Children of War (6 page)

My uncle promised to pay them if they would come back the next day, but
before they came back, we gathered what we could carry and came to Jordan.

My brother and I lost so many years of school because of the war, and
because of coming to Jordan. This past September was the first time we could go to
Jordanian public schools because someone is paying for us to go. But it's not
good. They put us into classes that we are way too old for. All the children are smaller
than us. It's embarrassing. They put me into the third class, and I am fourteen! I
think the school is going to ask me to leave because it's hard for them, too. Then
I don't know what I will do.

I like studying and learning things, although it is hard for me. I
don't know what I want to be, or how I could ever be what I might want to be.

The thing I most wish for is to have a close friend, a girl my age to play
with and who likes to study, like I do. We could learn together and laugh and talk about
things that are private between the two of us. That would make me so happy. It would
make me feel less alone.

But I am too shy and too weak to make such a friend. I have no chance.

Kidnapping as a tool of terror became popular in Iraq soon after
the fall of Saddam. When Saddam was in power, he would often kidnap and execute
political opponents. The kidnappings that have happened since the invasion are
sometimes for political purposes, but often are ways for rival gangs to collect
money to keep their battles going. Sometimes the kidnappings are for ransom, and the
person is returned once the money is paid. Sometimes the kidnapped person is never
heard from again.

After the invasion, the Iraqi police force was disbanded, and the
American army had no orders to act like police in their place. Groups who wanted to
were able to easily take advantage of the situation. Too
often, children became the targets.

Laith and his family left Iraq in 2005, after a boy at his school
was kidnapped.

My father was a taxi driver in Baghdad. My mother was an
agricultural engineer. Neither of them have jobs now. For a while, my father worked at a
small booth in the market selling vegetables, but it became too dangerous. The
immigration police would show up at the market looking for Iraqis to send back to Iraq.
So he stopped working there.

My mother found a way to do a bit of work from home. She makes things like
pickles and baskets and candles, then finds a way to sell them. It brings in a bit of
money, and that is how we live.

Something happened in Baghdad that made my parents decide to leave.

A child at my school was kidnapped.

It was during the school day. Lots of people were around. The kidnappers
wore dark masks over their heads and faces, so it didn't matter that people could
see them. They couldn't tell who they were.

They drove up really fast and got out of the car. First they grabbed a
girl and tried to stuff her into a car, but she screamed so loud and fought them so much
that they dropped her and went after a smaller child, a little boy who was too scared to
scream or fight. They put him in the car and drove away. They had these guns and no one
could stop them.

Maybe they would have grabbed me or one of my sisters.
They didn't really care which child they grabbed. One was the same as another to
them. Even now, here in Jordan, when a car pulls up near me on the street, I worry that
men with guns will get out and drag me inside, and no one will ever see me again.

The kidnappers went to the boy's family and demanded a lot of money
for them to let the boy go. My parents were afraid that if any of us were kidnapped,
they would not be able to afford to pay the ransom. So they decided we had all better
leave.

I don't know what happened to the boy the kidnappers took. Maybe his
parents found the money to pay and he's all right. Maybe he's dead. We left
without finding out.

The bombing time was terrible. I was young and didn't understand why
the Americans were bombing us. I thought that maybe they didn't know we were
there, that we should tell them so that they could drop their bombs where they
wouldn't kill anybody.

Those nights were awful. We were stuck in one room with a hundred other
people in a place where everyone would go to try to be safe from the explosions. We
could hear glass breaking, things blowing up. The whole world would shake. I thought we
would all die, and I didn't want to die in that awful room with all those
screaming people around.

The bombing ended — the bombing from the sky, that is. Then we saw
the American soldiers in the street.

At first they were friendly. They said hello, especially to kids, and we
would be friendly back, because kids are
friendly people. And
sometimes the soldiers gave us sweets, and who doesn't like sweets?

Then they would ask, “Does anyone in your neighborhood have a gun?
Tell us who, and we'll give you a whole lot of sweets.” Then they would go
into the neighborhood and arrest a lot of the people, and the child would get a real bad
feeling, a sour feeling. This didn't happen to me, but to kids I know. We would
talk about it.

People think children are stupid, that we don't know what's
going on. Sometimes we get fooled for a while, when adults lie and pretend to like us,
but eventually we figure it out.

Soldiers would sometimes encourage children to surround them, thinking the
militias wouldn't attack if it meant killing children, too.

The soldiers being nice didn't last too long. They started being
afraid of us. I'd go to or from school, and I'd see the soldiers beating
kids, yelling at them and shoving them. Someone told me that they thought the children
might be helping the terrorists. Once there was a big explosion near a tank, and
soldiers said children had distracted them so they couldn't pay attention to the
dangerous people around them. After that they stayed away from us, and we stayed away
from them.

The American soldiers did good things, too, though. They didn't just
ride around in tanks. They brought supplies to us at school — books and notebooks
and pens. And a lot of them did try to be friendly. I want them to see Iraqis as people,
so I have to see the Americans as people, too.

After the fall of Saddam, things were quiet for a little
while. Then it started to get dangerous again. People started hating each other,
Iraqis hating Iraqis, and lots of killing. Our school was far from our house, and if we
were even a little late coming home, my mother would be out looking for us, thinking we
had been killed.

I don't like any of my life here in Jordan, except being away from
the killing. I want to go home.

I have friends here in school, and they are great, but Jordanian teachers
are mean to Iraqi children. They insult us and bully us and don't treat us fairly.
There are only two other Iraqis in my class, both girls. One day the teacher said, in
front of everyone, “The best Iraqi was Saddam Hussein, and why did you have to
come here to make trouble for Jordan? You should all go home.”

I've had good teachers here in Jordan, but some of them are just
mean.

I try to keep in touch with my friends in Iraq. They called me for a
while, but now they've stopped. I think they've forgotten me. I miss them,
though. I miss my home, too, and my things. I had to leave nearly all my belongings
behind when we came to Jordan.

It's very hard here for my parents. They worry about money and what
will happen to us. In Iraq they both had good jobs and made enough money to take care of
us. Now they have to beg for everything. They have to go to charities and ask for
things. One charity promised us blankets and a heater, but they haven't arrived
yet. The weather here is changing. Soon it will be winter, and cold.

If I could talk to American children, I'd say, “Take your
soldiers out of my country. I want to go home.”

Iraq has a rich history of artists, poets and musicians. Many
Iraqi writers and artists have had to continue their work in exile, driven from Iraq
by persecution during Saddam's regime, or by the violence of post-Saddam
Iraq.

Abinminak's mother is an artist who is hoping to sell her
artwork to Americans who are against the war. In Mosul, their home in Iraq, his
father taught at an art college. After he put on a play about Abu Ghraib prison and
the torture and human rights violations by the Americans, two of the colleagues who
worked with him on the play were assassinated. The dean of the college then asked
Abinminak's father to leave.

My family and I came to Jordan two years ago, from
Ramadi. We left so we would stay alive. I have one sister. She is two years younger than
me.

My mother is an artist. She paints beautiful pictures on glass, on
ceramics, and on canvas for people to hang on their walls. She did a lot of pieces of
art for a woman here in Jordan to sell in her shop, to earn money, but the woman gave
them to friends instead of selling them. When my mother asked for her pay, the woman
said, “I didn't sell anything, so I have no money to give you.” That
woman was not honest.

Now my mother has money from CARE to put on an art show. She's busy
all the time, making paintings and taking care of us.

I have learned how to paint from my mother. People say I'm very
talented. I do a lot of paintings of soldiers shooting tanks and dropping bombs and
shooting guns at people, but I also paint happy pictures. I did one I really like of
children playing with a butterfly. They keep trying to catch the butterfly, and it keeps
flying out of their reach.

My father is an actor. We had to leave Iraq because of a play he was in.
We went to Mufrak, in Jordan.

I remember being in my grandparents' house in Ramadi. We were just
there, just living, regular life, and American soldiers came in. They just banged right
in! They didn't even knock! They were very angry and yelling about something, but
they were not yelling in Arabic, so I couldn't understand them. They arrested my
uncles. The soldiers beat my uncles and nobody could stop them because they were big and
loud and had all these guns.

We had a DVD in the house of people resisting the US
army. Someone had made a movie of people trying to attack the Americans. The Americans
found it and this made them more angry. I was shaking all over, as if I was cold, but I
wasn't cold, and I couldn't stop.

The soldiers came a lot to our neighborhood, a lot to our house. Most of
the time they would come in the middle of the night. I stopped sleeping at night so that
I could be ready for them. I wouldn't be ready to fight them, because I was too
small, but it was less scary if I was already awake when they came. But sometimes they
would come in the daytime, too, so I never knew when it was safe to go to sleep.

At night we could hear them running across the rooftops, running from
house to house in their big boots. We had a metal door that led from our house to the
roof, and one time they broke it with a big crash and came running down our stairs.

Another time we could hear a helicopter coming closer and closer. A
helicopter makes a sound like thump-thump, thump-thump, and stirs up the air like a
sand-storm. It landed on our roof or on a neighbor's roof. I don't remember
for sure. We had put another lock on the metal door to replace the one they broke, but
they broke this one, too. I remember the bang-bang-bang when they tried to break the
lock.

We all stayed together at night. My parents wanted me close. We wore all
our clothes at night, our regular clothes, in case the soldiers came and took us away.
We didn't want to be taken away in our pajamas.

I remember one time the soldiers came and they found
my aunt praying. They didn't know what she was doing. Maybe they don't pray.
They thought she was up to some trouble, so a soldier put a gun to her head. She
finished her prayers, then told him to go away.