A year later, one Baghdad family rebuilds and returns

The weave of life also has a different quality today. First- and third-graders Ali and Hassan quickly lose interest in a new visitor and step outside into the unfinished courtyard to kick around a partly deflated soccer ball. They laugh and joke with each other, and bring smiles to the rest of the family.

They have not been told the truth about how their mother, Azhar Kamel, died during the second explosion, right under this concrete awning where they now kick the ball around.

Azhar had sent Hassan to the shop for bread, and after the first explosion began to chase after him; the second blast brought down the awning and caught her.

The boys' 11-year-old sister, Roussel, also died that morning, at the top of the back stairs. Their father, Yas, was with her but only broke his leg. Today, he works in an auto-parts shop.

Mother Azhar, as far as the boys understand it, is visiting relatives in Egypt. For most of the past year, they lived at their aunt's house, where they went to a new school with a cousin.

"It helped them forget," says Salaam al-Khafaji, an uncle to the boys, and son to Khudair. He works at the Hamra Hotel's reception desk, but was at home during the blast. His wife was seriously injured; his son Ali was killed as he walked to his job in the Hamra sweet shop. Surveillance video showed Ali virtually at the point of impact when the first truck drove up and exploded its bomb.

"We are just as religious as before," says Salaam, whose family recently moved back into the newly finished house. It was getting too dangerous, because of sectarian killings, to make the daily commute from their temporary apartment. "We pray every day, and fast during Ramadan. We are believers."

But those beliefs have been severely tested. In one way, the family says, it feels safer: After the blast, the Hamra Hotel (which is used primarily by Western media organizations) extended the perimeter blast walls and increased the number of large, sand-filled Hescoe barriers.

But in another way, this family – and all Iraqi families in Baghdad – feel less safe than they did a year ago because the scale of sectarian violence, at the hands of both insurgents and Shiite militia-run death squads, is leaving up to 3,000 dead each month in Iraq. Many of those are murdered in the capital.

It means families such as this one have more to worry about than just whether they will be caught in an explosion.

"When you wake at 8 a.m., all is good and the house is complete. And by 8:15 a.m. the house is destroyed, your family is destroyed, and your shirt is full of blood," says Khafaji tearfully of the shock of a year ago.

He then becomes more philosophical about why his family has been able to turn the sound of bombing into that of building.

"When God created humanity, there was no difference between people," he says, "just those who do good work and believe."

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