Children Of War Part 2

But they yelled again, "Go away! Get out of here!"

I was smaller, and they were big and loud and angry. I held my brother's hand and should have run away, but I guess I was surprised that they would be so angry at two little kids.

Then two of the men grabbed a pot of very hot water and threw it at us.

It hurt. I got burns on my legs from where it splashed me, and my brother got burns on his back. There are some scars on my face, too, where the water landed.

We ran home, and my parents took us to the Italian hospital in downtown Amman, which is a very kind place for Iraqis.

Something bad happened to my mother and sister, too, when they went out one day. My sister needed gla.s.ses for her eyes, to help her to see better. My mother and sister went out together to get the gla.s.ses. A group of young men blocked their way and decided to beat them. I don't know why the men did that. Were they bored? I will never do such things when I am a man. I cannot even think of doing such things.

So, from the beating and from the way we live, my mother has high blood pressure, and both she and my sister have nervous problems. They're afraid to go out of the house, and they get very, very sad.

There are eight of us living in two small rooms. We are too crowded, and because we don't feel safe outside, we are in here together too much. We're always on top of each other, and that's fine when we're all getting along, but terrible if we're not. One person waking up in a bad mood soon means we are all in a bad mood, and then it's terrible.

It's not a healthy house, either. My mother cleans and cleans, but it still smells bad from the sewer, and when it's cold and rainy outside, it's cold and damp in the house.

At least I am back in school this year. I want to be an engineer. My sister wants to be a doctor. I don't know if we'll get what we want. Mostly I would like us to not feel so gloomy all the time.

My brother and I have a small courtyard to play in, and there's a wall that divides the courtyard from the street. We have contests to see who can climb over the wall the fastest. I'm bigger, but he's pretty fast.

And my mother likes things to be pretty. We have a sort of a shrub growing in the courtyard that she and my sister and grandmother have decorated with artificial flowers and fake fruit they found in the street. They like to make things look beautiful. My mother also puts pots of daisies and other flowers around to cheer us all up.

I know my parents worry, about money, about what will happen to us, about how to keep us safe. We cannot go to the police when bad things happen to us because we are here illegally, and they could ship us all back to Iraq. We feel we are on our own.

To make the world better, every town and city should have places where only children can go a" all children. It doesn't matter if they are Iraqi or Jordanian or what. They could go there and be safe and play all they wanted, and just be happy.

Haythem, 8.

Depleted uranium is waste from nuclear power and from the manufacturing of atomic weapons. It is radioactive, and very dangerous. There are more than a million tonnes of this waste in the world, and it's very expensive and difficult to store. It tends to eat through the containers where it is kept.

One way to get rid of it a" or at least get it out of our own backyard a" is to sell it cheaply to arms manufacturers, who attach it to conventional weapons to make them stronger and more deadly. During the First Gulf War in 1991, US and British forces sent depleted uranium ammunition into Iraq a" ammunition that was toxic not only to the Iraqis, but to the soldiers who fired the weapons as well. In November 2007 New Internationalist reported that between 1990 and 1997, cancer rates in a Basra hospital increased dramatically. Both the children of American soldiers and children in Iraq have been born with birth defects.

Haythem was born with hydrocephalus, a condition that causes fluid to build up in the brain. His condition was made worse in 2005, when four masked gunmen stormed into his home in Baghdad, startling his mother and causing her to drop him. He hit his head on the hard floor. He has had surgery to try to repair the damage, but one side of his head is still badly swollen.

The gunmen kidnapped his uncle and demanded a large sum of money for his release. The family sc.r.a.ped together what they could, paid the ransom and fled the country as soon as the uncle was returned to them.

Haythem's parents suspect that his initial illness came from the weapons that have been used in and against Iraq, but they are unable to prove it. His mother lost two other babies before they were born. When Haythem's uncle was kidnapped, his mother chased the kidnappers out onto the street to try to rescue her brother, but they turned on her and beat her badly. She was seven months pregnant at the time and lost that baby as well.

Haythem lives with his mother, father, uncle and grandmother in a small but sunny apartment on the side of one of Amman's many hills. They have a magnificent view from their courtyard, where Haythem's mother grows pots of herbs and flowers. His father was a soldier and suffers from the trauma of war and from not being able to properly provide for his family.

Haythem likes to read, but he has trouble remembering things, and he has to read them over and over. He can't control the movement of his arms and legs. His father is a silversmith, and he is sad that he will not be able to pa.s.s down the art of jewelry making to his son.

The family have been accepted by the UNHCR as refugees, but so far no country has stepped forward to let them in.

I like to play with little cars, and to play games with my father. We set the games up on my tray, and we play.

Sometimes by cousins come over, and we play together. My cousins can understand me when I talk, and they don't laugh at the way I look. The children in the neighborhood can't understand me.

I love to go out into the streets and see what's going on. I like to see people working and playing and doing different things, and I like to look at cars. Sometimes my father takes me out. The hills are very high, and it's hard to push my chair up and down them. People look at me because I look different, and I don't like that.

My mother takes good care of me, and my father plays with me and helps me with my reading. I'd like to go to school, but there is no school for me.

Widian, 14.

An article in USA Today reported that Iraqi psychiatrists are worried about how children there will cope with the long-term effects of being exposed to war and violence. A survey by the Iraqi Ministry of Health found that seventy percent of students in Baghdad are suffering from war trauma and are showing signs of stress like bedwetting and stuttering. Many have had to pa.s.s dead bodies on their way to school. Many have repeatedly heard explosions or seen acts of violence on others. There are not enough mental health professionals in Iraq to help them deal with this. "Some of these children are time-bombs," Said al-Hashimi, an Iraqi psychiatrist, said.

Widian and her brother are orphans living with their uncle and his family. They were in Iraq during the heavy bombing. The large extended family lives in three small rooms in the Jebel Amman section a" another poverty-stricken area of the city. Mats line the walls of the main room, which are flaky and dark with mold. Their belongings are piled up under blankets.

We live in Amman with my grandmother, two aunts, two uncles and five children, plus my brother and me. The rain comes in when it's raining outside. But at least we are alive.

My father and mother are dead, and so are two of my uncles.

Before the First Gulf War, we were living in Kuwait. Then, when that happened, we moved to Basra, because Kuwait no longer wanted Iraqis in their country.

I have damage in me from the First Gulf War. I wobble when I walk, and I fall down a lot. My muscles and nerves are damaged, they say from the weapons that were used to make Saddam leave Kuwait.

My father was the first one to die. He was captured and murdered. He was tortured to death by electricity. That sort of death leaves marks on your body. When my mother saw him after he died, it was clear what had killed him.

Still, she wanted to be sure, so she had people who knew about such things examine his body and give her papers to say that yes, he had been tortured. She had all these doc.u.ments with her when she was kidnapped. We heard nothing about her for three months. Then my grandparents got a phone call telling them where to find my mother's body.

My older brother hasn't gone to school for many years because he is afraid of also being kidnapped and killed.

Sometimes I am afraid of that also, and there are other times when I don't care if it happens or not.

We left Iraq in 2004.

When the Americans first came, we all hoped democracy would come, and everyone would be able to live together and be safe. But religious extremists and terrorists took over, and everything became very bad.

We were in Iraq for the heavy bombing. I remember that there was no water or electricity. There were just bombs. It seemed that the big British and American forces were trying to squeeze through our small area. They dropped heavy bombs on us. Not just regular bombs. Heavy bombs. Why are any of us still alive?

We tried to go to sleep early some evenings, thinking that if we managed to fall asleep, we would stay asleep through the bombing. It was foolish thinking. Who could sleep through such things? My head was always cloudy from being scared, and from headaches, and from never getting any rest.

Before the bombing, the people around me, the adults, would talk about how worried they were about what would happen with Saddam no longer in control. They worried that all the tribes and religions would go to war against each other, and that's exactly what happened.

The thing that finally made us leave was when the uncle we were living with got beaten. Gunmen wearing masks over their heads and faces came right into my uncle's house and beat him right there, in his own home. They ordered him to pay them ten thousand dollars or they would come back and kill him and also destroy the house and his shop so that the rest of the family would not be able to eat.

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 cla.s.ses that we are way too old for. All the children are smaller than us. It's embarra.s.sing. They put me into the third cla.s.s, 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.

Laith, 11.

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 gla.s.s 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 a" the bombing from the sky, that is. Then we saw the American soldiers in the street.

At first they were friendly. They said h.e.l.lo, 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 a" 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 cla.s.s, 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."

Abinminak, 8.

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 a.s.sa.s.sinated. 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 gla.s.s, 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 b.u.t.terfly. They keep trying to catch the b.u.t.terfly, 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 n.o.body 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.