LAKE HABBANIYA, Iraq » A few hours outside Baghdad in the middle of Iraq's vast western desert is a sight that could understandably be mistaken for a mirage: a long, sandy beach filled with thousands of people swimming and dancing barefoot under the hot sun without apparent care.

A disc jockey — “;Mr. D.J.,”; he calls himself — is shouting into a microphone over a thumping Syrian dance song and blurts out something remarkable in its ordinariness.

“;A shoutout to everyone from Baghdad!”; he says in Arabic.

“;Yea!”; responds the crowd that has gathered around him.

“;Everyone from Adhamiya and Sadr City who came from Baghdad, show me what you got!”; Mr. D.J. yells, referring to two neighborhoods in the capital — the first almost exclusively Sunni, the second nearly entirely Shiite.

In response, energetic dancing breaks out all around, and Sunnis and Shiites share a rare moment of careless bliss together.

It is amazing, but it is real: For the first time since the outbreak of the sectarian war in 2006, Iraq is enjoying a beach season.

The water at Lake Habbaniya in Anbar province is muddy, and today, a sandstorm has blotted out the sun. Back home, few people have air conditioning or dependable electricity. And already this month, hundreds of Iraqis have died in the violence that continues to envelop the country.

All that, say the sunbathers, is why a day at the beach is so important.

“;I'm here to get away — from the bombs in Baghdad, from the sound of generators,”; said Aya Alshemari, a 22-year-old college student who, despite that she was wearing a modest T-shirt and jeans, was drawing the gazes of dozens of male beachgoers. “;We're here to have a good time. There's no difference between Shiite and Sunni. We are all Iraqis.”;

Most people had driven their cars right onto the sand, pulling up next to the water. And because it is Iraq, each vehicle has been carefully checked for explosives and every beachgoer frisked for a suicide bomb vest.

On this particular August day, though, there is nothing more harmful than 115-degree heat and high-calorie food: beef and lamb kebabs, biryani, fried kibbeh. A few young men take furtive sips of cold beer.

1st Lt. Uras Saad, an Iraqi army officer who is responsible for the lake's security checkpoint, said there had been no acts of violence at the beach since it reopened this summer.

But the area has not always been calm. Lake Habbaniya is in Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland, and until a year and a half ago the area had been a stronghold for al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, an insurgent group that has made a specialty of brutal attacks against Shiites across the country.

That troubled history seems far away at this particular moment. A young woman wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans has just emerged from the water. Her heavy clothes may not make for the most comfortable swimwear, but as she emerges from the lake, she is still smiling happily.

Like most women here, she is showing little more skin than her bare feet. Some women wade into the water wearing hijabs and abayas. Most of the young men go shirtless with baggy shorts.

“;I want to wear less, but my brothers get mad at me,”; said the woman, Maha Abdul-Wahab, 23.

The beach is divided into two sections, one reserved for families, the other for young men.

It is the family section where most of the young women sit, usually under the watchful eye of an older brother. And it is to the family section that the gazes of many of the unaccompanied young men return every few minutes.

If a young man moves too near the family section and is unable to show he belongs there, police officers step in to shoo him away.

But for all that, the beach here, like most any other, is about boys and girls trying to be together. And the intrepid find ways.

With the air turning a foggy yellow color because of a nearby sandstorm, a lanky young man from the male section, wearing a blue tank top and black shorts, caught the eye of a young woman sitting in the family section.

Mr. D.J. was spinning “;Al Agruba,”; by the Iraqi singer Hussam al-Rasam:

“;Mother, a scorpion bit me

“;Oh Mother, if you'd only seen her

“;God created her to be gorgeous

“;A kiss from her

“;And everything would be perfect.”;

After half an hour of long-distance flirting, the young man, Laith Ali, came up with a plan.

He asked a man who was sitting in a truck for a scrap of paper and wrote something. He then walked slowly along the beach, seemingly unaware that he was headed toward the family section. Keeping his head lowered, he avoided the attention of a group of distracted policemen.

He moved toward the young woman, who was looking off in the other direction. And then, as if by accident, he dropped a piece of paper and walked away.

For a few minutes, nothing happened.

Then the young woman stood up and walked a few yards toward the water. She stopped and picked up a piece of paper in the sand.

She opened the note, read it and smiled.

From a distance, the young man was watching.

“;I told her she is beautiful,”; Ali said softly. “;And I gave her my phone number.”;