BAGHDAD, Iraq — From her bedroom window, Nesma Abdul-Razzaq, a 43-year-old housewife, has watched insurgents fire grenades from a patch of grass near her garden. Frequent patrols of American tanks rattle the glass. A bullet has pierced a pane.

"You can't live in safety if you cooperate with either side," she said, standing in the bedroom of her house, located deep in insurgent-controlled western Baghdad. So when American troops offered to pay for the use of the roof last month, she politely declined.

"What would I say to the neighbors?" she said.

Two-and-a-half years after the American invasion, the violence shows no sign of relenting, and life for middle-class Iraqis seems only to be getting worse.

Educated, invested in businesses and properties and eager for change, the middle class here had everything to gain from the American effort.

But frustration is hardening into hopelessness, as families feel increasingly trapped by the many forces that are threatening to split the country apart.

Insurgents fight gunbattles on their streets. Sectarian divisions are seeping into their children's classrooms and even their own dinner-table discussions. Their secular voices are barely audible above the din of religious politicians and the poorer Iraqis to whom they appeal.

The daily life they describe is an obstacle course of gasoline lines, blocked roads and late-night generator repairs.

In these families' homes, the talk is more often of leaving.

"For Sale" signs dot the gates of the houses on their block. But gathering children and extended families is proving difficult, and many families, potentially the most skilled builders of democracy here, are bracing themselves for a future that appears to them increasingly under siege.

Over the past year, insurgents have come to control large swaths of western Baghdad, including Khadra, the area where Abdul-Razzaq lives with her husband, Monkath, and their two boys, ages 9 and 12. Their bedroom window looks out on elevated highways that are the main arteries into the capital from the north and west, where insurgents have built up no-entry zones.

Four times in recent months Abdul-Razzaq has seen men, sometimes in masks, tramping across her lawn, lifting rocket-propelled grenade launchers to their shoulders. Once, several men shot at an American convoy from behind a funeral tent near her house.

American troops often come to look for attackers. They have searched her house six times.

Southwest in Amariya, the area that borders the dangerous airport road, street battles between insurgents and the Iraqi police have been so intense that the two main grocery stores were badly damaged and have closed. Residents must now find food elsewhere.

Even as the neighborhood deteriorated, Monkath Abdul-Razzaq, 46, a mechanical engineer and a secular Sunni, held out hope for a better life. He felt the election in January was important for Iraq and ignored commands of religious Sunnis not to vote. On election day, when men walked the streets warning residents not to go to the polls, Abdul-Razzaq sneaked out to vote.

Like many Iraqis, Abdul-Razzaq said, he despised Saddam Hussein. His uncle was in prison for four years. As an officer in the Iraqi army, he saw five of his friends executed for treason in 1983 during the war with Iran.

But he also enjoyed benefits from his connection with the military, securing contracts for spare parts after he quit. Still, Saddam's fall was a cause for celebration, and he had high hopes for his future.

But the rise of the religious parties over the past seven months has sapped Abdul-Razzaq of his remaining hope. The Iraqi middle class is largely secular, and most of its members are put off by the religious parties that appeal to the poor Shiite masses on the one hand and to embittered Sunnis, who lost their status after the American-led invasion, on the other. Abdul-Razzaq voted for a Shiite because the candidate was secular.

But leaving is expensive, and money is tight. Last month, for the first time since the war, Abdul-Razzaq sold nothing in his spare-parts shop. Income from a building he owns helped pay the bills.

"I am very worried," he said. "No power. No peace. Do you think this is life? It is hell."

Across town in a quiet area of central Baghdad, a family of merchants knows a lot about leaving. Dhia al-Din, 70, a Shiite, presides over three generations spread over two houses. In all, five of eight grown children and their families live abroad, and he lives much of the year in Jordan.

He spoke on the condition that his family name not be used. He has received two death threats. One son escaped a kidnapping and left Iraq with his family this month.

He has the means to go, but the migration is scattering his family and slowly erasing the life that he had carefully built up over decades.

"I lost my money, my hotel, my lovely working with the people," he said, his voice breaking. "My family, it is disappearing."

Then he added in a tone that was only half joking, "It's all because of the Sunnis."

His wife, Samira, a Sunni, shot back, "Why are the Sunnis always blamed?"

The two have been married for 50 years, and the difference in sects never seemed to matter. But recently, new questions have come up. A niece named Rim, 24, had her engagement broken off by her fiancé's parents because she is Sunni.

"She cried and cried," said her mother, Hana. "Even if they come back, I will never give my daughter to them."

The blow has driven her daughter to feel her Sunni identity even more intensely, she said.

That, in turn, has caused a problem with an uncle, Husham, who was in prison under Saddam, and is now working as a senior official in the new government. Another family member jokingly introduced him to a visitor as "the Shiite extremist."

Rim stopped talking to him when he had made disparaging comments about Sunnis.

"He should not talk about Sunnis like that," she said. "He hates Sunnis."

Later, over lunch, Samira and one aunt were alone in their nostalgia for the past. Saddam, they said, was at least able to keep the electricity on.

Dhia al-Din shot back angrily, "They slaughtered us like sheep."

His son motioned to the people gathered at the table, his fingers oily with chicken, and said, "It's a little Iraq."