By Mariam Fam
Associated Press, 27 December 2005
Jameela Abbas says her youngest son, Eissa, was "the flower of the house."
Three months ago, she bathed him, helped him get dressed, combed his hair and sprayed him with perfume before the 6-year-old left with his father for Syria. Nearly four hours later, her husband called to say their son was mistakenly killed by U.S. fire, becoming one of the many Iraqis who die simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In Iraq, people are killed for many reasons: working with the Americans, joining the security forces or belonging to the wrong sect or ethnic group.
But many others are killed without apparent reason in an often murky conflict that pits Islamic extremists and nationalist insurgents against U.S. troops and Iraqi government forces.
Their deaths not only leave families and neighbors baffled, they fuel a sense of vulnerability and insecurity. For a country increasingly polarized along ethnic and sectarian lines, it is perhaps ironic that the violence is so indiscriminate.
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Eissa's birthday came two months before he died.
"He was about to enter school. I had just finished his paperwork," said Abbas. The photos she took for his school application now grace the walls of her house in Baghdad's eastern Shaab neighborhood.
"I look at them a lot," she said. "Eissa was beautiful. He was beautiful. He was chubby. His eyes were big. His hair was long. I liked to spoil him."
"He was always with me. He went to the market with me," she added. "Now, I feel lonely."
The last time Abbas saw her son, he was excited about traveling with his father, a driver, on a work trip to Syria.
"Dad will take me to the amusement park," he told her.
"I felt like he's not coming back to me. It's the feeling of a mother, but he was happy," Abbas recalled.
Abbas said she did not know what the U.S. troops were firing at when they hit her husband's car as he was driving in the Abu Ghraib area in western Baghdad.
"Eissa was sleeping in the arms of his brother. The bullet hit him in the head," Abbas said. "He died in his sleep. There was no time for him to wake up or move a muscle."
When she saw her son's body, Abbas slapped her face, beat her chest and ripped off her flowing robe. She wailed and sobbed as U.S. troops tried to calm her.
"It is a mistake. We didn't mean to kill the child. We will do anything you want," she said they told her. "They apologized, but I didn't accept their apology."
She never heard from them since, she complained. She wants the U.S. military to pay her money in compensation.
Queries to the U.S. military about the case went unanswered after an initial response that they would look into it.
Ali, her other son, was wounded.
"He is now like a mad person. It's like something got into his head. He stopped going to school," she said of Ali, 16.
Her husband stopped working and the family now lives off its savings, she added.
Abbas said she cannot forgive those responsible for Eissa's death.
"I feel like I want to drink the blood of those who killed my son," she said. "I want to kill them the way they killed him and killed me."
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Khawla al-Azami, 52, wishes the car bomb that killed her eldest son had taken her life instead.
"What would I do with a life so painful?" she said. "I don't want it."
It was June 2004, when a car exploded in the Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah where she lives.
Residents rushed to the car. They heard voices of people trapped inside: "Help! Help!" A bigger crowd gathered trying to open the car's doors. Boom! The car blew up again.
The voices calling out for help were not of real people, al-Azami said. It was a recording.
Al-Azami was a few yards away from the car when the second explosion sounded.
Her two sons, Ziad and Mohammed, were among the crowd.
She saw blood gushing out of the arm of Mohammed, then 14.
"Mama, Ziad has been hit. He died," he told her, oblivious to the pain in his own arm. Ziad was 26.
"I carried him myself and took him to the hospital. I carried him and he was dead," she said, bursting into tears. "He dropped out of school so that he could work and support the family. Now, everything is gone."
Three people were killed on al-Azami's street alone. Seven were wounded, some now confined to wheelchairs.
"There were no targets in the area. No U.S. troops. No government offices. No police stations," she said. "We have nothing to do with politics. We mind our own business and just try to scrape out a living."
Residents say they saw men detonating the car from a distance, but al-Azami maintains the Americans planted the car bomb to punish residents because a U.S. patrol was attacked at the same spot.
When asked about the possibility that insurgents were responsible, she said: "Maybe it was terrorists. But it's the Americans who brought the terrorists in. Let them close the borders."
The notion that time heals is a myth, she said.
"It gets even more difficult. It's like someone has stuck a nail in my head and my heart."
The scene of her carrying Ziad's bloodied body plays through her mind every time one of her children goes out of the house. She wants her daughter to quit her job.
"There is no security. You don't feel safe even in your own home. You go to bed terrified and you wake up terrified," she said.
Asked what would make her feel better, al-Azami said: "We should get rid of the Americans and of the criminal terrorists they have brought us."
Then she paused. "But nothing in the whole world can make up for my loss."
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At first, Saad Kadhim did not think much of the masked gunmen who walked by his produce store. He thought they were police officers. Police, a frequent insurgent target, often cover their faces to protect their identities.
But he knew something was wrong when he heard gunshots. He rushed out, and saw the men firing in the air to keep people away.
Two stores down the road, his cousin, Naseer al-Nasrawi, was lying on his back in a pool of blood, killed by at least 12 bullets. His eyes were still open.
The gunmen fled in a black car.
Kadhim says that to this day he does not know why his 40-year-old cousin was killed.
"I know Naseer very well. He had no enemies. He had no party affiliations. We are very confused."
Since the attack, Kadhim has been feeling threatened.
"I don't have problems with anyone and yet I sit at my store looking left and right all the time," he said. "I look around when I am walking on the street. I don't feel safe."
"When I see a policeman standing next to my store, I ask him to leave. How can I tell that he is in fact a policeman? You can't tell a policeman from a terrorist these days."
Asked if he believed the attack was motivated by divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, he quickly ruled out the possibility. Al-Nasrawi, like himself, was a Shiite who lived in Baghdad's western Jihad neighborhood.
"No. No. No. In Jihad we live together Sunnis and Shiites. We don't have discrimination. I don't feel any difference between my Sunni neighbors and the Shiite ones."
He then seemed to be having second thoughts, speculating the killer may have wanted to "create sedition."
"If only I knew the reason, maybe I would have felt a little better," he said.
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Citation: Mariam Fam. "Violence Defies Reson for Many in Iraq," Associated Press, 27 December 2005.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051227/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_random_violence
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