Israa
learned English at the American High School, now called the Baghdad
High School, in Mansur City. She studied administration at the
university and worked for Lufthansa and Japan Airlines before
meeting her husband. She quit because it was forbidden to work
for a foreign company and be married to an Iraqi soldier. Her
husband now trades “cars and other things,” Israa
tells us, though she doesn’t know exactly what. “My
habit is that I don’t ask him what he does.” She needed
to get permission from her husband, who was playing tennis at
the time, before speaking to me.
Israa brings her children to the Iraqi Hunting Club to swim on
Wednesdays and Saturdays. The club is a recreation center for
upper-class Iraqis that provides its members with tennis, swimming,
and large dining halls for private and club parties. It costs
ID 200,000 to join and then ID 25,000 per year thereafter. Uday
and Qusay Hussein used to have their famously lavish—and
dangerous—parties here. Uday was known to lock the doors
and make people dance and celebrate—or be shot.
We didn’t believe the Americans would come and do what they
did. On April 6 we heard the Humvees and tanks as they crossed
the highway and bombed, so we went to my sister’s house.
Our house has lots of holes from bullets, so I thank God that
we left.
The children were not so afraid because I was not so afraid. They
look at how you act and do the same. They have seen two wars,
but not like this one, not with so many bombs. And now the country
is not established. It is crowded, and everyone does what he wants.
No one is afraid because there is no government to punish them.
This is all because of the Americans. If they wanted to control
things, they could do it in a few days. But they don’t,
because they want people to steal and kill. They don’t like
us. They don’t like the Arab people. They just want the
petrol. And they have been planning this for a long time.
I don’t like Saddam Hussein because he is not a good man.
He doesn’t love his people. But now the government is not
good either. Why do the Americans want to hurt us? If they didn’t
like Saddam, why didn’t they kill him? Instead they kill
all the people here. They must leave, but they will not. They
will not leave us.
I remember suffering a lot in these ten years. The war was very
bad because my husband had been in the military in Kuwait since
December 1989. I didn’t hear anything from him for two months.
I thought he was killed. Then he walked from Kuwait to Baghdad.
On March 3 he came to my door. It was the happiest day of my life.
Every Iraqi wants a good life for herself and her children. Iraqis
want their children to be like other children in the world: to
use the Internet and to learn science, all these things that weren’t
available before. I want them to be free, but with limits, because
we are Muslim, not like Europeans or Americans.
I think Iraq is so great, and we hope the country gets well and
heals. I hope we become free and have a good government and become
friends with all our neighboring countries. It is difficult to
know who should lead because for 35 years we couldn’t even
think of anyone else. So now we don’t know anyone. The ones
there now are from the outside. We want someone to feel and to
be reasonable and established. But no more war, please, because
we are tired.
