In his mind's eye Bahia envisions the Al-Mansour Country Club, where more than 26 years ago thoroughbreds took to the racetrack, friends played tennis, and swimming pools shimmered.

The Iraqi expatriate awakens each morning thinking of when he will get to his homeland. He daydreams of seeing high school friends. He conjures up the places he will visit, friends he will meet, delicacies he will taste.

But for Bahia and many others it remains a dream, not a reality.

Baghdad's airport remains closed. The State Department warns U.S. travelers to stay out. Images on television of tattered buildings, potholed streets and dusty towns bereft of vegetation conflict with his happy expectations.

Other Iraqi expatriates in Orange County have similar visions of home and what they seek. For engineer Mazin Yousif Al-Eshaiker, it's starting a business. For his brother Muhannad Eshaiker, an architect, it's encouraging investment. For Irvine engineer Sam Ali, it's reconnecting with long-missed family.

Bahia, 52, a Newport Coast dentist, knows his birthplace has changed. The country club now looks like a shack, the streets of Baghdad have lost their palms, oaks and eucalyptus, the houses have gone unpainted for years, and neighborhoods resemble ruins. Some of his friends tell Bahia not to visit so that his fond memories will last.

"I am very aware things are not going to look as rosy as we have in our minds," he acknowledges.

Still, he can't wait to kiss the ground when he gets to Iraq. Back to the 2,500- square-foot home in a Baghdad suburb that he left behind in 1977. Back to the family farm, some million acres on the west side of the Tigris, where grains grew in the winter and vegetables in the summer.

Bahia wants to start a business with his uncle. He submitted a business plan to John Deere to supply farm machinery. But with conditions still uncertain, he pulled out.

The homeland Bahia left behind seemed close just months ago.

When bombs started falling on Baghdad in March, local Iraqi women and men danced and stomped on pictures of Saddam Hussein with visions of reuniting quickly with relatives in a peaceful, post-dictatorial Iraq.

But today they are deterred by almost daily accounts of American soldiers being killed, media accounts of lawlessness on the streets and in the neighborhoods, and reports from friends and relatives in Iraq worried that stability may be elusive without Saddam's capture.

The emergence of a new and democratic Iraq is coming all too slowly for some local Iraqis. They are thankful Saddam is gone and readily acknowledge that they may have expected too much too soon. They also say the United States has made missteps and poorly executed a post-Saddam plan.

"Expectations were very, very high, so the celebratory mood has faded," said Al-Eshaiker, whose Cowan Heights home was the site of at least two celebrations during the war.

Al-Eshaiker, 42, the youngest of six siblings, left Baghdad in 1978 for England out of fear of being drafted. Three years later, he came to America. More than two decades later, he finally sees a window to sow the seeds of entrepreneurship in Iraq.

Despite the uncertainty, Al-Eshaiker, the West Coast representative of the Iraqi National Congress, a group of anti-Saddam Iraqi expatriates with U.S. financial backing, will leave his four children and wife behind and head to Iraq this month. He wants to start a company that will encourage Iraqi investment and match foreign firms with qualified Iraqi workers.

Unemployment, he says, is at about 60 percent.

"We just want to be there and be ready for the growth," Al-Eshaiker said.

His brother Muhannad Eshaiker, 50, should have been in Baghdad by now.

The Irvine architect had applied to work with relief agencies and private firms that were preparing to bring aid to a post-Saddam Iraq. Now, he can't get enough information on what the agencies are doing. He awaits his chance to invest in rebuilding the infrastructure in Iraq.

Conversations with Iraqi friends and business partners reveal a sense of pessimism about the handling of postwar Iraq by the United States.

"The mismanagement was that there was not a plan in place," Eshaiker said. "That allowed for deterioration of security nationwide."

Since 1991, Eshaiker has been involved with groups such as the Iraqi Forum for Democracy to raise awareness of suffering and human-rights abuses in Iraq.

"It's a big disappointment. We had a golden opportunity, and nobody wants to waste a golden opportunity," he said. "Once it is gone, it's very hard to get everyone excited."

About now, like many fellow Iraqi-Americans, Sam Ali had hoped to enjoy homegrown dates, take a stroll along the banks of the Tigris and embrace relatives he hadn't seen in some 20 years.

He and several other local Iraqis were invited guests of the State Department in the weeks leading up to the war, helping the United States plan everything from water resources to setting up local government in a post-Saddam Iraq.

Because of squabbling between the State Department and the Pentagon, Ali, 50, feels that those plans were shelved and his visits to Washington, D.C., were for naught.

Ali left Baghdad in 1979 because he felt pressured to join the Baath party.

Only one of his five siblings remained in Iraq. Since the end of the war, he has learned that nine of his cousins appeared on Saddam's execution lists. The brother of his wife, Rawa, is still missing.

"Because of the security situation I keep postponing the trip," Ali said. If the situation improves, Ali will shoot for a Christmas visit along with his family. It would be his first visit since he left.

"We expected thousands and thousands of people would be going back on just a short notice," Ali said. "If the security situation improves, then many people will go back, some to visit and some to stay."