Ordinary Iraqis bear brunt of war

Zeinab's sister Nisreen, 4 years old at the time, was uninjured. The day after the blast, she sat in a dirty pink shirt watching the adults pick through the rubble, surrounded by the few things the family had been able to salvage: Coffee pots, rolled-up mattresses, bits of clothing, and cups.

Now Nisreen is an energetic 5-year-old, bounding around the small room that is her house. Her younger sister, Zeinab, is now 4 but looks half that age and seems to have lost the ability to speak, as well as walk, since the explosion, her mother says.

Since the bombing, some of the neighbors have rebuilt their homes, and to everyone's horror, the police station has reopened. They don't see it as a source of security, but rather a fresh target for the insurgents.

The conservative Shiite family calls the people who set off the bomb "terrorists." But they also blame the American forces for not securing the country or giving them help. But most days, politics and religious ideology are far from their minds. Their focus is survival.

The family had hoped before the bomb to raise themselves above the subsistence level by operating a taxi.

"My son worked 10 years in Jordan to collect money for this car," says Jabbar Kathem Hassan, the 80-year-old patriarch of the family while pointing to a crumpled, blackened frame they had planned to use as taxi. "This was all we had and now it's gone."

Zeinab's father points to the room with no heat, electricity or indoor plumbing that opens onto a small, walled-in courtyard. The packed dirt yard serves as bathroom and kitchen, explains Mr. Kathem, a tall, thin man with a deeply lined face. Wet clothes are strung above it. A spigot that is the only water source juts out of the ground near toothbrushes hanging in a faded red basket on the wall.

Some 17 months after the bombing, his son, Hamid Hussein, provides the household's only regular source of income. His teacher's salary was recently doubled to 200,000 dinars a month, about $142. Most of that goes towards their huge hospital debts from that day. "The [extended] family helped us but couldn't pay to treat everyone so some people still have glass in their bodies," says Hamid.

Hamid had squirreled away $1,200 and bought the requisite gold jewelry so he could to marry his fiancée. It was all stolen from the rubble by looters after the blast, he says. His wedding day has been indefinitely postponed.

"I am busy giving my salary to the people who lent us money for operations. Life is expensive," he says, looking down at the floor of his bare cement room. "It's not enough. We only have one meal a day instead of three."

With no outside aid, Kathem knows they must rely on themselves and so he and the other men in the family try to find work as day laborers. Most days they come back empty handed.

"We're waiting for God's help," Kathem says. "I will work doing anything."

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