Scenes From An Iraki Childhood June 1st 2007 – Fathers And Children
Family life is so fine in Irak since the Americans came. I find myself looking back to Saddam’s time as a golden time.
Father And Daughter
This is Wasna Abdullah. 
1) Wasna is brought into Imam Ali hospital
by a relative after being shot.
2) Wasna weeps for her father who was shot
dead in the same “incident” by the Americans
She is seven years old she was photographed today at Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City. Her name means that she is named after a narrator of Hadith who had this name.
An American led force conducted a raid early this morning , June 1, 2007 on the Kibr and Ghizlan areas on the outskirts of north eastern Sadr City.
During the raid the Americans opened fire. They fired their rifles into the air killing Wasna’s father Khalid Abdullah and wounding her.
Residents described the shootings as accidental.
Some ”accident”.
Shoot a seven year old child. Shoot her father dead and condemn her to a life of abject poverty. Wasna Abdullah’s family were already poor. Sadr city is where the very poor people live and unemployment runs at more than 70% for men and higher even for that for widowed women.
In my work I meet families like Wasna’s every day. The people in Sadr city are already in dire straits economically and desperate for money to eat and buy water. For most, even if they can find work it is as badly paid day labourers. To get such work they must gather before dawn at recognised meeting places and as markfromireland wrote on June 28, 2006 in “Looking For Work Is A Dangerous Business” they risk their lives doing so.
So you ask around, by now every town in Iraq has a spot, a particular marketplace, a square, a street corner, where people gather early each morning making themselves available for casual labour.
Perfect!!!!!
That’s the perfect place for a bomb.
Source: “Looking For Work Is A Dangerous Business”
But it’s not just dangerous when they get up to go to work. It’s dangerous to sleep too. In Baghdad at present there isn’t any electricity. Supply is limited to one hour a day and in summer the city gets very hot.
Today the temperature was 43°Celsius – that is 109.4° Fahrenheit and the humidity level was 16. At night the ground and the buildings release the fierce heat from the sun and it can be very difficult to sleep. It is nearly midnight in Baghdad as I write this. There is shooting outside - as there is every night – and it is 29°Celsius - or 84.2°Fahrenheit. Tonight when the shooting dies down – if it dies down. I will creep on to the roof of my house with my husband and my children. We will try to sleep and hope not to be hit be a stray bullet when, not if, when, the shooting breaks out again. We will hope not to be hit like Wasna and her father Khalid Abdullah were.
We wouldn’t be the first to die in that way this summer any more than Wasna and her father Khalid. Abdullah were. In that “famous” American raid the other day, the one we wrote about and posted photographs of the other day, the one that the Americans say didn’t take place, two elderly people sleeping on their roof were died because an American helicopter fired missiles and radio Annas has reported others. There will be many more such deaths this summer as there have been every summer since the Americans came and introduced us sand niggers to force.
Wasna and her family may or may not get some compensation. Probably not. Because killing Wasna’s father and shooting here would be classified combat related. If they were to compensated what they can expect is a solatia payment [PDF]
- Solatia Payment
- Token or nominal payment for death, injury, or property damage caused by coalition or U.S. forces during combat. Payment is made in accordance with local custom as an expression of remorse or sympathy toward a victim or his/her family. Payment is not an admission of legal liability or fault.
- Payment Levels In Iraq
- Up to $2,500 for death; up to $1,500 for serious injury; and $200 or more for minor injury.
Wasna’s injury isn’t very serious – she hasn’t lost a limb or an internal organ so at most Wasna’s family could expect to get $2,700 for having their lives wrecked. At most they could expect $2,700 for having even the remotest chance that they could climb out of poverty destroyed by some trigger happy American oaf.
Father And Son
I don’t know very much about this boy. 
Father and son, inside an ambulance
in Al-Mahmudiya both were wounded
in a mortar attack, May 31st, 2007. He’s from Al-Mahmudiya. It’s a bit south of Baghdad — call it 30 Kilometres and we used to call it the “Gateway to Baghdad.”
These day’s of course it’s better known as the place where private Stephen D. Green and four other fine examples of American “civilization” ganged up to rape Abeer Qasim Hamza, after first murdering her mother, her father, and her sister, in her hearing so that they could commit their crime. Then they set fire to the bodies to try cover up their barbarity. Charming people the Americans send over here to keep us sand niggers in our rightful place under the American jackcombat boot. No?
Because it’s so close to Baghdad it’s hotly contested territory between the American invaders the ones with the jackcombat boots and those sandniggers determined to resist the American rape of Irak and expel them. It gets a lot of bombings, ambushes, and mortar attacks.
Yesterday there was a mortar attack. One person was killed. Twenty one people were wounded. They were wounded so badly that they had to be brought to hospital. This boy and his father were among the twenty one people wounded.
Night and day, fathers and daughters, fathers and sons, bombs, bullets, helicopter missiles, not enough food, not enough water, death squads, truly compared to the Americans the time of Saddam was a golden age. As I once heard my Irish friend say to a squad of American soldiers “Well done I hope you’re fucking proud of yourselves.
Nur
Baghdad
Irak
