INTERVIEW WITH ANWAR KADHUN JEWARD

Anwar Kadhun Jeward hosts me in her parents house where she now lives in a suburb of Baghdad.. She is young, dressed all in black with hijab, and holds, Hassan, her five month old son. Abir, her adolescent daughter, sits quietly next to her.

Anwar: After the war in March, it was in the summer, my husband and I took our 4 children to visit my parents in this house. My family was happy and healthy: my son was waiting to hear results from his application to medical school, my oldest daughter was in high school, this daughter (indicates Abir next to her on the sofa) and my 8 year old daughter were in grade school. I was pregnant with this child (indicates baby Hassan on her lap.)

It was about 9:30 pm and the electricity was off as there had been some kind of explosion at a nearby power station. It was dark as we drove our private car with the children sitting together in the back seat. A military patrol of two humvees and I don� know how many soldiers came down the street and shone a very bright light on us. In the past we�e had these patrols in our neighborhood and the men and boys of the neighborhood families have chatted with the soldiers and shared water and cigarettes with them. This night, as we were caught in the bright lights from the humvees, the soldiers started shooting at us.

My husband put his hand out the window and yelled, �top shooting! Stop shooting! My family is in the car, just my family, my wife, my children, there is no trouble here. Stop shooting!�But the soldiers didn� stop; they kept on shooting. For fifteen minutes they shot up the street and our car.

When they stopped I was shot in the leg and the arm and I had my husband� head in my lap. I was covered in his blood. He told me to run from the car and hide. I did this and watched from my hiding place for a long time. After three hours they took my husband to the hospital. My son was dead; my oldest daughter was dead; my eight year old daughter was dead. I didn� know where this daughter was (pats the knee of the girl next to her). 

The next day Abir came home. She said she had been taken to the hospital too after a female soldier found her in the gutter. The soldier pushed my child with her boot then took the gold ear rings from my daughter� ears before leaving her for dead. Abir also told me that she� heard at the hospital that my husband could have lived, even with eight bullets in his body, had he been brought to the hospital sooner.

Later I heard that the soldiers also shot up a car on another street and badly injured and  burned the two occupants of that car. Two days after the shootings I received my sons acceptance letter to medical school.

Some time later an American came to my door and told me I might be able to present a claim for compensation for the �ccident.�I consulted a lawyer who submitted my claim. This lawyer was told by the American lawyer that I had no right to submit a claim and that I must wait for the new Iraqi government and request compensation from them. I asked him, �hat kind of Iraqi government? How do I ask an Iraqi government to compensate for an American �ccident� How long must I wait? What of the car?�br>
In my family, like many Iraqi families, the husband takes care of all the family business. My job is to care for the well being of the family inside the house while my husband� job is to care for every thing else. This is the way we do it in Iraq. Now, I have no husband. I have no income. I have no house anymore. I live with my parents and these two children. Everything else is gone. I will never recover. And who is asking for the rights of my dead children and dead husband? When the x-rays of my children came back from the hospital we saw that the bullets that were used were the kind that fragment on impact.
[Author� note: I saw these x-rays. Indeed, the bullets were shattered into the bone: two visibly fragmented bullets rested in the 8 year old� jaw and one in her skull; fragmented bullets were visible in the arms and ankle of another child.]

"I want the whole world to know of this. When you go back to America, tell them there is tragedy in Iraq.�