Children of War (4 page)

We all miss our homeland. We had friends there, and lives that could have
been wonderful.

I think if American girls my age could meet me, they'd like me. If
they were friendly, we could go look in the shops and talk about clothes and music. Then
they could tell their parents to stop being afraid of Iraqis.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) did a
trauma survey of Iraqi refugees in Syria that was published in January 2008.
According to the survey, 77 percent of the refugees they talked to had been affected
by air bombardment, shelling or rocket attacks; 80 percent had witnessed a shooting
and 72 percent had witnessed a car bombing; 68 percent had experienced
interrogation, harassment or death threats by militias and 16 percent had been
tortured. The survey also found that 75 percent knew someone who had been killed,
and 89 percent suffered from depression.

Like many Iraqi families, Eva's family has been
living with war for generations. Eva and her family live in a
small, dark apartment in Amman. They are Mandaean Sabians, followers of John the
Baptist. The word sabia comes from an Aramaic word meaning to be baptized.

The Sabians have had an up-and-down experience in Iraq, sometimes
protected by the government and respected by others, sometimes having to hide from
persecution. There have been times when certain professions were denied to them, so
they took up what trades they could. Many have passed trades like goldsmithing and
silversmithing down through generations.

Since the overthrow of Saddam, many Sabian families have been
targeted for political reasons, or by criminal gangs, and many have had to flee
Iraq.

We came to Jordan on May 5, 2005, after the killing of my father.
He was a goldsmith.

My whole life has been war. Really, from the moment I was born. My mother
was giving birth to me when a missile hit the hospital. This was during the war with
Iran. It was her first time to give birth, so you can imagine how scared she was anyway,
and then the missile hitting.

So I came here in war, and there is still war.

We lived in Basra, in the south of Iraq, near the Iranian border, not too
far from the sea. My memories of living there are not very good.

We are Mandaean Sabians, and we were the only Sabian
family in our area. It was mostly a Shiite community, and children would throw stones at
me when I went outside. They also made fun of me because of my teeth. I have had too
many health problems since I was born. I wasn't strong like other children. They
would laugh at me and the teachers would be mean, too, because it took me longer to
learn. I liked to learn, but it took me longer.

I went only as far as the third grade in Iraq. Then the health problems
and the teasing got to be too bad. So I left school. I wish there was a way to learn new
things here in Jordan, but there is no chance. My mother is a smart woman and could
teach me, but she is too busy to spend the time. I try to help her by doing a lot of the
cleaning and taking care of the younger children. When I have some quiet time, I like to
write down my thoughts. I'm not good at it, but I like to do it.

My mother says that all the bombing that happened while she was carrying
me led to my sickness. My head did not look normal when I was born. The bombs brought
many chemicals with them, and a lot of children were damaged, like me and even
worse.

After the war with Iran came the first war with the Americans. Then came
all the years of sanctions, when it was not possible for me to get treatment.

The sanctions meant there was no electricity, not enough food for many
people. We were not a rich family. We had a very simple house, and my father worked in
someone else's shop. We had no extras to get us through. We were living like
ghosts. We tried to stand on our own
feet, because we are a proud
family, but it was very hard. There was no good food available. Even the bread was bad
and dark. The flour was mixed with wood dust and other things to make the wheat stretch
farther.

The bombing time was very loud. A bomb fell on our neighbor's house
and the whole earth shook. We were scared all the time. We trembled and shook even when
the bombing had stopped. There was no time when we could relax because we were always
afraid of the next bombing. When we slept, we had nightmares.

The water supply went bad during the bombing. For three months we had no
good water to drink. We drank the bad water anyway, because we needed to drink
something, and we were always sick with bad stomachs.

When the soldiers came, we didn't talk to them. The younger children
were scared of them because of their tanks and helmets and guns. My mother was always
warning the younger ones to stay away, but she didn't really need to. They would
have stayed away anyway.

Things fell apart soon after the soldiers came. People started turning on
each other. We saw lots of people being killed, shot with pistols, dead bodies.

Our father was killed on a trip to Baghdad to buy and sell gold. That was
his job. My youngest brother was with him in the car.

We think the killers were watching him in Basra, followed him to Baghdad,
then followed him back home. He was killed on the road back to Basra.

My little brother saw the whole thing. It was set up to look like an
accident. The killers' car hit my father's car,
right on
the driver's door. My father was bleeding, and the killers took all the gold out
of his car, even the rings off my father's fingers. My father died in the car.

My little brother lost consciousness after the robbing, from fear, I
think. The killers shouted at him, threatened him, and he passed out because he was so
scared and from the shock of seeing our father killed. He was six years old at the time.
Ever since then, he suffers from bad dreams. He keeps drawing the same pictures over and
over again — a car full of blood with dead people in it. Even now he'll have
times when he'll just cry and cry.

My other brother, Laith, who is now fifteen, refused to believe that our
father was dead until my uncles took him and made him look at the body. That's the
only way he would accept it. They made him watch the digging of the grave and watch our
father be lowered into it. After he realized our father was really dead, he started to
become very rough with the family, yelling and being angry all the time.

We have a proverb that goes, “The walls of the house fall when the
husband dies.” And that is true for us.

The authorities called my mother and said, “There's been an
accident. Your husband has been injured in his legs.” My uncles went and saw that
he was dead. I don't know why the authorities needed to lie to my mother. The
killers were never caught.

Before our father was killed, we were preparing to come to Jordan. We got
our passports in October of 2004, and he was killed on November 2. We think our father
was killed because the killers knew we were planning
to leave and
they wanted to steal from us before we left. Other Mandaean goldsmiths had been
targeted. Muslim goldsmiths were left alone.

With my father gone, people turned their attention to my whole family and
started to pressure us to leave. We were threatened because we are Sabia. Under Saddam,
we had freedom, all our rights, and our religion was protected. If we had any
complaints, we just had to say them, and we would be protected. Before the war, Sunni,
Shia, Sabia, Christian, we all lived together and got along. When my father was killed,
many Muslim neighbors came to help us.

But there were also many people who treated us badly — not because
they were Muslim, but because they were uneducated. Also, the war made everyone a little
crazy. Hating people is not part of our culture, but the war is sending people back to
the dark ages. It is destroying who we are. Iraqis love sports and literature, and
poetry and science, and gardens, all good things. Iraqis don't like all this
killing.

Our religion is very important to us. Our prophet is John the Baptist. He
was a good person who taught us to love other people. For so many years we lived in Iraq
in peace, in our own communities. After the war, attacks came.

My mother's sister's husband was forced to convert to Islam
and be part of a terrorist group. After working with this group for a while, he wanted
to convert his sons to Islam. Their mother, my aunt, wanted to keep them Mandaean, so
she tried to leave the country with them, but he prevented her.

My mother has lived through too many wars. She is an
orphan from war, and still managed to get good marks in school, and get a college
diploma in commerce. But all her life has been war, like all of my life, and now she is
a widow.

Our house here in Amman is just two rooms, plus a hallway and a very poor
kitchen. We have to bathe in the kitchen. Our toilet is very bad. The rooms smell all
the time of bad things like the toilet. We all have rashes on our skin. The furniture is
what we found in the trash along the street. The rugs on the floor are a gift, though.
They came from a mosque. They know we are not Muslim but still they helped us, and the
cushions are gifts from other Muslims. The American president says Muslims are bad, but
so many of them have been good to us.

I try not to think about tomorrow. I try to keep the house clean, and I
try to do things that will make the young ones happy for a while, and when I can, I like
to try to write and draw pictures that are beautiful. And that is my life.

According to the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child,
children have a right to play. Children can find a way to play no matter where they
are, but the adult world can certainly make it easier for them by providing safe
playgrounds and toys, and creating a world where play is encouraged.

Children who are refugees are often afraid to play. They are
afraid of being picked up by police if they lack documentation, being harassed by
locals who do not want them in their country, and being in an unsafe place.
Sometimes they have to work to help the family, and there is no time for play.
Sometimes their homes are so crowded with people that there are not many places to
play.

Bashar and his family are from Kirkuk. They
are refugees living in Amman.

We have come here to Jordan because of all the killing.

My grandmother lives here with us. She has a bullet in her leg. She was
shot, and the bullet went in but it didn't come out. It's still there. She
has an x-ray of her leg and you can see where the bullet is. It hurts her, and she
complains about pain in her bones. But she doesn't complain too much. She
doesn't want to make us sad.

She was shot on her way to Jordan. She was with her brother and three of
my uncles and my aunt. They were trying to get out of Iraq, and they were stopped along
the road by men with masks who took all their money. That's when she was shot,
because she argued with them. She said, “Why should you take our money? It's
all we have! Get your own money!” They didn't like that, and they shot her
in the leg, and they also beat up my aunt. They beat my aunt's face until it was
all bruised and bloody.

Four people were killed on that trip — my grandmother's
brother and three of my uncles.

My grandfather was kidnapped in 2003. Some people took him from his home,
and for many years my grandmother didn't know what had happened. There was no
news, so she was always waiting and wondering.

A month ago, they found his body down in the valley near a Kurdish
village. They recognized him from the clothes he was wearing and from the golden teeth
in his
mouth. They couldn't recognize him from his face
because he had been dead too long.

Some good people in the village gave him a proper burial and got word to
my grandmother. My grandmother cried when she heard the news. We all did.