Children of War (11 page)

My father went back to check on our house almost every day, to make sure
it hadn't been bombed or looted. There were people who would go around to homes
when no one was there and steal everything.

But just because we didn't see much of the bombing doesn't
mean we weren't scared. Staying at my uncle's house was a woman who was
pregnant, and she was so scared all the time we thought she would lose the baby.

After three months we went back to Baghdad. It was a city for dead people.
Everything was black, it seemed.
There was only the army out on the
streets. People stayed in their houses.

Sometimes we had to talk to the American soldiers so we could continue
going down the street. I remember one of them who was very polite. We saw him a few
times. He said, “Good morning,” and “thank you.” My mother said
if we were nice to them, they would be nice to us. It was safer for us if we were
polite.

Even then, with all the Americans in our streets, I thought Saddam was
going to do something to let us win the war. But he was quiet for a long time. We
didn't know where he was.

I wasn't surprised when he was arrested by the Americans, but I
don't think they should have hanged him. Saddam killed a lot of people, and now
he's resting in peace. If they had put him in jail for the rest of his life, at
least he would have gotten a taste of what he had done to others. A lot of Iraqis
don't like that he's resting in peace.

I don't hate him. I don't love him. I have no feelings for
him. I'd rather not think about him. Most Arabs can't talk about their
governments because their governments don't like other opinions. This is not
because of Islam. Islam says there should be lots of opinions. It doesn't say
governments should kill their own people.

We went back to our house in Baghdad. It had not been bombed, so we could
live there. It was a big house with a beautiful garden, but I just stayed in my room,
watching the cars go by on the highway from my bedroom window. It was too dangerous to
walk in the streets
because you could get killed. I felt like all
the plans I had for my future were gone.

We had already applied to Canada because my mother has family here, so we
thought we would go to Jordan and wait for the visa. We thought it would come soon. We
went into Jordan on a three-month visa and stayed for one year. Every three months
we'd have to go to Syria for a day and get another three-month visa for
Jordan.

Even though my family said we were safe in Jordan, I was still scared all
the time. It didn't help that I couldn't go to school. We couldn't
afford it, and Jordan could kick us out at any time. So I had too many days with nothing
to do but be scared and worried.

We left Iraq for Jordan on October 23, 2004, and we left Jordan for Iraq
on October 23, 2005. Our money had run out.

We stayed in Iraq for six months. I couldn't go back to school
because we got there in the middle of the school year and they wouldn't let me
enroll.

We got a message that we'd missed our immigration interview so our
visa application to Canada was denied. But we never got the message telling us to come
to an interview. All those years of hoping to come to Canada, and the hope was gone in a
moment.

But we had to keep trying. There was no life for us in Iraq. My mother,
little brother and I packed a small bag, enough for three days, and went to Syria to try
to get another appointment. My father stayed behind to watch our house. My older brother
stayed with him. He had studied at home and had exams to write.

We ended up staying in Syria for three months, but we
almost didn't get there.

To cross the border, first you go to the Iraqi border control. They
stamped my mother's passport and the driver's passport, but they
wouldn't stamp mine. “She should have a man traveling with her,” they
said. “She is a young girl. She should stay in Iraq, not travel to Syria without a
man to protect her.”

Mom felt that we had to get to Syria. It was our last chance to get into
Canada. She didn't want to take us back to Baghdad. And she couldn't leave
me at the border. There's nothing at the border! Just desert! So, what to do?

The driver found a police officer and gave him some money. The police
officer went to the border guard, passed the money along, and my passport got
stamped.

I was so angry by now. I thought, just hurry and give me my passport so I
never have to see your face again.

Then we got to the Syrian border, and the manager there was even worse. He
insulted my father for allowing me to travel without a man. He told us to go back to
Iraq. He was very mean. If I saw him today, I would kick him.

The whole thing made me very sad. The Syrians used to like us, because
Saddam gave them oil, and he gave them electricity even when we didn't have any
electricity in Baghdad. The Syrians blame us for not fighting hard enough to keep Saddam
in power.

We managed to get our immigration file opened again, gave them lots of
ways to contact us for an interview, went back to Iraq to sell all our things, then went
back again to Syria.

All this time, we were living on money from my uncle
in Canada. He is not a rich man. He was working two jobs, one to support his family, and
one to support my family. He opened up a bank account for us in Canada, which meant that
we could get credit cards, and we lived on those credit cards and whatever money my
uncle could send. By the time we came to Canada, we owed the banks $60,000.

So we sold our things, found good people to look after our house —
which belongs to my mother's family, not to us — and went back to Syria for
another three months.

Finally, we got a call to go for the immigration interview. We got word to
our father, who was still in Iraq, and he headed to Syria. His car was stopped along the
highway by a gang of men with guns. He had bags of our stuff in the car with him. They
stole all that, and they wanted money. He didn't have any. They got his cellphone
and pretended to call my mother and say, “Give us money or we will kill your
husband.”

They put him in a hole in the ground, and put a machine gun to his head.
It must have been a hole they'd used for killing before, because there were other
body parts and heads down there.

“We're going to kill you,” they kept on saying. Finally,
my dad shouted, “Shut the hell up! I don't have any money. My wife
doesn't have any money. So go ahead and kill me.” Then he said, “But
after you kill me, take this bundle of papers to my wife in Syria, if you want to do
something good in your life to make up for all the bad.”

He didn't act scared, so they thought he was crazy. They stole his
passport, but they gave him ten thousand
Iraqi dinars —
around five American dollars — and let him get in the car and drive back to
Baghdad.

He got back to Baghdad after dark, spent the night at a police checkpoint
because he couldn't travel after curfew, then the next day went to see about
getting a new passport. That was a whole other long story, but he got it, got to Syria,
we had our interview, and the day after we got the visa, we got on a plane and came to
Canada.

I like being in Canada. Here, I feel good. Here, no one cares what you do.
You can do what you want without being watched by your government or the police or
people who are your enemy. Sure, sometimes here people are rude, like they are at times
to my mother because she wears hijab, but mostly people are kind and let you live your
life.

And I really need to live my life now. I saw things in the last five years
that most people don't see even if they live to be ninety. I was put into grade
nine when I came here, because I missed so much school and didn't know English,
but I'm going into grade twelve in the fall. I'd like to go to college and
be an eye doctor. I love so many things — art, music, dancing, guitar, designing,
computers and photography.

I want to press a delete button on the last five years of my life, and
erase all those unhappy memories.

There should not be any war. If George W. Bush had a problem with Saddam
Hussein, they should have both been given a gun, told to take ten steps, then turn and
shoot. They could have just killed each other instead of killing and hurting so many
other people.

Although Saddam Hussein was executed on December 30, 2006, Iraq
is still torn by ongoing violence, as religious groups and others fight for power.
One violent incident can spark a retaliation, and on it goes.

In June 2007, a revered Shia shrine was blown up in Samarra, north
of Baghdad, resulting in harsher curfews, retaliation killings of Sunni Muslims, and
a new influx of American troops.

Huthaifa and Yeman are brothers who lived in the Ala Dhamiya
section of Baghdad — a mostly Sunni area where frequent attacks have taken
place since the Samarra bombing. They came to Jordan
on July 1,
2006, after a close friend of their father was abducted and killed.

HUTHAIFA
– We left Baghdad just four days
after I finished high school. I got a chance to join a college here in Jordan for one
year, at Amman University. I was studying in the biomedical engineering department. I
studied for only two semesters. Then I had to leave because my family couldn't
afford the tuition. Now I have no studying, and no job. It's kind of expensive to
live here in Jordan.

I've applied to take several courses here that are offered by NGOs,
for capacity-building, photography, media. Also, I play music. I've been playing
guitar for five years now. My brother also plays. I'm teaching myself electric
guitar. I play mostly progressive rock. Back in Baghdad I had friends who were also into
music, and we would get together and play. We weren't a group. We just used to jam
together.

YEMAN
– I am in grade eight, in a private
school here, Terra Sancta College. I was just finishing grade six when we left
Baghdad.

People were very scared and nervous before the invasion. The American
government kept saying scary things, and we were afraid of what they would do.

HUTHAIFA
– There was some talk that America
would use atomic weapons in Iraq. They used them against Japan, so we knew they
weren't afraid to drop them on people.
There was talk that
they might do to Baghdad the same thing they did to Hiroshima.

Before the war, people were used to their lives. Because of sanctions,
most people did not have a lot of extra money. They were used to not traveling abroad or
doing very adventurous things, just staying in their areas.

Our father had a small video cassette shop, to rent and sell videos,
mostly American movies, and music as well. We just went on with our daily lives. We
would watch movies from my father's shop. My favorite was
Spawn
. My
brother's was
Batman
.

I attended the American-based Baghdad College High School. It is a very
good school. Our father went there, too. I made a lot of friends at Baghdad College.
They became my best friends, but unfortunately they are still back in Baghdad. I worry
about them every day. We contact each other from time to time, but it's not the
same.

During the sanctions sometimes we needed medications that we could not
get. We needed things for our computers that were not available in the country. After
the war, they became available.

YEMAN
– Before the war, I remember mostly
my friends, my school days. We lived in an old neighborhood in the eastern part of
Baghdad. The Tigris River wound through it very beautifully. It was a sort of island,
the greenest part of Baghdad. A very good place to live.

My favorite thing to do was play computer games. Dead Man's Hand and
Grand Theft Auto are the ones I like best. Plus, I play classical guitar.

HUTHAIFA
– There was
so much talk on the news of the war coming. We had a satellite dish. Even before the war
when it was forbidden, we had one. We watched BBC and CNN and got many different points
of view on whether the war would happen or not.

YEMAN
– It's complicated, the reasons
why they wanted to bomb my country. We all know George Bush didn't like Saddam,
but it was also that they wanted our oil. I think it was even more reasons than that,
reasons we might not know about for a long time.

We heard the bombs and we saw them. Most of the explosions were far from
our neighborhood. I think our neighborhood then was one of the safest places in the
city, safest from the bombs. We could see the sky light up at night, and of course we
heard the noise. Very loud noise. And our window glass got broken from the ground
shaking.