After the Fall, Amal Surrenders Her Illusions

Amal's diary was becoming more and more tattered. The writing itself was filled with highs, the glimmers of hope that had passed, and the more enduring lows that always seemed to return.

"God is greatest! Praise to God!" Amal wrote in one entry when occasional electricity flickered through their apartment. "There was rejoicing in the whole building, people saying to each other, 'Electricity is back, thanks be to God.' We slept, feeling happy because of the electricity."

And then, a few pages later: "We are now sitting, waiting for electricity to come back. What happened to the promises?"

In Amal's building, the water remained off for months, so the children took turns lugging buckets from a faucet that still worked in the entryway downstairs, near a pool of black, brackish water. For days at a time, the family had no kerosene for cooking. On the occasions it was available, it would sometimes sell for 20 times its prewar rate. Prices for food skyrocketed: Karima groused that cucumbers had tripled in price since the war's end and tomatoes had more than doubled. The family staved off hunger only by way of monthly food rations that were still distributed to each family. Rent was always two months or more late, and the landlord was stopping by the apartment every few days, angrily demanding money.

The pressure was taking its toll on Karima, a widow who was just 36. Her oldest son, Ali, had survived the war, deserting the army before the conflict ended and making his way to Baghdad. But he was jobless. She looked for work at the city's main hotels -- the Meridien and the Sheraton -- but could not make her way through security. She spoke no English; often the U.S. soldiers manning the entrance spoke no Arabic. Their interpreters dismissed her as more riffraff from the street.

As her family's circumstances spiraled downward, Karima, in desperation, went to the family of her late husband's sister along Abu Nawas Street. Karima needed help -- money for rent and food. After fighting and humiliating Karima, the relatives tried to get U.S. soldiers stationed down the street to arrest her, but the interpreter with the troops was a neighbor of Karima's and sided with her. Karima returned home.

"Why would my aunt do that?" Amal asked. "She is our aunt and we are like her children. But the times have changed. Life has no mercy on anyone in this world. Even the same family won't have mercy on each other. Why? Why? I think of this every day. She is the sister of my father. Why did she do all that? Because of money? She is a teacher and she is in no need, but we are. If my aunt has no compassion to us, who will?"

'What Else Can We Do?'

In Amal's writings, the meaning of liberation was personal. Her mind was flowering, her raw intelligence exercised by her consideration of her country's experience. Amal's hard-won wisdom seemed the quietest of triumphs in the long months after Hussein's fall.

In a society that equated wisdom with age, the once-impressionable girl had begun thinking critically, first about Hussein and then the invasion, the occupation and the ambitions that drove the Americans forward. There was an irony in her awakening: She was free to speak, but it was her liberators whom she criticized with her new candor.

"People are exhausted and conditions are harsh. We are now living on false dreams and in a failed democracy," she wrote. "Satellites were banned in the past, and they are now permitted, but who can buy a satellite? Those who have money can buy, but those who don't can't buy anything. This is democracy."

Well-intentioned U.S. officials would often remark that they were there to throw open the gate to a democratic, pluralistic future, but stressed that the Iraqis themselves would have to walk through it, on their own. Time and again -- often oblivious to history and unmindful of the consequences an occupation inspired -- the Americans were frustrated when Iraqis, battered and beaten down by wars and dictatorship, didn't start to walk through the gate.

But the Americans had to take, or at least share, responsibility for raising the people's expectations in the first place. Iraqis might forget the date, perhaps even the person who spoke the words, but they always remembered the pledge uttered on March 6, 2003, by President Bush when he promised that "the life of the Iraqi citizen is going to dramatically improve."