Children of War (8 page)

When my father was younger he was a very important goldsmith. He went on
trips to Bulgaria and other European places, showing people what he could do. The shop
was very successful, and we were very rich. We had a beautiful house, many possessions,
cars, everything anyone would want. Now look at us! Even the rugs on the floor came from
someone else's garbage out in the street.

My father's shop was taken by Saddam because my
father refused to join the Ba'ath Party. Saddam considered him a traitor,
took away his shop and threatened to hang him. So we left. We have been in Jordan since
before the Americans came. I had to leave school in the sixth grade, and have not been
back.

Now my father is very sick. He has diabetes, very bad, and he had to have
his leg cut off. They gave him an artificial leg, but he lost a lot of weight, so the
leg no longer fits. He usually manages without it, hobbling around on his crutches.

His heart is bad, too. His heart problems became worse when my brother was
arrested.

My brother was selling cigarettes in the streets and markets around Zarqa.
It wasn't much of a job, but it brought in a little money to help feed us. The
Jordanian immigration police grabbed him and said, “Show us your papers!” He
didn't have any papers because we're not legal to be in Jordan.

The police brought him back to us in handcuffs and told him to quickly
pack a few things. Then they drove him to the Iraq border. We heard from him later that
he was met there by American soldiers. He said they treated him well. They let him wash,
gave him a bit of money and food. Now he's staying with relatives in Al Kut, two
hours from Baghdad. He doesn't do anything there. Just misses us.

My sister lives with us, too. She is older than me and married, although
her husband has disappeared. We don't know if he is dead or in prison or what.
Maybe the police got him and deported him, or maybe he was just tired of
taking care of so many people and went away. We don't know. My sister and her
baby live here with us.

We keep to ourselves. We don't want to draw attention.

I don't know where my life will go. Should I go back to Iraq and be
with my brother? I hardly know Iraq, and I would have no job there. My only hope is if I
can get out of Jordan and start life fresh in a new country, somewhere far away,
somewhere new.

I really try not to think. When I think, I am too much reminded of what
I've lost, and then it's like I fall into a deep, deep pit, with no way
out.

Abbadar lives with his family in an apartment building near a
public laundry in Zarqa. His street is fragrant with the scent of detergent. Up a
few stories of a narrow, dark staircase is their small apartment. Posters from
airlines and sports teams decorate the walls.

The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child states
that all children have the right to a nationality, and to documents that protect
them. Without these documents, without proof of who they are and where they come
from, children are not protected and are denied other rights, such as health care
and schooling.

A universal problem for refugees, from no matter
which war or which country, is the loss of papers, the loss of proof of who
they are. It makes their struggle that much harder.

My brother was killed eight months ago in Baghdad. He was
seventeen years old. Nobody knows who did it, or if they know, they aren't saying.
His body was found on a rubbish pile. That's how we know he is dead.

We left both of my older brothers behind in Iraq when we came to Jordan.
Jordan doesn't let young Iraqi men into their country. They're afraid young
men will become terrorists. They let me in because I am a child. If I were older, they
would have said no.

My other brother is still alive in Iraq, but he's homeless. He works
in a bakery, and his boss lets him sleep in the storeroom, but that's not like
having a real home. He calls us when he can and asks my father to send him money. That
makes my father cry, because he doesn't have any money to send.

We live in my sister's house. She is married to a Palestinian, so
they can live here and he can work. He sells coffee and tea from a little shop along the
street. My sister is twenty-two and has two children. They are very small even for
babies, because they don't get the right kind of food. They get sick a lot, too,
and there is no medicine.

One of the babies was born in a hospital here in Jordan, but my sister and
her husband had no money to pay the hospital fees. They had to sneak out of the hospital
with the baby, but they can't get the birth certificate
until
they pay the bill. Papers are important. You learn that very quickly when you have to
leave your country.

I am enrolled in a Jordanian public school. This year they let us into
their schools so we can continue our education. We have to be educated so we can be
prepared for what life throws at us. I'm a good student. The class I like best is
the one where we learn English. If I learn enough English, maybe we can go to
America.

It might be better for my father's heart if we went to America. His
heart is bad and it got worse when we got the news about my brother's death.
He's not able to work, so he has too much time to miss my brothers and to miss our
old life.

He has friends who help us out when they can, both Jordanian and Iraqi
friends. Like today, someone gave my father some olive oil and some olives for free, as
a present. He's very proud to have such good friends.

At one time my father made a very good salary in Iraq. He was a 747 jumbo
jet engineer. He's very smart and knows all about how to make airplanes able to
fly. But under sanctions, Saddam cut all the salaries, and my father was earning only a
little bit of money for doing the same work. It wasn't enough money to live on, so
our lives were very hard.

Then he and my mother had a bad feeling that war was coming. It was going
to go hard on Iraq, he said. So he and my mother decided we should leave our homeland
and come here. It cost them almost all the money they had left for visas for the three
of us. We got out just before the bombing started.

My brothers got left behind. Eight months ago, one of
them was killed. We don't know who killed him or why. I don't know why they
left his body in such a terrible place. I don't know if they killed him as part of
the war, or if they just killed him because they were mean anyway. And I don't
know if we will ever see my other brother again.

So now, instead of being an important man with an important job, my father
stays home and cries a lot because he doesn't see how it will get any better.

The Iraqi constitution of 1970 included equal rights for women,
specifically, their right to vote, attend school, run for office and own property
— rights not allowed in many Arab countries. Under Saddam Hussein, women had a
harder time maintaining those rights. Saddam tried to tighten his hold on power by
making friends with regressive religious leaders, and this also restricted
women's mobility and access to jobs. In 1998, to increase jobs for men, the
government fired a lot of women working in the civil service. Women were less free
to travel abroad, and some co-ed schools were forced to become
single-sex.

Since the American invasion, women's rights
have gone on a quick downward spiral. Many have been kidnapped, raped,
forbidden to drive and kept from participating in society. Women who had been used
to moving around freely were suddenly forced into wearing hijab and staying inside.

Masim lives with her mother, brother and little sister in a nice
third-floor apartment in a brand-new building in Amman. Although her mother is
educated, she is unable to work in Jordan. She is isolated and at the mercy of her
abusive second husband, Masim's stepfather.

We used to live in Baghdad. We never wanted to leave. We stayed
all through Saddam, all through the bombing and the invasion, and even through so much
death and killing.

We finally had to leave because sectarian militia killed my uncle, because
he was a Sunni Muslim from Fallujah, and they threatened to kill the rest of us, too, if
we didn't go.

We live in a very lovely new apartment building on the edge of Amman.
Amman keeps expanding out into the desert, and we are in one of the new buildings. We
have very nice furniture, and when you walk into our apartment, you probably think, what
problems could this family have?

I am living here with my brother, Saif, who is seventeen, my mother, my
aunt and my half-sister, Meyar, who is five years old.

My father — the father of me and my brother
— was a pilot in the Iraqi army. He left our house one day in 1994 and never
returned. He was with a special branch of the army that did secret things, and we guess
he died doing one of those secret missions. We didn't ask questions. We
wouldn't have been given answers anyway.

My mother remarried four years later.

My mother is from Tikrit, from the same tribe as Saddam Hussein. Her new
husband — my stepfather — is from a very rich family. He was a friend of my
father's and had one wife already. My mother became his second wife. It is not an
uncommon custom.

Because Saddam was in power at the time, my stepfather and his family
thought that marriage to my mother would be good for their business. Before the
invasion, they all treated her very well, and my stepfather treated my brother and me
very well, too. My little sister was born, and we all had a good, happy life
together.

Then the invasion came, Saddam Hussein was taken from power, and things
changed. My mother being from Tikrit was no longer good for my stepfather's
business. In fact, having ties to Saddam was now an embarrassment.

My stepfather's brothers, who had been kind and generous to us, now
started to speak against my mother. They said my stepfather should get rid of her, that
she was a danger to them keeping their lands and fortunes. My stepfather probably would
have gotten rid of her, but he really loves his daughter, my little half-sister.
That's the only reason he stays married to my mother.

But he stopped being kind to us. He blamed us for all
his problems. He was bitter and nasty, and so was his family.

My mother had nowhere to turn. Her own parents were already dead, so she
couldn't go back to them. She has one sister — the aunt who is now living
with us. My aunt was married to a man who was related to Saddam Hussein. Her husband was
killed. That's what made my stepfather decide we should leave Baghdad.

I will never forget it, the bombing time when the Americans came. Some of
the explosions were cars and buildings actually blowing up. Other explosions were just a
lot of noise — sound bombs, just to scare us. The people who think up these things
are terrible, terrible people.

One night we heard six explosions. They were bombing all the houses around
us — one, two, three — the explosions came closer and closer to our house.
We were all huddled together waiting to die.

There were six explosions, then a seventh, and then there was a moment of
real quiet. Not calm, just silence, like shock. And then all around us was screaming and
crying. We went outside and saw all the damage that the bombs had done, and to help the
people who had been hurt.

After the bombing time was over, and Saddam was no longer the leader, our
lives did not get better. The streets were full of soldiers. The American soldiers came
rumbling down our streets in their big Hummers and tanks. They walked around in their
big helmets and protective suits. Sometimes they had big black dogs on leashes, and they
used the dogs to scare small children. “If you cry, the dogs will attack
you,” they'd say.