Children of War Read Online Free Page A

cousin.
    I have two sisters. Their names are Heinine, who is fourteen, and
     Sabine, who is eleven. Our cousin Nahan is also with us. She is the same age as me.
    We live now in a small apartment in Jordan. It’s very bare, with
     just mats along the walls, no good furniture. We burn incense a lot because it covers up
     the smell of damp and worse things. None of us like it here. We are in the Hashimi
     section of Amman, where a lot of Iraqis live, but we don’t spend time with them.
     It’s hard to know who to trust. A lot of people left Iraq for a lot of reasons.
     Just because we are all here now in Jordan doesn’t mean we all like each
     other.
    Our father died seven years ago from sickness. It was harder to get good
     health care in Iraq in the time of sanctions. I don’t know if he would still be
     alive or not if there were no sanctions. It’s something I don’t like to
     think about.
    Although we lost his salary when he died, my mother had a good job. Our
     lives would have been much worse ifour mother didn’t have a
     job. She was an accountant in the educational system.
    She was also a member of the Ba’ath Party and worked with the Iraqi
     Women’s Union, a non-governmental organization that helped make women’s
     lives easier day-to-day and also encouraged women to participate in the political life
     of Iraq. It was a very old organization, around for many years.
    After the fall of Saddam, militia groups targeted former Ba’ath
     party members, killing a lot of them. We would hear about the killings, and we worried
     that our mother might be targeted.
    Eventually she did get a death threat, and that’s when we left. We
     were living in our grandparents’ house at the time. We gathered together what we
     could in a hurry, then left quickly and quietly.
    For a while, our mother worked here as a housecleaner in the neighborhood,
     but now she is sick and tired all the time. I’m not really sure how we are
     surviving now. I think she borrowed money from someone.
    We sold some jewelry and dishes, but a lot of Iraqis are trying to sell
     things in order to live, so we didn’t get a good price for them.
    Our mother is thinking that if she can get a sewing machine, she can do
     some tailoring and bring in some money that way. It would be good to see her busy. I
     think she would be happier if she had something to do that she liked. She’d have
     less time then to worry about me.
    My sisters and I are back in school this year, because Jordan now lets
     Iraqi children attend for free. My teachersare good, very kind and
     patient with us. We lost our school year last year because we couldn’t afford to
     pay the fees, so we are behind and have to work hard to catch up.
    School feels safe. We can learn, and we have friends and can laugh and
     have fun. During the war we saw dead bodies in the streets, explosions, terrible things.
     It helps to be able to laugh and have a bit of a regular life. Both Heinine and I want
     to be doctors. Sabine hasn’t decided yet.
    My mother and grandmother want us to wear hijab. They’re afraid for
     us because we have no father or older brother to protect us. They say, “You are
     young girls, walking around the streets with your heads uncovered. What if you are
     attacked by some bad Jordanian men? We cannot go to the police. They will send us back
     to Iraq!” They talk and worry, and sometimes I just get tired of all their worry.
     This is the one time I have in my life to be young. I don’t want to spend it
     hiding and worried and afraid.
    We all miss our homeland. We had friends there, and lives that could have
     been wonderful.
    I think if American girls my age could meet me, they’d like me. If
     they were friendly, we could go look in the shops and talk about clothes and music. Then
     they could tell their parents to stop being afraid of Iraqis.

Eva, 17

    The United Nations High