Children of War (9 page)

They always had guns pointed at people, at people who
had no guns to point back at them. The soldiers broke down people's doors and
yelled at people and bothered them.

There was a lot of resistance in our area to the American troops. This
wasn't because our area was full of terrorists. This was because people
didn't like to see foreign troops trying to control their country. How would
Americans or Canadians feel if there were Iraqi troops on your streets, and these Iraqi
troops broke down doors and tried to tell you what to do?

But because there was resistance, the American soldiers felt they had to
fight back, and their fighting made more resistance. It was a very bad time. There was a
lot of killing. My little sister still has nervous fits because of all the dead bodies
she saw.

School was closed for a lot of the time. When it reopened, we were driven
there in a minibus. Sometimes there would be gunshots at the bus, from the American
soldiers and from insurgents. I don't know if they were shooting right at the bus
— why would they shoot at a school bus? — or if they were shooting at each
other and we just got in the way.

We were at school one day, and some Americans came flying low over the
school in an Apache helicopter. Some of the kids yelled at the helicopter and threw
rocks at it. The soldiers got mad and tried to land the helicopter in the yard, so the
teachers scrambled and got everyone back inside the school. We listened to the
helicopter fly away then. Some of the kids cheered, like they had done some-thing
great and scared the soldiers away, but they were fools. It's
foolish to try to tease people who could easily shoot you and not get into trouble for
it.

So now we are in Jordan, and our life is difficult for different
reasons.

My stepfather was used to having a very rich, very good life. Losing so
much of that has turned him into a very mean man. I think he has psychological problems,
too, that make it hard for him to cope. He has a lot of phobias. He is always thinking
people are out to get him, or steal from him.

He started hitting my mother, hitting all of us, except my little sister.
He said things like, “I will send you all back to Iraq, and when your son is
kidnapped, I will not pay the ransom, because he is another man's son. I
won't care if he is killed.” And he said, “I am feeding you, so you
have to do what I say. You are all worthless.”

Luckily, he doesn't live with us. He lives with his other family,
who are also here in Jordan. But he pays the rent on this apartment, and this furniture
belongs to him. He gives my mother a bit of money to look after my little sister, but
that's all we have. My mother sold some things that belonged to her only, but that
money will soon run out.

My mother is an educated woman, a professional woman. She was working at a
good job in Baghdad. Now she has lost all of her self-confidence. She can't work
here in Jordan, and she doesn't know how to protect us.

My stepfather comes over whenever he feels like it. He has a key, of
course, since he pays the rent. He'll come in
and say,
“I'm hungry. Go cook for me.” And he said that he's paid for the
rent for another few months, and when those months are up, he won't pay any more,
and we can sleep on the street.

One time he stood out in the street in front of the building and yelled up
terrible things at us, insulting things, using bad, terrible curse words.

My brother and I are very good students. My mother had to borrow money to
pay our school fees, and she doesn't know how she will pay it back, but she says
our education is the most important thing. Without it we will have no hope. My brother
is very smart at English and computers. My teacher actually said to my mother,
“May God bless you for having such a daughter and for bringing her into my
classroom.”

So we are all smart people, and should have good futures ahead of us, but
so much seems to be beyond our control. My mother doesn't have an independent
income, and my stepfather is unstable. We are one tantrum away from being thrown out and
having nowhere to live.

I guess I would say to American girls my age the same thing I would say to
any girls anywhere. It's the same thing my mother says to me. Be strong and
arrange your life so that you can look after yourself, no matter what. Don't rely
on a man, even if you fall in love. The man could die or go crazy, and then where would
you be?

Fallujah, a city located not far from Baghdad on the Euphrates
River, has seen a great deal of fighting that has taken many American and Iraqi
lives. During battles in 2004, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled the city, and
when they returned, many of their homes had been bombed so badly they were no longer
fit places to live. There was sewage in the streets from pipes being blown up, no
electricity or clean water, and no one to bury the corpses that rotted in empty
buildings.

During the battles, US forces fired white phosphorus shells at
insurgents. These shells burst into flame on impact, starting fires that can't
be put out with water and causing widespread burn injuries among civilians.

Abdullah's father's family comes
from Fallujah. He has moved many times since leaving Iraq. His family fled to Jordan
when they were threatened by the Mehdi Army, a Shia militia.

We came to Jordan because the Mehdi Army said to my father,
“We will kill your son and daughter if you don't leave Iraq.” They
wanted to kill me because I am Sunni.

My friends were very good in Iraq. Leaving them was difficult. Their names
are Athere and Osama. We loved to play football and basketball and go swimming.

I am in grade seven here in Jordan. All the teachers are good, and the
other students are also good. No problems.

Baghdad is beautiful, or it used to be. Any place is beautiful when your
friends and family are there. I was there during all the bombing. I didn't like it
at all, but I was not scared. I was not brave. I was angry. The bombing made me very
angry. I didn't know why they were doing this. Why should people be allowed to do
such things? I don't understand.

I saw a lot of American soldiers. They were screaming and doing nothing. I
mean, they were standing around a lot with their guns, not working. I was a child when
all this happened. I don't remember well, because I was in grade one.

I do remember a bit about our life before the Americans came. We had more
water and more electricity, and no one was killing other people.

After the Americans came, one of my friends was killed
in the car park of my school. His name was Mohammad. I heard the explosion, and I
saw the blood, and my friend was killed. I don't know if it was a car bomb or some
other kind of bomb. Does it matter?

When we had to leave Iraq, I left so many of my things behind. The thing I
miss most is my computer, and of course my friends and uncles and aunts. I loved playing
computer games. My favorite is Tomb Raider. We had to leave all that behind, and bring
just a few clothes.

My father is a very brave man. He has moved us around to keep us safe. We
moved several times in Baghdad, then to Aleppo, then to Damascus, and now we are
here.

My father and his family are from Fallujah. He was there when we were in
Damascus. He's a writer, and he writes about Iraq for newspapers and magazines.
He's been on Al Jazeera television, shouting about what is going on.

He had a contracting business for twenty years, working with the Japanese
and other nations. He had a plastic bag factory, a weaving factory. He did many
important things, even worked with the UNHCR. He had to sell one factory. It was worth
half a million dollars and he had to sell it for $6,000, because our family was starving
because of the war. Someone now will get rich from our misfortune. The building alone
was worth a lot of money, but people said, “Either you will sell it to us at this
cheap price or we will blow it up.” Maybe they had a car bomb. I don't
know.

Then the Americans blew up my grandfather's house
in Fallujah. It was a big, good house, and they sent seventeen missiles into it. It
still didn't come down, so they blew the rest of it up with TNT.

When fighting started in Fallujah, my father and his friends organized a
clinic to take care of wounded people. They even had an ambulance. It wasn't a
secret ambulance. It was a very clear ambulance, perfectly marked so everyone would know
what it was. It got shot up and destroyed.

They used white phosphorus bombs that set things on fire and make them
keep on burning.

That didn't stop him. He saved a lot of families. There were so many
bodies in the streets. He got people to a safer place and made a refugee camp for
them.

He tried to make an agreement between the resistance and the American
army, to stop the fighting. He told the Americans he could get people to stop carrying
weapons in the streets and to obey local authorities, if the Americans would agree to
stop all the missiles and bombs. He thought he had everyone agreeing, but the next day,
the Americans dropped a one-thousand-pound bomb on the city.

So everybody became mad at my father after that. They blamed him for
trusting the Americans. He says now that it would be better for him and his
family's reputation if he had fought and been killed instead of trying to
negotiate with monsters. He means monsters on both sides, but I don't think he
really wishes he had picked up a gun. What good would it do us or anyone if he had
died?

Now he writes and helps an American group called No
More Victims. They bring children out of Iraq who have been hurt by American
soldiers. They find towns in America who will take the children and pay for surgery. I
get to meet the children, and the American man, Cole, who helps them. He often stays
with us.

I know there can be good people and bad people in every country. All those
people in America who help with No More Victims. They don't have to do that. They
could be like their government and say, “It's just an Iraqi child. It
doesn't matter.” But they don't. They try to fix those mistakes.
I'm glad there are people like that.

I wish Iraq had no oil. Then people would leave us alone.

I don't know what will happen in the future. So many people have
left the country. As long as the American soldiers are there, things will be bad, and
people will be killed. I worry that too many people will become used to all this killing
and forget that there is a better way to do things.

Jordan is okay, but I don't like it very much. I don't have a
good friend here, so I am a little lonely.

I don't know how to make the world better. It's hard to
imagine. There is so much that is wrong. I don't know what I would say to American
children, but I do know what I would say to George Bush. I'd look him in the face
and say, “I hate you.”

When the Americans overthrew the Iraqi government, they needed
to replace it with a new one. To do this, they needed the assistance of the Iraqi
people. Many were hired as drivers, interpreters, clerks, guards, and so
on.

Those Iraqis who signed on to help the Americans sometimes became
targets themselves of people who see the Americans as an occupying force that should
be kicked out. Many have been killed, kidnapped or forced to flee
.

Sometimes the Americans or British are able to provide some
measure of protection for those who work for them. Other times, they are not.

Shahid came to Jordan from Baghdad in March
2005. She lives with her parents and her little brother, Mohammad. Their father
worked as an interpreter for the US army, helping the Americans to train new police
at the Iraqi police academy. The family is now waiting for permission to live in the
United States, although the countries that invaded Iraq have so far taken only a
small number of Iraqis, even those like Shahid's father who risked their lives
to help them.