Children of War

by Deborah Ellis

  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.

  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?

  Abdullah, 13

  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.”

  Shahid, 10

  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.

  I remember Baghdad very well. I miss it. I miss my grandparents, and I miss my friends. I wrote a letter to my best friend in Baghdad, but I can’t mail it because there is no mail delivery service to Iraq yet. Here is the letter. Maybe she’ll read this book and will know that I am thinking of her.

  My dear friend:

  I hope your day is full of flowers. I love you and miss you too much. I hope you will forgive me for not sending you a letter sooner. I write you letters, but then I just put them in a bag because I don’t know how to send them.

  What are you doing now? Do you still play the same games that we played together? Do you remember me and miss me? We had a lot of fun.

  I hope that we will come back to you soon, back to our homeland. I have good news. I believe that when I get into the fourth grade, we will go back to Iraq, because in the fourth grade I will learn many new and important things. So, maybe I will see you soon. Inshallah.

  My mother says hello to you, and that you should be well, and not cause your mother any worry.

  I am out of room, so I say goodbye for now.

  Your friend,

  Shahid

  If we learn of someone going back to Baghdad, maybe they can take my letter and deliver it for me.

  The neighborhood where we used to live in Baghdad was very beautiful. It was full of shops, the sort of shops people would want to go to. They could buy dresses and new televisions. They could go to a furniture shop and tell a carpenter what they wanted, and the carpenter would go right to work and make it for them.

  And we had the best food in Baghdad, too, in our neighborhood Al Ameed. The best kebab, the best baklava, the best restaurants.

  We are Sunni Muslims. My father was a first lieutenant in the Iraqi army, but he hated Saddam. He left the army for medical reasons before the Americans came, and he was very glad to see Saddam gone and be killed.

  “Iraq will be better now,” he said. “We will have freedom and good laws and proper leaders.” He was glad that my brother and I would be growing up in an Iraq without Saddam. He was very disappointed that everything did not work out as he wanted. But eve
n after things started to fall apart, he kept thinking that they would get better. “We shouldn’t expect the Americans to fix everything for us,” he said. “This is our country. Iraqis have to do the work to make it better.”

  That’s why he volunteered to work with the Americans. He thought he could do good work to bring the country together again. Most Americans can’t speak Arabic, so they needed someone to help them communicate.

  Our beautiful neighborhood became full of men with guns who shot at people. Bodies would be found on the side of the road and in alleys.

  Our father was very secret about working with the Americans, but people found out anyway. Men would stand at the gate to our house and yell at my mother. They’d say, “We know your husband is working for the Americans. We will blow up your car. We will blow up your house. One day you will be surprised because we are coming after you.”

  There were a lot of men with nothing to do but watch other people and see what they did, and if they saw things they didn’t like, they’d shoot or blow things up.

  I would hear my parents arguing about it. My mother thought we should get out of Iraq. She was afraid we would be killed. My father thought it was important that we stay, that if all the good people left, Iraq would be lost.

  The Americans built a sort of a wall around my neighborhood, so the only people who could come in were the people who lived there. There were fewer killings for a while, I think, but it was like a dead city. The shops closed, and all the things that had made it a good place were not there any more.

  The threats kept coming against my father. He went to the Americans and asked them for protection for us, but they had no help to offer.

  Finally, he and my mother made the decision that we should leave our country and come to Jordan.

  They sold their car, and as many of our belongings as they could. A lot of families were trying to sell things to get money to leave, so they didn’t get as much money as they thought they should. I would hear them complaining about it.