After the Fall, Amal Surrenders Her Illusions

One of those who remembered was young Amal:

"Please, tell us, when are we going to live a life of security and stability? Listen to us, hear us, you people out there, we have cried and shouted. What else can we do?"

Although her entries became less frequent through the year, Amal's writing became clearer, her sentences longer and more complex, her vocabulary more sophisticated. She gained confidence in her ideas as she observed life around her. "They talk about democracy. Where is democracy? Is it that people die of hunger and deprivation and fear? Is that democracy?"

When the damp, sometimes gusty cold of winter arrived, Amal's family sat on mattresses and shabby brown blankets around a kettle of tea, brewed by eldest sister Fatima, and a plate of cheese called Abu Thufira served on a dented metal tray. Pictures of Arabic pop stars lined the walls, along with the usual religious portraits and invocations.

The twins attached stickers of soccer players to their school notebooks. The other children traded copies of leaflets that were circulating in the streets at the time. "An American soldier cries in Baghdad," one of them declared over a picture of an American fighter with his hand held to his eyes. The leaflet was from one of the numerous insurgent groups, and it catalogued the opposition's latest, if fictional, triumphs: three planes and 14 U.S. tanks destroyed on a single day. Another, handed out by the U.S. military, featured a picture of a fighter clad in black with a ski mask, carrying a rocket-propelled grenade. It implored Iraqis "not to permit terrorists or loyalists of the previous regime to take away your new freedom."

Amal's family believed one, not the other. They talked about the fear they had seen in the eyes of U.S. soldiers near their home. They exchanged rumors of desertions in the U.S. military. Conspiracies ran rife.

"All the explosions are their fault," Karima said of the U.S. officials ensconced in the Green Zone. "They are the reasons for the bombing."

"It's apparent," Ali said, as an Egyptian serial, "Alexandria," its volume loud, played on the television. "Only Iraqis die in the explosions. No Americans ever die."

Karima shook her head. "Saddam did not do good things," she said. "He made the people suffer. But there was fear. And with fear, there was security. He was strong."

Ali called civil war a prospect. "It's possible," he said. "It might happen."

Amal interrupted, raising her voice for the first time that day.

"I don't think it will happen," she countered.

Growing ever more confident, Amal, approaching 15, volunteered her own view of the country's confusion. "If I say the Americans are better, someone asks what have the Americans done. What have they done for us? All the Americans have done is bring the tanks," she said. "If I said the time of Saddam was better, they say, what? If he didn't like you, he would cut off your head. He was a tyrant.

"I don't know what to say," she admitted.

A few days later, as she sat near a space heater casting a yellow glow over the room, Amal had thought about the previous conversation.

"People must be optimistic," she said. Sometimes her dark brown eyes were cast to the floor. At moments, though, she looked up, her voice clearer, her ideas more insistent. "There must be hope. Even the Koran says we should be optimistic."

She looked down to the floor again. There was a suggestion of defiance in her words. "If not for my generation," she said, "then the generation that's coming."

Karima sat next to her. She spoke softly, though Amal seemed to hear her. "They're still young," she said, shaking her head. "They don't know what's ahead."

NEXT: Life in Baghdad today