Posted on 09/22/2003 3:28:29 PM PDT by guinnessboy
Amid strife, Iraqi family finds hope By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff, 9/21/2003
AGHDAD -- Zainab Fatima Hamid can finally smile again. The infected shrapnel wound on her right cheek -- caused by the same mortar that killed three of her children and her sister-in-law in April -- has healed. Growing in her belly is a baby, which she will name after one of her lost children. ADVERTISEMENT
In the kitchen, there are potatoes, green beans, and okra where five months ago roaches scavenged in a half-empty bag of flour meant to sustain 14 family members.
''For us, things feel back to normal,'' said her husband Adnan, 32, as he held their only surviving child, a 2-year-old daughter named Bunayah.
Instead of bitterness, the Hamid family exudes gratitude for the war that toppled Saddam Hussein's government. The regime harshly persecuted the 2 million Shi'ites crammed into the slum northeast of Baghdad formerly known as Saddam City but now called Sadr City, after a revered cleric.
Their good will toward the American-led occupation authority -- despite the personal suffering wrought by the war -- might help explain why this sprawling Shi'ite Muslim slum has not risen up in revolt and in quiet ways has provided a bulwark of support for coalition forces.
''The Americans did us a great favor by getting rid of Saddam,'' Adnan Hamid said. ''We owe them. And I don't think they will abandon us.''
On April 8, the day after residents of Sadr City welcomed US soldiers, Fedayeen Saddam fighters rained shells onto their neighborhood in retribution. One exploded in the Hamid courtyard, killing Mohammed, 6; Rokaya, 4; Aya, 3; and Adnan's sister, Amal Hamid. Shrapnel ravaged both legs of a relative, Kaiss Hamid.
At the end of April, Zainab Hamid had sunk into such deep depression that she stopped breast-feeding or even speaking to Bunayah. It fell to Adnan -- with no job -- to care for his daughter, feed his extended family, and seek apparently futile treatment for his little brother Kaiss, in the hospital with gangrene but unable to afford antibiotics.
Now, a cage with three yellow and blue parakeets covers the mortar crater in the courtyard.
Kaiss, with help from the Italian Red Cross field hospital, has recovered. Doctors amputated his right leg at the knee, as well as half of his left foot. Neighbors took up a collection to buy him a satellite dish for entertainment since he barely leaves the house.
Two of Adnan Hamid's sisters who live with them have given birth to girls since April; one is named after Rokaya.
And in six months, Zainab expects her baby. She is still reeling from watching three of her children die before her eyes.
''Every night I drown my pillow with tears,'' she said. ''I wish I had died instead of my children.''
Shyly placing one hand on her stomach, she said they will name the child after Mohammed or Aya, depending on whether it's a boy or a girl. The tentative order restored to the Hamid household has also come to Sadr City and has won coalition forces a measure of peace. Despite the headline-grabbing Shi'ite clerics who denounced the foreign troops and the riots last month after US soldiers in a helicopter ripped a religious flag from a tower, the slum's neighborhoods have seen sweeping improvements in the quality of life under the US occupation.
The military says it has already spent $600,000 in Sadr City rebuilding a town hall, a municipal office building, and three police stations. The results so far: Recently electricity ran uninterrupted for four days, unheard of during the Ba'ath Party regime. An independent municipal government now collects daily the garbage which perpetually choked the area's streets.
And in the Hamids' quarter, at least, the nightly gunshots and fear of crime have subsided. Adnan Hamid and his friends sit in white chairs on the roadside long after midnight, talking politics and work.
After the war, Hamid and his neighbors hesitated to discuss politics, the weekly visits from regime intelligence agents still fresh in their minds. Now, they break into laughter as talk turns to the hoped-for capture of Hussein.
Iraqis, Adnan believes, will show the same patience with national reconstruction that they have in painstakingly reclaiming their personal lives.
''You have to give the Americans time,'' Hamid said. ''The infrastructure is old, pipes are rusty, power plants are broken. You can't fix it all in a day.''
The Hamid clan has made its way slowly. Adnan Hamid earned $150 -- a small fortune -- in August working for the Coalition Provisional Authority painting one of Saddam Hussein's palaces now used as a government office. He has since found regular work at a neighborhood foundry, pulling in about $1 a day.
''We're making do,'' he said. ''We have enough to eat.''
Kaiss hopes to raise $150 to buy a prosthetic leg. He swings a useless, 20-year-old artificial limb the family bought for $16; it's a full-length leg, and the joint does not move. When Kaiss straps it to his knee, it drags behind him.
''The hard moments come at night, when I remember what it was like to run,'' said Kaiss, who once played soccer for an Iraqi military team.
When he and two cousins figure out how to connect the satellite dish, Kaiss said, he will be able to watch the news and follow his beloved sport.
''Maybe one day I'll be able to have plastic surgery to reconstruct my right foot,'' Kaiss said. ''I'm a man, I need to find work.''
The family has other plans, too. When Zainab gives birth, there will be 17 people living in the 1,200-square-foot home again, and Adnan wants to build another bedroom on the roof.
Their concerns lie far outside the political struggles of the Shi'a clerics who call on the residents of Sadr City for support.
Each week, the Hamid family listens to tape-recorded sermons from the great mosques in Najaf and Kufa and follows the factional arguments between clerics who encourage cooperation with the US-led occupation -- and for now hold sway over the Shi'ite street -- and those who promote anti-American resistance.
The debate does not seem that relevant to his life, Adnan Hamid said. He turns away from the stack of cassettes; Bunayah has just poked her newborn cousin Rokaya in the eye with a stuffed yellow duck.
''Why would we fight the Americans?'' Adnan said, laughing and waving his hand to take in his wife, daughter, sisters, and home. ''They did us the greatest favor of all.''
Why wouldn't the Boston Globe post an address where to send donations to help this guy out?
I hope our troops hear about this.
And, I hope Adnan Hamid knows that our President will NOT abandon them.
Now, the Dimms....well, that's a big question mark, isn't it?
I hope our troops hear about this.
And, I hope Adnan Hamid knows that our President will NOT abandon them.
Now, the Dimms....well, that's a big question mark, isn't it?
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