Iraq goes back to school, but not back to normal
Students trickle in as half of Baghdad's classrooms reopen
It started like any other day. Almost.
"Good morning," says head teacher Amal Majeed with a smile to the dozen 8-year-olds in her small classroom. "Please open your books to Page 1, and tear out that picture. If your mothers do not allow you to tear books make a big X mark - and let's move rapidly along to Lesson 7, on formal greetings in the Arab tradition."
"A salaam aleikum" - may peace be with you - the children chant, pleased to see their teachers, happy to be together, though only 12 of their 140 classmates have returned to school.
And so just like that, the visage of Mr. Hussein - which for the past 20-odd years stared out at students across this country from the first page of every textbook - was unceremoniously done away with at the Marjaayoon Primary School here on Saturday, the first day back since the war began.
But even as unarmed police officers return to work Monday, getting back to normal in the post-Hussein era will take more than removing the man or his image. Electricity and water are still unpredictable, traffic lights are flickering, buildings are smoldering, offices are closed, and looters firing guns into the air abound. But the worst, say residents, is simply the uncertainty.
Roxan Yousif Kamil absentmindedly presses on the gas of her beat-up Chevrolet, almost slamming into the car ahead of her. She grumbles under her breath, caught in a massive traffic jam as she takes her three children to school. Their suburban home is 15 minutes away, but they have been stuck in the car for over an hour, watching as one hapless driver after another tries to direct traffic at the roundabout. Everyone is honking, and tempers rise with the heat.
The first stop is Marjaayoon. It is one of more than 220 schools, half of all those in Baghdad, that are now open. Many remain closed because they have yet to be checked for weapons by US troops, or because they have been bombed, burned, or looted.
Ms. Kamil's son Yousif, dressed up in his finest clothes, is a student in the fourth grade at Marjaayoon. Grinning shyly, he hugs his teacher. He is two hours late, but it makes little difference. Most students did not even know schools were reopening. Perhaps they were not listening to the radio for information, or maybe they are out of town. Some are afraid to go out into the streets, and the rest don't have enough gas to make the drive. That will soon be Kamil's problem she admits, but meanwhile, she has decided her kids will go to school on Thursdays and Saturdays.
As she makes her way to the second stop - her son Mustafa's high school - she passes her former office downtown, now boarded up. She works in the tourism business, organizing visits for Iranians to the holy shiite sites of Iraq. But she has had no groups since December.
"Now, the Iranians will come back," she muses nervously, "but not on tours." Kamil, like many other Sunnis, worries about the country coming under a more extreme Shiite rule, influenced, perhaps, by Iran.
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