LIKE many top executives, James R. Lavoie and Joseph M. Marino keep a close eye on the stock market. But the two men, co-founders of Rite-Solutions, a software company that builds advanced — and highly classified — command-and-control systems for the Navy, don’t worry much about Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange.

Instead, they focus on an internal market where any employee can propose that the company acquire a new technology, enter a new business or make an efficiency improvement. These proposals become stocks, complete with ticker symbols, discussion lists and e-mail alerts. Employees buy or sell the stocks, and prices change to reflect the sentiments of the company’s engineers, computer scientists and project managers — as well as its marketers, accountants and even the receptionist.

“We’re the founders, but we’re far from the smartest people here,” Mr. Lavoie, the chief executive, said during an interview at Rite-Solutions’ headquarters outside Newport, R.I. “At most companies, especially technology companies, the most brilliant insights tend to come from people other than senior management. So we created a marketplace to harvest collective genius.”

That’s a refreshing dose of humility from a successful C.E.O. with decades of experience in his field. (Mr. Lavoie, 59, is a Vietnam War veteran and an accomplished engineer who has devoted his career to military-oriented technologies.)

Most companies operate under the assumption that big ideas come from a few big brains: the inspired founder, the eccentric inventor, the visionary boss. But there’s a fine line between individual genius and know-it-all arrogance. What happens when rivals become so numerous, when technologies move so quickly, that no corporate honcho can think of everything? Then it’s time to invent a less top-down approach to innovation, to make it everybody’s business to come up with great ideas.

That’s a key lesson behind the rise of open source technology, most notably Linux. A ragtag army of programmers organized into groups, wrote computer code, made the code available for anyone to revise and, by competing and cooperating in a global community, reshaped the market for software. The brilliance of Linux as a model of innovation is that it is powered by the grass-roots brilliance of the thousands of programmers who created it.

According to Tim O’Reilly, the founder and chief executive of O’Reilly Media, the computer book publisher, and an evangelist for open source technologies, creativity is no longer about which companies have the most visionary executives, but who has the most compelling “architecture of participation.” That is, which companies make it easy, interesting and rewarding for a wide range of contributors to offer ideas, solve problems and improve products?

At Rite-Solutions, the architecture of participation is both businesslike and playful. Fifty-five stocks are listed on the company’s internal market, which is called Mutual Fun. Each stock comes with a detailed description — called an expect-us, as opposed to a prospectus — and begins trading at a price of $10. Every employee gets $10,000 in “opinion money” to allocate among the offerings, and employees signal their enthusiasm by investing in a stock and, better yet, volunteering to work on the project. Volunteers share in the proceeds, in the form of real money, if the stock becomes a product or delivers savings.

Mr. Marino, 57, president of Rite-Solutions, says the market, which began in January 2005, has already paid big dividends. One of the earliest stocks (ticker symbol: VIEW) was a proposal to apply three-dimensional visualization technology, akin to video games, to help sailors and domestic-security personnel practice making decisions in emergency situations. Initially, Mr. Marino was unenthusiastic about the idea — “I’m not a joystick jockey” — but support among employees was overwhelming. Today, that product line, called Rite-View, accounts for 30 percent of total sales.

“Would this have happened if it were just up to the guys at the top?” Mr. Marino asked. “Absolutely not. But we could not ignore the fact that so many people were rallying around the idea. This system removes the terrible burden of us always having to be right.”

Another virtue of the stock market, Mr. Lavoie added, is that it finds good ideas from unlikely sources. Among Rite-Solutions’ core technologies are pattern-recognition algorithms used in military applications, as well as for electronic gambling systems at casinos, a big market for the company. A member of the administrative staff, with no technical expertise, thought that this technology might also be used in educational settings, to create an entertaining way for students to learn history or math.

She started a stock called Win/Play/Learn (symbol: WPL), which attracted a rush of investment from engineers eager to turn her idea into a product. Their enthusiasm led to meetings with Hasbro, up the road in Pawtucket, and Rite-Solutions won a contract to help it build its VuGo multimedia system, introduced last Christmas.

Mr. Lavoie called this innovation an example of the “quiet genius” that goes untapped inside most organizations. “We would have never connected those dots,” he said. “But one employee floated an idea, lots of employees got passionate about it and that led to a new line of business.”

The next frontier is to tap the quiet genius that exists outside organizations — to attract innovations from people who are prepared to work with a company, even if they don’t work for it. An intriguing case in point is InnoCentive, a virtual research and development lab through which major corporations invite scientists and engineers worldwide to contribute ideas and solve problems they haven’t been able to crack themselves.

InnoCentive, based in Andover, Mass., is literally a marketplace of ideas. It has signed up more than 30 blue-chip companies, including Procter & Gamble, Boeing and DuPont, whose research labs are groaning under the weight of unsolved problems and unfinished projects. It has also signed up more than 90,000 biologists, chemists and other professionals from more than 175 countries. These “solvers” compete to meet thorny technical challenges posted by “seeker” companies. Each challenge has a detailed scientific description, a deadline and an award, which can run as high as $100,000.

“We are talking about the democratization of science,” said Alpheus Bingham, who spent 28 years as a scientist and senior research executive at Eli Lilly & Company before becoming the president and chief executive of InnoCentive. “What happens when you open your company to thousands and thousands of minds, each of them with a totally different set of life experiences?”

InnoCentive, founded as an independent start-up by Lilly in 2001, has an impressive record. It can point to a long list of valuable scientific ideas that have arrived, with surprising speed, from faraway places. In addition to the United States, the top countries for solvers are China, India and Russia.

Last month, InnoCentive attracted a $9 million infusion of venture capital to accelerate its growth. “There is a ‘collective mind’ out there,” Dr. Bingham said. “The question for companies is, what fraction of it can you access?”

That remains an unanswered question at many companies, whose leaders continue to rely on their own brainpower as the key source of ideas. But there’s evidence that more and more top executives are recognizing the limits of their individual genius.

Back at Rite-Solutions, for example, one of the most valuable stocks on Mutual Fun is the stock market itself (symbol: STK). So many executives from other companies have asked to study the system that a team championed the idea of licensing it as a product — another unexpected opportunity.

“There’s nothing wrong with experience,” said Mr. Marino, the company’s president. “The problem is when experience gets in the way of innovation. As founders, the one thing we know is that we don’t know all the answers.”

Filed at 9:54 p.m. ET

Now that March Madness is in full swing, AP sportswriters will be filing periodic, behind-the-scenes reports from the NCAA

tournament:

SUNDAY, March 26:

MINNEAPOLIS — It’s hard not to be a fan of Villanova coach Jay Wright.

All weekend long, as his Wildcats made a run at their first Final Four in 21 years, Wright conducted himself with class and patience.

He welcomed former players and coaches from the 1985 team that shocked Georgetown for the national title, embracing the tradition rather than treating it as a burden that these new kids had to live up to.

Everywhere he went, people talked about 1985. And with Rollie Massimino in the stands and Ed Pinckney on the bench as an assistant coach, the newest edition of the cardiac Cats easily could have been overlooked.

But Wright made sure that didn’t happen. While welcoming chatter about the past, he also used the platform to introduce the rest of the country to his seniors — particularly Randy Foye and Allan Ray.

After the Wildcats lost to Florida on Sunday, Wright was blunt in his feelings.

”This hurts,” he said. ”It’s supposed to hurt.”

But he also went out of his way to say how proud he was of his team’s breakthrough season — a school record 30 wins and their first No. 1 seed.

And he answered every question, from those about the disappointment to what happens next when Foye, Ray and Co. leave school.

”It’s not even about not going to the Final Four,” Wright said. ”We just wanted to advance and keep playing together, keep being together.”

A lot of coaches say things like that, but Wright says it with a purpose and a genuineness that some of his colleagues lack.

”I want them to feel great about themselves, great about Villanova,” Wright said.

After spending four years with a coach like him, how could they not?

–AP Sports Writer Jon Krawczynski.

KIEV, Ukraine, Monday, March 27 — President Viktor A. Yushchenko, who led a wave of popular protest to office promising a freer Ukraine aligned with Europe and the United States, suffered a stunning political defeat in parliamentary elections on Sunday, leaving him weakened and his reformist policies in doubt.

Mr. Yushchenko called the vote for a new and newly empowered Parliament “the first fair, democratic elections in Ukraine,” and his party appeared to have been routed.

Nearly a year and a half after the protests and international pressure swept Mr. Yushchenko to the presidency, his party fell far behind not only the party of the man he beat for the top job, Viktor F. Yanukovich, but also the party of his former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, according to an independent survey of voters leaving the polls, announced by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, after voting ended at 10 p.m. on Sunday.

Mr. Yanukovich’s Party of Regions, which the survey showed with 33 percent of the vote, was poised to win the largest bloc of seats in the 450-seat Parliament, but not enough to win control outright. Ms. Tymoshenko’s bloc received 22 percent, while Mr. Yushchenko’s party, Our Ukraine, trailed in a distant third place, with only 13 percent, according to the survey.

Mr. Yanukovich, the former prime minister whose supporters were accused of having rigged the presidential race against Mr. Yushchenko in November 2004, declared “a decisive victory,” using the sort of language that rallied those against him and his patron, the former president, Leonid D. Kuchma. “Ukraine made its choice,” he said. “Its choice is freedom, democracy, stability and confidence in the future.”

Mr. Yanukovich’s strength is less a reflection of his political successes than it is of the failings of Mr. Yushchenko, whose reputation at home has suffered from one problem after another despite his image abroad as a reform-minded democrat.

His inability to help improve the weak economy and lessen the country’s reliance on Russian gas, which caused painful shortages this winter in a price dispute, deeply hurt him.

The election results set the stage for a period of political jockeying that could last for days or even weeks before a new government is formed. Much will depend on the success of an array of smaller parties that needed to win at least 3 percent of the vote to secure seats.

The voting was the first electoral test of the sweeping changes Mr. Yushchenko promised during the huge street protests that came to be known as the “Orange Revolution.”

If the results of the voter survey hold, the election will underscore the disastrous turnaround in Mr. Yushchenko’s political fate, leaving him forced to compromise.

At stake are Mr. Yushchenko’s stated policy goals, including integrating Ukraine into the European Union and NATO. Mr. Yanukovich’s party has promised to restore economic stability and forge closer ties with Russia.

The election has added significance for Ukraine, a country of 47 million on the edge of a newly expanded European Union, because of a political compromise that cleared the way for Mr. Yushchenko’s presidency. Under constitutional changes adopted then, the new Parliament will have the power to choose the prime minister and most of the cabinet, though Mr. Yushchenko will retain control over foreign affairs and security ministries.

Mr. Yushchenko’s party now faces a choice of whether to repair the fractured coalition with Ms. Tymoshenko, who served as his first prime minister until a falling out amid infighting over policy and accusations of corruption, or possibly to face a hostile government. Together, their parties still drew more votes than Mr. Yanukovich’s, according to the voter survey, but her showing increased her leverage in the talks.

Without Ms. Tymoshenko’s support, Mr. Yushchenko’s only other choice would be an improbable alliance with Mr. Yanukovich. The president remained noncommittal on Sunday, saying in televised remarks that he was considering “all kinds of various combinations.”

Later, though, as the gravity of his party’s poor showing became clear, Mr. Yushchenko’s aides said they were prepared to revive the “orange” coalition. The mood at the party’s headquarters was funereal, despite rock bands that performed on the central square of Kiev, the capital, and videos that evoked the 2004 protests there.

A scheduled appearance by the current prime minister and leader of the party, Yury I. Yekhanurov, was abruptly canceled without explanation early Monday morning.

Ms. Tymoshenko, by contrast, clearly relished a result that provided a measure of vengeance after her dismissal last September. She said those who supported the Orange Revolution were still a majority — now led by her, her remarks suggested, though she stopped short of declaring her insistence on becoming prime minister again.

“I would not like us to let the people down again,” she said.

Although Mr. Yanukovich’s party complained of widespread irregularities ahead of Sunday’s vote, including names missing from voter lists or Russian ones mistranslated into Ukrainian, there were few immediate reports of fraud or significant disruptions. But long lines formed as voters slogged through a ballot with 45 parties, and a homemade firebomb damaged one polling place in the Kiev region.

For many of those who voted, the significance was not in the results, but in the process. They described a Ukraine that was freer and more democratic, if also unruly and still divided along the same ethnic, social and political lines of 2004.

“It is already a big victory,” Mr. Yushchenko said, putting the best face on his party’s performance.

The survey of voters was carried out for the Democratic Initiatives Foundation by the Razumkov Center and the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, which is part of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy. Final results are not expected at least until late Monday, and perhaps later.

Critics of Mr. Yushchenko’s performance as president welcomed the freedom of choice.

Maria I. Kompaneyets, 63, said that she voted for Mr. Yanukovich in 2004, but that she had hopes that Mr. Yushchenko would use his popular mandate to improve life in Ukraine, especially the economy and pensions, recurrent complaints among those less well off.

“Nothing changed, at least nothing changed for better, neither in the country nor in our own life,” she said, as she voted with her husband, Pyotr. “Of course we had hopes. So much had been said in those days. Who could expect that it would turn out so bad?”

THE other day when I called Art Buchwald, he couldn’t come to the phone. John Glenn, the former senator, was at his bedside in the Washington hospice where, for 10 weeks now, Mr. Buchwald has been waiting to die.

Art — I can’t easily call him Mr. Buchwald because we are acquaintances — has lived a storied life, cutting a swath through postwar Paris, where he wined with Taylor (Elizabeth) and dined with Bergman (Ingrid), then returned to the United States to write a column that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1982. He’s also written some 30 books.

So he’s not complaining now, despite losing a leg to amputation this winter and an apparently imminent death sentence. He has decided he would prefer to die rather than undergo hours of dialysis to cleanse his kidneys every few days.

But he also hasn’t died yet, despite predictions that he would only last three or four weeks without the dialysis. That may be because he’s having too much fun. His hospice room, where he intends to stay until the end, has become an informal salon, filled with various members of the Kennedy clan, Marine brass, Senator Glenn, Benjamin C. Bradlee, Representative Nancy Pelosi. On Tuesday the French ambassador showed up to make him a commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and give him a medal.

And he’s been writing words of wisdom about the end of life.

“People constantly ask me if there is an afterlife,” he wrote in The Washington Post on March 14. “It’s a good chance for me to philosophize. I tell them, ‘If I knew I would tell you.’ ” Last week he wrote a more sober column, about choosing someone to make life-and-death decisions for you.

“A good surrogate is hard to find,” he wrote.

I can’t pretend to be nonpartisan when it comes to Art Buchwald.

I met him too late in life — his life. It was a balmy evening last summer. He was sitting between Carly Simon and a technology zillionaire who was the host of a charity event for human rights on his back lawn on Martha’s Vineyard. A small tented affair for about 200 that didn’t make a dent on the vast green expanse overlooking the harbor.

Art’s eyes twinkled, his lip sagged, he knew my byline. We hit it off right away.

“Are you married?” he asked, first thing. Then he asked for the latest gossip from the newsroom of The New York Times, Hollywood and Washington. I fetched him a plate of food from the buffet, since friends and fans were keeping him occupied. And I drove him home that night, grasping a scrap of paper on which he’d scrawled, ever so slowly and in trembling script, his address in Vineyard Haven with the words “yellow mailbox.”

To me Art Buchwald was a monument. I’d read his syndicated column since I was a kid and felt the echoes of his footsteps in Paris, where he had lived and written for about 14 years, and where, much more recently, I had lived and written for 6. I had gone on to work for The Washington Post, where his column was based. And every year The International Herald Tribune would run his Thanksgiving column, an absurd bit of whimsy about the nonexistent “Jour de Merci Donnant.” I laughed every time.

So it was pretty surprising to find that in the summer of 2005, Art — “Arty,” as all his friends called him — was still around, still writing his column, still sharp as a stick. A stroke had slowed his speech, so the punch lines sometimes came at a snail’s pace. But it was always worth paying attention.

“Did I ever tell you about the time that Leonard Downie tried to cut my salary?” he asked about the executive editor of The Washington Post as we sat out on his back porch at dusk, with a view of his blooming hydrangeas.

Then he launched into a story of a certain Hollywood star who had a torrid extramarital affair one summer and — hmm, perhaps those details were not meant to be shared. Anyway, it ended in a joke involving bicoastal ashes.

One evening Mike Wallace came gliding through the screen door, shirtless and in a pair of shorts. His teeth gleamed white against a deep tan.

“Nice column,” he offered, referring to Art’s latest piece in print, which had merited a mention on a popular journalism Web site. Then he asked some penetrating questions about my career, and in about two strokes I felt like a midget in the land of giants.

The feeling persisted. Once I glanced down at a wrinkled and stained list of typed phone numbers next to Art’s phone: Ethel Kennedy. William Styron. Carly Simon’s number was written at the top in Art’s painstaking hand. Perhaps she’d moved.

Art, Mike Wallace and William Styron are a legendary trio on the Vineyard. All of them have suffered from depression, and they have toured together to promote the merits of medication and other treatment. Their friends refer to them as the Blues Brothers. When the subject of depression came up, Art launched into a diatribe against Tom Cruise, the antipsychiatry movie star, about whom I’d recently written. He didn’t miss much.

The summer ended. In the fall the French Embassy in Washington gave a gala 80th birthday party for Art, with his famous and powerful pals as hosts. It was an event attended by le tout Washington. I was stuck on the West Coast and couldn’t make it.

We exchanged a few e-mail messages, I cursed him for being so old, and got busy with life.

Then a couple of weeks ago I heard that he was dying, and I called.

It had been nine weeks since his kidneys had started to fail and he was still alive. “No one can figure it out,” he told me. In the meantime, he said, “I’m having the time of my life.” Prominent visitors stop by, his kids bring him McDonald’s for dinner, the grandkids come. He called up Mr. Styron to boast about the French medal. “I’ve got that one also,” Mr. Styron grumbled back.

Enough about him. Art wanted to know the latest from Hollywood, about the private investigator Anthony Pellicano and how the federal investigation against him was going. That reminded him of the case he’d brought against Paramount Pictures years ago, claiming the company stole his idea for a screenplay.

It was a landmark case. After eight years, amazingly, he won. And it led to one of his enduring legacies, the “Buchwald clause” in Hollywood contracts, protecting studios from having to compensate a writer for an original idea. It also led to revelations about Hollywood accounting.

What else was new? Mike Wallace had just announced that he was going to retire this spring, when he will turn 88.

“Retiring,” Art mused. “Isn’t that terrible?” And he told me to call him next week.

Nancy Goodman’s employer, a telecommunications company in Boston, offers benefits to help employees care for elderly parents. But she found them nearly useless during four years of caring for her mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, and her father, who died of kidney failure last year.

“They say they want to do the right thing,” Ms. Goodman, 58, said of her employer, which she would not identify for fear of losing her job. “But when it comes down to it, they’re not seeing the true picture.”

Ms. Goodman’s lament is common, as corporate America scrambles to help the soaring number of baby boomers, mostly working women, whose obligation to frail, elderly parents results in absenteeism, workday distractions or stress-related health problems.

Companies are responding, but experts say they often use child care benefits as a model when they do not suit the different and unpredictable needs of the elderly. In addition, at a time of cutbacks in expensive health insurance and pensions, the most commonly offered benefits are those that cost a company little or nothing, like referral services and unpaid leaves.

Ms. Goodman, for instance, tried her company’s referral service to supplement inadequate staffing when her parents lived at an assisted living center in Connecticut. It was “like going to the yellow pages,” she said, since it did not relieve her of the time-consuming tasks of arranging for and supervising the services from afar. Ms. Goodman was also entitled to a year’s leave of absence, a benefit a new mother might appreciate. But if she took a leave now, what happened if her mother lingered?

Employees with ailing parents, more than 20 million nationwide, cite other benefits that would allow them to focus more on their jobs, like geriatric case managers to guide them through the mysteries of Medicaid and Medicare, or backup care for emergencies like a last-minute business trip. Companies that offer this kind of hands-on assistance generally pay for at least part of the service.

But they are rare. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, which represents more than 200,000 human resource and other corporate officials, 39 percent of its members said in 2003 that elder care benefits were “too costly to be feasible.” Only 1 percent of their companies subsidized any elder care benefits last year. And only 3 percent offered the emergency backup care — subsidized or otherwise — that experts say saves money by keeping workers at work.

“The perception among companies is that they can’t afford elder care benefits,” said Frank Scanlan, a spokesman for the society.

It is the largest companies that are the most generous, but even those often subscribe to the mistaken notion that the Mommy Track and the Daughter Track are the same, said Chris Gatti, president of the Work Options Group in Superior, Colo. Work Options, whose clients employ 400,000 people nationwide, provides in-home care for children and the elderly.

“These benefits fall under the same umbrella but are fundamentally different,” Mr. Gatti said. “Child care programs are relatively straight-forward and easy to administer compared to elder care, which is a maze with lots of sharp corners and dark secluded places.”

An individual supervisor can ease an employee’s burden but still leave them vulnerable to management changes. Just 6 percent of employers have written policies about elder care, according to surveys by the Society for Human Resource Management, while 76 percent say they help employees on a case-by-case basis.

For Ms. Goodman, the one godsend since her father died and her mother moved into her Boston apartment has been permission to work at home. But that is likely to change with a new boss. “I’m walking on eggs right now,” Ms. Goodman said.

The distinctions between child care and elder care have become apparent as the first of the 77 million baby boomers turn 60 and their parents live past 85, joining the fastest-growing segment of the population.

The most obvious is that children’s schedules are predictable — a school holiday next Monday — while elderly parents’ needs — a trip to the emergency room — are crisis-driven. Also, children are raised at home; an elderly parent often lives far away.

Guiding the decisions of an elderly parent also requires mastery of arcane legal, financial and medical matters.

“It’s a new and very confusing skill set,” said Maureen Corcoran, a vice president at Prudential Financial. “You don’t just give people a list; you lead them there. Otherwise they spend hours upon hours figuring it out themselves.”

For both employees and employers, the costs of elder care are enormous, according to studies by the MetLife Mature Market Institute, which is in the midst of updated analysis to reflect rapidly changing demographics.

The price tag for employers in 1997 ranged from $11.5 billion to $29 billion a year. Most expensive were the replacement of lost workers (at least $4.9 billion a year), workday interruptions ($3.7 billion) and absenteeism ($885 million). The employees lose salary, Social Security and pension benefits as a result of refusing promotions, switching to part-time work or retiring early.

Certain benefits mitigate these costs, and certain companies have learned there is a clear return on investment. At Prudential, for instance, subsidized emergency backup care prevents absenteeism and workday interruptions. Prudential’s 21,000 employees, with one phone call to Work Options Group, can get help for parents by the next morning, for a co-payment of $4 an hour.

A $20-an-hour aide, on an eight-hour shift, would otherwise cost a Prudential employee $160, rather than $32. Yet the company says it will save $650,000 during a three-year contract with Work Options, Ms. Corcoran said, because “if our employees needs are taken care of, they can focus on work.”

Diane Yankencheck, a Prudential employee in Newark, said the service kept her working during a crisis. Her father has a degenerative neurological disease and round-the-clock care. Her mother manages the household, or did until she broke her wrist. Now an aide from Work Options cooks, cleans and helps her bathe and dress.

Kent Burtis, a Verizon technician in Bayville, N.J., uses similar backup care for his father, who is paralyzed and incontinent. For a while, Mr. Burtis spent hours before work feeding, diapering and dressing him. Now an aide does the morning shift. “It’s kept me from slitting my throat,” Mr. Burtis said.

Elder care benefits most often seem a luxury at small companies and nonprofits. So even at AARP, dedicated to the needs of older Americans, Deborah Russell, the director of work force issues, was daunted by coordinating long-distance care for her mother and then missing weeks of work to be at her bedside when death neared.

Ms. Russell and her two sisters, grateful for AARP’s excellent referral service, still spent “an inordinate amount of time on the telephone” during working hours, distracted and unproductive. As their mother’s condition deteriorated, and the siblings rotated weeks in Florida, Ms. Russell used paid vacation time rather than the 12 weeks of unpaid leave guaranteed by the federal Family Medical Leave Act or AARP’s more generous 16-week program, also unpaid.

Another benefit assumed to be useful is the flexible spending account, governed by the Internal Revenue Service and widely offered by companies. It permits the use of pretax dollars for dependent care, as long as the dependent meets the I.R.S. definition. Virtually all children do, but most aged parents do not. That means tax breaks for baby sitters but not companions for the elderly.

Experts disagree about whether women will push employers for help with their parents, as they did 30 years ago when child care was their pressing issue.

Ellen Galinsky, 63, president of the Family and Work Institute, led the charge for a day care center at Bank Street College when she was a researcher there in 1969. After “huge resistance,” the center opened in 1974. Ms. Galinsky predicts a similar awakening to elder care issues because “demographics are destiny.”

“Everyone I know is dealing with this,” said Ms. Galinsky, who recently stayed at the bedside of her 98-year-old mother for the last two months of her life. The institute allows unlimited sick leave for such family emergencies. But even with that leeway, Ms. Galinsky said: “I was on another planet. It’s like no other experience. I barely have words for how hard it is.”

Todd Groves, founder of LTC Financial Partners in Seattle, who advises human resource managers on long term care, is not convinced that women like Ms. Galinsky will have the same galvanizing effect this time around, regardless of their numbers or their passion.

“Back then you still had a paternal business culture,” Mr. Groves said. “Now people feel out on their own. They are fearful about their careers and don’t feel they can ask for help.”

HOW does Rome taste? An odd question perhaps, but the sort that comes to mind when I read travel accounts that define cities by sights and sounds, colors and tempo. What about the flavor, I wonder, meaning that more literally than figuratively.

Say Rome to me and my first thoughts are not of the swirling traffic around the marble wedding cake that is a monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, nor of the eaten-out stone melon that is the Colosseum, nor of the “Dolce Vita” set as immortalized by Fellini. Rather, I think first of the creamy foam, or spuma, that tops lightly sugared espresso at the always jammed Sant’Eustachio around the corner from the Pantheon, the coffee bar that I still consider this city’s best.

Next, thoughts turn to Rome’s own big, round globe artichokes available from late February to mid-April and most succulent simmered in olive oil with mint and parsley alla Romana or as carciofi alla giudea flattened and fried to resemble dried sunflowers and one of the many Jewish culinary inheritances from the city’s Ghetto preparations that do almost as well by other artichoke varieties in other seasons.

Among Roman pastas, I remember favorites such as the guanciale-and-egg-decked carbonara, cacio e pepe with its cheese and pepper sting, the mellow tomato-and-onion-sauced amatriciana and the unusual, delectable pajata (pronounced pie-YAH-tah), pasta tossed with chopped intestines of newly born lambs that still hold remains of milk, resulting in a creamy, meaty tomato sauce. And gnocchi alla Romana, unlike others in Italy, are rounds of semolina baked under a golden glaze of butter and cheese, an elegant variation.

These lusty eaters enjoy their meats close to the bone, gnawing through roasted abbacchio lamb, suckling pig or braised oxtails. They dote on innards like tomato-simmered tripe and tantalizingly chewy coratella, a savory hash of mixed lamb organs. Suffusing all are the seasonings that define the Roman kitchen: the air-cured pig’s jowl bacon called guanciale; salt-etched anchovies; garlic; fiery, red peperoncino chilies; black pepper; the pungent sheep’s milk cheese pecorino; and rosemary, sage, parsley and minty mentuccia.

Trying for a genuine sense of place ever more elusive in these days of global homogenization I seek out restaurants featuring traditional dishes and am therefore as unlikely to order artichokes alla Romana in Kiev as to try chicken Kiev in Rome. But it is in markets and shops that I discover most about local food and manners, scouting regional products to look for on menus. Even more intriguing is the tense interaction of vendors and buyers bustling through daily routines, exhibiting manners and mores, trusting or not, bargaining or not, according to local custom.

For enticing displays of both food and folkways, there is no better market in Rome than the Campo dei Fiori right in the heart of the city. A veritable stage set of an antique marketplace, facing the 16th-century Palazzo Farnese and bordered by romantically faded buildings, cafes and restaurants, it comes to life every morning (except Sunday) until 1:30 p.m. The site of public executions during the Renaissance, it is now dedicated to far more felicitous pursuits.

Vegetable and fruit stalls are gardens of temptations, the heavenly artichokes still on long, leafy stems, and in season there is the particularly Roman puntarelle, a tangy salad green with long, jagged leaves, and the tiny sweet strawberries fragoline di Nemi that grow wild in the Castelli hills of Lazio, Rome’s province. Usually there is broccolo Romano, a spring green cross between cauliflower and broccoli in pyramid-shaped heads formed of tiny shell-like nodules.

Last fall, I learned more about it in the home kitchen of Paola di Mauro, the culinary doyenne of a wine-producing restaurant family. She has informed the work of many Italian-American chefs including Mario Batali. Among other bracing Roman dishes, she prepared a lovely soup of that broccoli, based on a soffrito, a sauted, minced blend of guanciale, garlic and parsley, and served it with thread-thin vermicelli and grated pecorino.

Fresh mushrooms prevail at some stands in the Campo dei Fiori, while the ancient-looking dried versions are in stock at others. At least six sizes and shapes of zucchini, crimson tomatoes and peppers, garlands of garlic and giant bouquets of parsley and rosemary take center stage, while around the edges open shop stands offer flowers, meats, poultry, cheeses and breads, all noisily hawked by vendors to every passer-by. Each time I return to this market, I am most surprised by the aromas. As beautiful as New York’s Greenmarkets are, rarely do apples, pears, grapes, strawberries and, I swear, artichokes exude the perfumes of those at this Roman treasure.

Similar charms abound in the less expensive, more rustic open market in Testaccio, an old district that is a place of sylvan parks and tree-shaded residential streets, but once the center for slaughterhouses and still known as the quinto quarto, or fifth quarter, referring to the innards and trimmings butchers kept for themselves. There one finds the piled-up enticements at Volpetti, a salumeria where, among the luxurious delicatessen, cheeses and candies, I first sampled corallina. It is Rome’s prized fresh salami of spicy, lean pork and lard, once relegated to Easter but now available year round, thanks to refrigeration.

Romans claim two special breads the round rosetta with a top pattern suggesting an open rose, and the crusty, oblong pane di Genzano, which comes from a town in Lazio on the slopes of a volcanic crater.

At the sparkling bread bakery and casual food shop that is Compagnia del Pane, the delicious rosetta is baked, as is a house version of the Genzano. That and other breads are the base for many sandwiches that are eaten in or taken out, along with salads, a few hot dishes and pastries including one of the best cornetti (Italian for croissant) I had in the city sheer delight with the very hot and frothy cappuccino. About 10 or 15 minutes’ walk from St. Peter’s, this is just right for a restorative, inexpensive lunch.

Food is the lure, but obviously not the only reward. Typically, during a weeklong visit to Rome last fall, such quests took me and my husband, Richard Falcone, to parts of the city that we might not otherwise have visited, affording glimpses of different neighborhoods with brief stops for travel poster sights en route. Finally, because authentic Roman fare is served at all levels from the least expensive, casual trattorias like the beguiling, young-spirited Augusto in the winding walker’s paradise that is Trastevere to the stylishly urbane and clubby Al Moro, around the corner from the Trevi fountain one can see a range of social and economic differences in service, dress and tone, as well as humble to haute renditions of traditional specialties.

Since my first visit to Rome in 1953, I have begun restaurant rounds at Al Moro, a smartly compact, sophisticated spot displaying portraits of celebrity habitus like Federico Fellini and other denizens of Cinecitt and the literary world. Despite the coolly detached management attitude that Italians describe as strafottente, and the attempt to relegate foreigners to a separate room unless they specifically ask not to be, I am instantly disarmed by the temptations presented at the entrance. In season they might include fresh porcini, the egg-shaped white ovoli funghi, white truffles from Alba, cheeses, corallina and always prosciutto with its earthy, burnished flavor.

Oddly, waiters are friendly and accommodating, suggesting the perfect artichokes alla Romana followed by thick bucatini strands in a refined amatriciana sauce (named for Amatrice, the Lazio town of origin) with bits of guanciale, onion and tomato. Or it might be spaghetti Al Moro we recognize it as carbonara which according to house legend was created here after World War II to please American G.I.’s who ordered spaghetti, bacon and eggs. More likely, it originated in the Apennines where lumbermen cooked this simple pasta over fires of wood charcoal carbona. Consistently, Moro has also had the best spaghetti with clam sauce in the city, made with the tiny, greenish veraci clams that Romans adore, and sometimes at lunch, a coarse, garlicky cotechino sausage nested on broccoli sauted with garlic and olive oil.

Main course winners on my last visit were the Roman roasted lamb, abbacchio with rosemary-accented potatoes, fork-tender oxtail in an airy tomato sauce, and butter-gilded sauted sweetbreads with mushrooms. Fortunately we had just enough room for what must be the world’s most scrumptious bab, the rum-soaked yeast bun, here doused with satiny zabaglione.

If Al Moro reflects exclusivity, Il Matriciano practically announces inclusiveness. Close to the Vatican Museum, this is a series of modern, bright and convivial dining rooms, suggesting a big American steakhouse. About 20 to 30 percent lower in price than at Al Moro, most of the same specialties are served with dash and vigor. A house antipasto includes varieties of perfect prosciutto, cheese and tiny fried croquettes of artichokes, meatballs and the like. The Roman stracciatella soup, chicken broth frothed with beaten eggs, was light and lovely, and the thin, fresh egg noodles, tagliolini, were done alla gricia, sparely adorned only with guanciale and cheese, minus the eggs of carbonara. Amatriciana had meatier overtones than at Moro and was well matched with short thick tubes of rigatoni.

Fried lamb’s brains with zucchini could not have been more crisp or golden, nor could the big, rustic chunks of oxtail have been improved upon. Although a chocolate pie proved disappointing, it was redeemed by the irresistible millefoglie, a flaky Napoleon layered with custardy whipped cream.

Still descending in price, if neither in charm nor deliciousness, is Matricianella, a homey trattoria with outdoor tables on a narrow cobblestoned shopping street between the Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina and Fontanella Borghese. As pleasant as sidewalk dining can be, serious feeders seem to favor the indoors. In or out, Matricianella provided the very best fried artichoke alla giudea of my visit, with just the right crackle to the outer leaves and the typical velvety softness of the heart. The same can be said for the blessedly hot carbonara with its eggs, cheese, nuggets of guanciale and needlings of black pepper. Rich tomato sauces enlivened silky tripe and, for another main course, Rome’s beloved salted codfish, baccal.

About 20 years ago I happened into Osteria dell’Angelo, then a tiny slice of a place in a quiet residential district, not far from the Vatican Museum, only to return whenever I am in Rome. Owned by the congenial Angelo Croce, a retired celebrated racecar driver, it grew into a much larger space still decked with photographs of many sports stars who have visited. Brown-paper-topped tables and a handsome stone floor retain the feeling of the tiny adjacent original, and the strictly Roman fare is listed in local dialect. Thus, the second courses appear on the menu as seconni instead of secondi, and sweets are dorci, not dolci, and nun instead of non means no.

Just as authentic are the no-frills versions of spaghetti or penne alla pajata, the innards still fresh enough to have the milk that tastes like a piquant ricotta. All the Roman pastas are generously served, if not all of them are served every day, and it would be wise to check the schedule for minestra di broccoli e arzilla, a soup of Roman broccoli in a broth of skate (arzilla) and piquant hot peppers.

Tripe, baccal, rabbit roasted with white wine and olives, and an anchovy tart are among weekly headliners. I’ve never made it to dessert but welcome a few cute biscotti to accompany a final espresso. The house features the wines of the Lazio in carafes adequate for two at lunch at 3.50 euros (about $4.25 at $1.22 to the euro).

On mild Roman afternoon and evenings, the young and the casual gather at the trestle tables set on a tiny, antique piazzetta in Trastevere, there to feast on the savory casalinga dishes of Augusto. Inside two cozy, white rooms hung with movie memorabilia, neighbors gather to chat and feed children. Daily menus change, but you could do no better than to catch the well-soaked and snowy baccal with tomatoes, olive oil and garlic, the tender pollo alla Romana chunks of chicken braised with tomatoes and rosemary any of the typical pastas and a sprightly salad of the bittersweet puntarelle or greens like chicory (cicoria) sweated with garlic in sunny Lazio olive oil.

Dispensing satisfying if not brilliant local fare to the solid bourgeois residents and market men of Testaccio since 1911, Perilli is a modestly priced period piece with white tablecloths, wine bottles and antipasto on display and romantic murals of antique Roman scenes. With old-time formality, waiters present appetizers like steamed, meat-filled zucchini and then rigatoni in a tomato and oxtail meat sauce, and for main courses, pork roasted with potatoes or tender grilled sweetbreads. The little veal roll-ups, involtini, were dry and bland, but there is more than enough here to allow one to enjoy Perilli’s old-time appeal.

Three other restaurants invariably mentioned when one asks for sources of Roman specialties are worth noting, because they proved to be a mixed bag.

The most frequently named is Checchino dal 1887, a 119-year old landmark in Testaccio. Offering a fully Roman menu, this tourist-conscious establishment makes it easy for the curious but cautious to try unknown fare. However, in at least four visits, including one in November, I have found dishes such as coratella, oxtails and involtini veal rolls, as well as classic Roman pastas, to be authentic, if less than sparklingly fresh or inspired. Thorough disasters included overcooked, mushy artichokes; gray, tough veal tongue in an oily green sauce; and all desserts including very tired cheeses. Service swings from helpful to borderline brusque toward non-Italians.

A spectacular artichoke dish is the only reason to visit Evangelista, an old-timer done up as a smartly modern bote. Most of the food we tried was lackluster, but the amazing house specialty, carciofi al mattone, makes this a must stop for aficionados of that thistle. Appearing as a bronze, crepelike disk, this riff on the artichoke alla giudea is made by frying the fully opened artichoke under a weight traditionally a brick, or mattone so that it emerges crackling crisp outside, yet meltingly tender within. That, plus a pasta like pappardelle with porcini and a glass of wine would make a satisfying lunch before a walk through the nearby Ghetto or along the Tiber.

Sora Lella is the sort of trattoria I would love to love, a charming old house on the Isola Tiberina, an island between Trastevere and the Ghetto that is also home to a centuries-old hospital and two churches. Despite the trattoria’s views of the Tiber and its thoroughly Roman menu, every dish seemed stalely reheated and bland. Too bad, because it was the only place that featured the centuries-old recipe for cinghiale agrodolce wild boar in a bittersweet sauce. The pork substituted for the boar would have been acceptable had it not been gray and dry and the sauce achingly sweet.

As much as possible we tried to sample the wines of Lazio, and found they had come a long way since the days when they were noted only for the whites of Frascati and Montefiascone. We had a pretrip sampling in New York last fall during a Roman food and wine week held at several restaurants like San Domenico and Union Square Cafe where, as red wine devotees, we favored the clear and sprightly I Quattro Mori from Castel de Paolis 2001 and the richer, more complex Racemo rosso l’Olivella 2000.

At Il Matriciano we found a robustly fruity, garnet-colored shiraz from Casale del Giglio for about $26. That same producer also accounted for the best white we tried, a fresh but mellow-edged Satrico chardonnay from Frascati. The tasting in New York was organized by Ian D’Agata, director of the International Wine Academy of Roma, a stunning multistoried installation in a 19th-century town palace beside the Spanish Steps. There one can have tastings of Lazio wines, among others, giving good reason to raise the Italian toast “A cent’anni” “To a hundred years” most suitable in this ancient city.

Soup to Biscotti

The country-city code is 39-06.

MARKETS AND SHOPS

Campo dei Fiori, Piazza Campo dei Fiori. Morning market until 1:30 p.m. every day except Sunday.

Compagnia del Pane, Via Fabio Massimo, 87a-89, 324-1605.

Gastronomia Volpetti, Via Marmorata, 47, Testaccio, 574-2352; www.volpetti.com.

ESPRESSO AND WINE BARS

Il Palazzetto, International Wine Academy of Rome, Vicolo del Bottino, 8, 699-0878; online at www.wineacademyroma.com.

Sant’Eustachio, Piazza Sant’Eustachio, 82, 688-02048.

RESTAURANTS

Prices include lunch or dinner with tip (service) but without wine.

Osteria dell’Angelo, Via G. Bettolo, 24, 372-9470. Lunch for two, about 40 euros, or $49 at $1.22 to the euro.

Augusto, Piazza de Renzi, 15, Trastevere, 80-3798. Lunch for two, about 28 euros.

Checchino dal 1887, Via Monte Testaccio, 30, 574-3816. Dinner for two, 90 euros.

Evangelista, Via della Zoccolette, 11/A, 687-5810. Dinner, 90 euros.

Matricianella, Via del Leone 2-4, 687-2100. Lunch, 70 euros.

Il Matriciano, Via dei Gracchi, 55, 321-3040. Dinner, 80 euros.

Al Moro, Vicolo delle Bollette, 13, 678-3495. Dinner, 100 euros.

Perilli a Testaccio, Via Marmorata, 39, 574-2415. Lunch, 70 euros.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 — Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in south Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up.

In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off.

Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, “You want us to blow your brains out, too?”

Mr. Azawi’s body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.

In the last month, hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and executed in Baghdad. As Iraqi and American leaders struggle to avert a civil war, the bodies keep piling up. The city’s homicide rate has tripled from 11 to 33 a day, military officials said. The period from March 7 to March 21 was typically brutal: at least 191 corpses, many mutilated, surfaced in garbage bins, drainage ditches, minibuses and pickup trucks.

There were the four Duleimi brothers, Khalid, Tarek, Taleb and Salaam, seized from their home in front of their wives. And Achmed Abdulsalam, last seen at a checkpoint in his freshly painted BMW and found dead under a bridge two days later. And Mushtak al-Nidawi, a law student nicknamed Titanic for his Leonardo DiCaprio good looks, whose body was returned to his family with his skull chopped in half.

What frightens Iraqis most about these gangland-style killings is the impunity. According to reports filed by family members and more than a dozen interviews, many men were taken in daylight, in public, with witnesses all around. Few cases, if any, have been investigated.

Part of the reason may be that most victims are Sunnis, and there is growing suspicion that they were killed by Shiite death squads backed by government forces in a cycle of sectarian revenge. This allegation has been circulating in Baghdad for months, and as more Sunnis turn up dead, more people are inclined to believe it.

“This is sectarian cleansing,” said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of Parliament, who has maintained a degree of neutrality between Shiites and Sunnis.

Mr. Othman said there were atrocities on each side. “But what is different is when Shiites get killed by suicide bombs, everyone comes together to fight the Sunni terrorists,” he said. “When Shiites kill Sunnis, there is no response, because much of this killing is done by militias connected to the government.”

The imbalance of killing, and the suspicion the government may be involved, is deepening the Shiite-Sunni divide, just as American officials are urging Sunni and Shiite leaders to form an inclusive government, hoping that such a show of unity will prevent a full-scale civil war.

The pressure is increasing on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, but few expect him to crack down, partly because he needs the support of the Shiite militias to stay in power.

Haidar al-Ibadi, Mr. Jaafari’s spokesman, acknowledged that “some of the police forces have been infiltrated.” But he said “outsiders,” rather than Iraqis, were to blame.

Now many Sunnis, who used to be the most anti-American community in Iraq, are asking for American help.

“If the Americans leave, we are finished,” said Hassan al-Azawi, whose brother was taken from the pet shop.

He thought for a moment more.

“We may be finished already.”

The human rights office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a mostly Sunni group, has cataloged more than 540 cases of Sunni men and a few of Sunni women who were kidnapped and killed since Feb. 22, when a Shiite shrine in Samarra was destroyed, unleashing a wave of sectarian fury.

As the case of Mr. Azawi shows, some were easy targets.

Mr. Azawi was the youngest of five brothers. He was 27 and lived with his parents. He loved birds since he was a boy. Nightingales were his favorite. Then canaries, pigeons and doves.

During Saddam Hussein’s reign, he was drafted into the army, but he deserted.

“He was crazy about birds,” said a Shiite neighbor, Ibrahim Muhammad.

A few years ago, Mr. Azawi opened a small pet shop in Dawra, a rough-and-tumble, mostly Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Friends said that Mr. Azawi was not interested in politics or religion. He never went to the Sunni mosque, though his brothers did. He did not pay attention to news or watch television. This characteristic might have cost him his life.

On Feb. 22, the Askariya Shrine in Samarra was attacked at 7 a.m. But Mr. Azawi did not know what had happened until 4 p.m., his friends said. He was in his own little world, tending his birds, when a Shiite shopkeeper broke the news and told him to close. He stayed in his house for three days after that. His friends said he was terrified.

The day of the shrine attack, Shiite mobs began rampaging through Baghdad, burning Sunni mosques and slaughtering Sunni residents. Some Sunnis struck back and killed Shiites. The mayhem claimed hundreds of lives and exposed tensions that until then had been bubbling just beneath the surface.

Two Shiite militias, the Badr Organization, which once trained in Iran, and the Mahdi Army, the foot soldiers of a young, firebrand Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, were blamed for much of the bloodshed. Mr. Sadr’s men often wear all-black uniforms, and many of the relatives of kidnapped people said men in black uniforms had taken them. Many people also said the men in black arrived with the police.

Around 9 on the night of the shrine bombing, a mob of black-clad men surrounded the Duleimi brothers, family members said.

The brothers lived in New Baghdad, a working-class neighborhood that is mostly Shiite. They were all gardeners and religious men who prayed five times a day. They had relatives in Falluja, in the heart of Sunni territory.

Where a family hails from in Iraq often reveals whether it is Sunni or Shiite. Nowadays, because of the sectarian friction, people are increasingly aware of the slight regional differences in accent, dress and name. Some first names, like Omar for Sunnis, or Haidar for Shiites, are clear giveaways. Others, like Khalid, are not. Tribal names can also be a sign.

A cousin of the Duleimi brothers, who identified himself as Khalaf, said the four men were taken at gunpoint from the small house they shared. The next day, their bodies turned up in a drainage ditch near Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army. All their fingers and toes had been sawed off.

That same day Mushtak al-Nidawi, 20, was kidnapped. According to an aunt, Aliah al-Bakr, he was chatting on his cellphone outside his home in Bayah when a squad of Mahdi militiamen marched up the street, shouting, “We’re coming after you, Sunnis!”

Ms. Bakr said they snatched Mr. Nidawi while his mother stood at the door. His body surfaced on the streets seven days later, his skin a map of bruises, his handsome face burned by acid, his fingernails pulled out.

“I told his mother he was shot,” Ms. Bakr said.

Sheik Kamal al-Araji, a spokesman for Mr. Sadr, said “the Mahdi Army does not commit such crimes.”

He also said the militiamen would soon change their uniforms so they would no longer be confused with thugs.

The question of who exactly is behind these collective assassinations has become a delicate political issue. So has the disparity in the killings.

Many Sunni politicians, including secular ones like Methal al-Alusi, accuse the Shiite-led government of backing a campaign to wipe out Sunnis. Many Shiite leaders, including Prime Minister Jaafari, blame “foreign terrorists,” without being more specific.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, has expressed increasing alarm about militia violence, saying it is a bigger killer than car bombs, the former No. 1 security threat. But he has been careful to paint the problem in broad strokes, implying both sides are at fault.

There are a few Shiite victims, such as Mohammed Jabbar Hussein, who lived in a mostly Sunni area west of Baghdad. He disappeared on Feb. 26 and was found four days later, shot in the head.

But the militias under the greatest suspicion, and the ones with the strongest ties to the government, are Shiite. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the American military, said Shiite militias have played a role in the killings and “the government of Iraq has to take action against the militias.”

Then there is the question of prosecution. While countless Sunni insurgents have been arrested and tried on murder charges, very few Shiite militiamen have been apprehended.

Thamir al-Janabi, who is in charge of the Interior Ministry’s criminal investigation department, declined to comment. So did several other Interior Ministry officials.

A new round of revenge attacks began March 12, around 6 p.m., when a string of car bombs exploded in Sadr City, killing nearly 50 civilians. Most security officials, Shiite and Sunni, blamed Sunni terrorists for the attack.

An hour and a half later, half a dozen gunmen arrived at Mr. Azawi’s pet shop.

Wisam Saad Nawaf was playing pool across the street. He said a man wearing a ski mask arrived with the gunmen, who were not wearing masks, and that when they grabbed Mr. Azawi, the masked man nodded.

“He must have been an informant from the neighborhood,” Mr. Nawaf explained.

Mr. Azawi got into a car. The gunmen closed the doors. The next morning Mr. Azawi’s body was found at the sewage plant. Autopsy photos showed how badly he was abused. His skin was covered with purple welts. His legs and face had drill holes in them. Both shoulders had been broken.

His brother Hassan carries the autopsy photos with him, along with a pistol.

“I cannot live without vengeance,” he said.

Hassan said there were a few Shiites at his brother’s funeral, which he took as a grim speck of hope.

One week later, on March 20, the body of Mr. Abdulsalam, another Sunni, was found under a bridge. Mr. Abdulsalam, 21, worked with his father in a real estate office. His family said he was last seen in his BMW, stopped at a Mahdi Army checkpoint.