lost laughter and broken lives

Lost Laughter and Broken Lives

Arab suicide bombers mass murder Iraqi children and then Arabs and

'leftists' ask Iraqis if THIS is the democracy they were asking for.

Bomb's Lasting Toll: Lost Laughter and Broken Lives

By SABRINA TAVERNISE, New York Times

Published: January 7, 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan. 6 -- If the cost of this war is measured in human lives,

one block in southeast Baghdad has paid more than its share.

On a hot morning two summers ago, 34 children were killed here in a

flash of smoke and metal. They were scooping up candy thrown from an

American Humvee. The suicide bomber's truck never slowed down.

More than 3,000 Iraqis are dying every month in this war -- roughly

the total deaths in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and

the Pentagon or all the American troops killed since the war began.

But behind the headlines and statistics, most of the war is

experienced in Iraqi living rooms and on blocks like the one here,

where families struggle with the intense pain of loss.

And while American war planners discuss the way ahead, Iraqis on this

scarred block are stuck in the past on the morning of July 13, 2005,

when time stopped and the war truly began for them.

"Our life now, it's not a life, it's a kind of dream," said Qais

Ataiwee Yaseen, whose two boys, ages 8 and 11, were killed that day.

"Life has no taste. I even feel sick of myself."

Qais Ataiwee Yaseen lost two sons, Abbas, 11, and Ali, 8, in the

blast. "I'm like a dead man," said Mr. Yaseen, who now lives alone

in a small room. "I have no ambitions. I have no goals in life. I

have lost everything."

In the early years of the war, the street -- a dusty, trash-strewn

strip of concrete that runs between Baghdad's southeast highway and

the neighborhood of Naariya -- was mostly quiet, home to a mix of

Shiite and Sunni families who had known each other for years.

But the cruelty of the war intervened when the bomber struck,

apparently aiming at a convoy of American Humvees parked at the end of

the street. One American soldier and 34 Iraqis were killed. All were

boys, and all but four were younger than 15. The youngest was 6. In

all, 29 families lost children; one lost three sons.

In the seconds after the explosion, the world narrowed to one child

for Sattar Hashim, a 39-year-old security guard whose son had gone out

to see the American patrol. Mr. Hashim moved frantically through the

wreckage, just outside his front gate, a scene now burned into his

memory. He found his son unconscious, his body torn by shrapnel.

"I pray to God that no one in this world will ever have to face such a

scene," he said, remembering the scene as he sat in his sparely

furnished living room with the curtains drawn. "As if they had been

scattered on the ground. Legs. Arms. Heads. Bodies still burning."

His son died in a hospital operating room several hours after the

explosion.

Suicide bombings often stop clocks nearby, throwing the delicate

mechanisms out of balance. The minute hand freezes the moment that the

bomber detonates, and cleanup crews find clocks hanging crookedly on

walls hours later, with the moment of loss fixed forever on the

clocks' faces.

For the parents in Naariya, the clocks are frozen at a quarter after

10. The deaths that morning tore a hole in the life of the block, and

more than a year later, many people have been unable to put their

lives back together. Some have drifted away from their spouses. Others

changed jobs or stopped going to work altogether. Reminders of the

loss were everywhere: Class sizes were smaller. Soccer tournaments for

12-year-olds stopped. Bug collecting was no longer a hobby.

The pain caused strange things to happen. Mr. Yaseen lost his knack

for numbers and found himself fumbling in front of customers at the

hardware store where he had worked for years. Eventually, he quit.

Reading and writing became difficult for Zahra Hussein, the mother of

11-year-old Hamza. She had lost her ability to concentrate and some of

her eyesight.

Hadi Faris, Hamza's father, stopped his work as a driver. He could not

control his thoughts, and concentrating on the road and split- second

decisions was too onerous.

"I kept thinking how life is cheap, how so many innocent people are

killed," he said, sitting in front of a kerosene heater in a small

guest room.

After some months, he applied for, and was given, a job as a guard in

his son's school. It felt somehow reassuring to do after his son's

death what could not be done during his life: protect.

"I felt that all the kids were Hamza," he said. "My main job was to

protect them all."

Life became empty and quiet for the children who were left. Adel Ali,

12, lost four of his best friends, most of his small soccer team and

his entire bicycle-racing brigade. They had all shared a surge of

happiness in the form of a birthday cake with candles, a first for

most of the children, just days before the explosion. The experience

was recorded in a grainy photograph of nine little boys making monkey

faces. All but two are dead.

Adel Ali, 12, survived the July 13, 2005, blast but lost four of

his best friends. After two killings at his school, his father

began keeping him home.

Adel spends his afternoons alone at home. In the early evening, he

plays soccer with the older boys. They do not know the names of famous

players that he and his friends gave each other when they made good

plays. They do not know the sheer joy of riding bicycles while holding

a rope together. They do not understand his loneliness.

"We used to play together, and the adults would play in another

place," said Adel, his small fingers zipping and unzipping a fleece

pullover at his neck.

The attack seemed calculated to make Iraqis despise Americans, in a

pattern that would eventually succeed and change the direction of the

war. But while some of the parents interviewed seem to have developed

that hatred, many had not and even expressed respect. Mr. Faris said

that immediately after the bombing he saw a soldier with a mangled arm

trying to pick up a wounded child.

More Americans came to the area several weeks later and brought small

trinkets to houses, in what Iraqis assumed was something of a peace

offering.

"We never hurt the Americans, and the Americans never hurt us," Mr.

Faris said.

A constant theme of the war for Iraqis has been their complete lack of

control over chaotic, life-changing events. Like victims of a car

wreck on an empty highway, they sit in pain and hope that help will

come along.

Mr. Yaseen is haunted by the helplessness he felt that morning when he

found his younger son, Ali, still alive. He was badly burned and

missing his feet.

"I said to myself -- two feet, it is nothing," he said. But within

several hours the child was dead.

"I did not have the ability to do anything for him," Mr. Yaseen said.

"To save him."

Memories rush back at inconvenient moments. Mr. Yaseen has one in

which his older son, Abbas, who loved bugs, begged him not to put

poison down for the ants, saying, "They also have families and

houses."

Even trifles sting. Ali, called English Ali for his tidiness and

admiration for Americans, had only bread to eat for breakfast that

morning.

"I'm like a dead man," said Mr. Yaseen, crying into his hands. "I have

no ambitions. I have no goals in life. I have lost everything."

His wife and daughter have moved out, and he has retreated into his

apartment, a 12-foot by 14-foot room. He stopped shaving. The room is

now piled with baskets of laundry, old children's toys and a metal

bassinet.

"I live in this room," he said. "I sleep in this room. I eat in this

room. This is my whole life. As if I'm in prison."

Meanwhile, the war ground on, and the block was not immune to changes.

In February, poor Shiites rampaged in neighborhoods throughout eastern

Baghdad. Naariya started to lose Sunnis. New graffiti in black paint

across from Mr. Yaseen's house spelled praise for a Shiite cleric.

Three Shiite families from Diyala, a violent province north of

Baghdad, arrived with the stunned look of refugees who just lost

everything but their lives.

"There are no smiles on their faces," Ms. Hussein said. "You can tell

they lost somebody."

Attacks on Shiites by Sunni militants started to wear, and families on

the block began asking about the backgrounds of newcomers.

A small statue erected in the children's memory was blown up, and a

bomb was planted under a date palm tree nearby, but it did not

explode. During the Ramadan holiday in October, around 20 Sunni men

disappeared from the neighborhood. Their bodies turned up in different

neighborhoods several days later.

Mr. Hashim heard of the kidnappings but was afraid to ask about them.

"We woke up one day," he said, "and a family had left." The 2005

explosion gouged the pavement in front of his house, and afterward he

had a large blast wall built. The wall had the added benefit of

shielding him from seeing the crater in the street day after day.

For Adel, the 12-year-old whose friends were killed, memories returned

in spurts. Some time after the July attack, he took his bicycle to the

balcony of his house and threw it off. He was angry about what

happened, Ms. Hussein said. A month ago, his life became even more

isolated: a guard and a teacher from his school were killed, and

Adel's father began keeping him home.

The boys come back in unexpected ways. Hamza's sister sees her

brother's face in a boy who lives in a house on her way to school. She

gives him candy sometimes. Mr. Yaseen often sees his boys in dreams.

In one, Abbas asks him why he is crying. He spoke of his own burial in

a reassuring way. "He tried to make it easy for me," Mr. Yaseen said.