The Eyes of Amal

'Give Us Peace and Safety'

Faith for Amal and her family was not a matter of religious zealotry. It was not even piety, really. It gave their lives cadence. Like the Muslim call to prayer, uttered from minarets five times beginning at dawn, religion ordered the day. It spoke with clarity, offered simplicity and served as a familiar refuge in troubled times. Interspersed in Amal's diary are scenes of her neighbors reading the Koran, its passages usually committed to memory. The twins often recited prayers -- little more than pleas for the fighting to stop -- and similar prayers could be heard throughout the building.

"Dear God, give us peace and safety."

In the intimate pages of her entries, Amal wrote the phrase often.

On television, throughout the war, Amal's family and the rest of Baghdad were subjected to a slew of patriotic songs, footage of goose-stepping soldiers and images of Hussein firing into the air. Although U.S. air power faced little resistance in the capital, the propaganda continued, much to the chagrin of American war planners. Yet in Amal's diary, bravado was in short supply. When the bombs fell, she and her family huddled in the building's dim, dirty stairwell, with neighbors who had momentarily set aside the disputes that arise when too many people are forced together in too little space. People traded rumors, often wild speculation, that terrified Amal's family.

"Our neighbor came over," Amal wrote in one passage. "He said they bombed the Civil Defense Command, only about twenty minutes from us. They bombed again at 10:45 and again and again. I turned on the radio. Reports said America bombed two main palaces on the Tigris at 10:50. I sat in the corridor of the apartment with Um Haider and Um Saif, and we talked about the war. Then at 11:10, the raid ended and my mother said, 'Thank God.' Um Haider said, 'Only 10 minutes and they will come to bomb us again.' "

In the war's early days, life was power cuts, air raid sirens, blasts that shook the shoddily built building, and fear. "I am sitting in the corridor in front of the apartment, beside my mother," wrote Amal on one of the worst nights of bombing. "Now, at 9:25, as we are sitting, explosions are becoming stronger and stronger." The narration picks up later, the writing less shaky. "You listen to the radio, but they don't tell the full truth. It is 11:35. Fatima thinks that whether we are dead or alive, we are still the same."

As the days passed, Amal's family asked again and again when the bombing would end and when it would begin again. Nights were sleepless, and as the war dragged on, the air raid sirens became more disorienting. Had that siren signaled the end or the beginning of an attack? It was becoming hard to keep track. Outside, sandstorms, as fierce as they had ever encountered, cloaked the sun in hues of red, brown and sickly yellow.

"The weather is like heaven's anger on the land and the people," Amal wrote.

'Why Is This War Happening?'

Baghdad's fragile, jury-rigged electrical network was no match for the war, and it gave out daily. For hours at a time, Amal's home would be thrown into darkness. Sometimes, the family would pull out lamps and candles, casting the apartment in a soft glow. Time and again, the power would eventually return, a semblance of the ordinary.

On April 3, though, the lights never came on again; the shadows remained as the war built toward its climax. "We are in darkness, the lights are out and we can't see anything, not even the stairs outside the door. No one can see because of the darkness," Amal wrote. "Oh God, light Iraq with your magnificent light."

The next day, the faucets in the kitchen and bathroom splashed water for a few moments. A cough followed, then a wheeze, before the pipes fell silent.

"We went looking for water and found all the taps were dry," Amal said in an entry that day. "Mother went to make some bread at 3:30 and said, God, even the water is off."