Toy guns, a burned taxi, and daily life in Baghdad

Daughter Zainab, 17, recently married Ali, a former Iraqi soldier who joined the nascent police force - the institution of the new Iraq most heavily targeted by insurgents. Despite several threats, he kept with the force. But when a fellow cop's wife was shot dead days after that policeman ignored a death threat, Ali took seriously the next threat he received and left his job immediately. Zainab, who now lives with Ali, no longer goes to high school for fear that she could be killed or kidnapped.

"The police chief told him: 'If we say we can protect you, we would be lying,' " says Methboub, noting that six or seven of Ali's associates have been assassinated. He continues with security work, but his new job may be even more dangerous.

"What else can he do?" laments Methboub. "Where can he get money?" Lack of money is again plaguing the family, whose furnishings appear today more Spartan than at any point in the last year - and not unlike their prewar situation, when they sold furniture to pay school fees.

Son Mohamed, 20 - convicted of stealing cars before the war and a one-time Abu Ghraib inmate - finally landed work as a taxi driver. But after just a month on the job, the car he was using burned when a horse cart full of gasoline cans collided with a minibus carrying bank staff. The grey carcass of Mohamed's taxi was pushed to a trash heap by the side of the Abu Nuwas road - a $1,500 hole in the pocket of a family that worries about the slightest rise in the price of bread and tomatoes.

"The police are keeping the horse," says Methboub. "We are trying to convince them to give it to us, so we can sell it."

Suddenly a crackle surges through the room and Methboub exclaims: "Electricity!" Hibba reaches for the light switch, and twin sister Duha turns on the television and surfs between satellite channels.

Amal retrieves a poem from the bedroom called "Identity of the Iraqi" that she wrote for school, which portrays a cynicism that didn't exist when Amal returned from a visit to South Korea after the war, funded by Monitor readers' donations.

"The Iraqi is a despised living creature, abused in the media and scatterbrained, [poor] and oppressed by government," she reads, giggling shyly. Her Iraqi is emotionally devastated, "frozen by cold in winter," tantalized by a brief hope that gas and propane are available.

"He is psychologically insane," Amal concludes, "and daily suffers catastrophe." The literary reverie is broken by the sound of Mahmoud and friend Mortada, playing war in the hallway with their toy guns. Plastic pellets bounce off the TV and the walls, and roll across the carpet.

"Now, get out from my house!" shouts Methboub to the boys, in a useless bid to quiet them.

"One day, all the children started to play with marbles; then it was soccer," philosophizes Amal. "Now is the day of the guns."

"I hate them - we don't have money to buy such things," says Methboub, noting that Mahmoud bought his fake assault rifles with his own money, given for the religious holiday of Eid.

"When school starts," the mother vows, "I will break them."

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