An Iraqi couple finds love amid the shattered glass
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"I couldn't stand it, so I ran away to our home," says Zainab. "I was scared and shaking. I was expecting another explosion."
Mrs. Methboub feels the weight of this environment and is ready for her daughters to marry, and, hopefully, move to safer locales.
"I love my daughters, but in this situation, the girls should go to their husbands' houses," says Methboub, who has complained in the past that Fatima's refusal to marry was unsustainable. "When I am older and feel weak, I want to be finished with raising my family."
The news isn't all bad for the matriarch. She began working again – after months with no income – as a cook for a well-to-do Iraqi family. Fatima may have found true love at the kitchen window, but her sister Hibba's engagement is not going as smoothly as mother Methboub would like.
The family attended a wedding party adjacent to Zainab's house, and a young man spotted Hibba while she sat outside. The next day, 24-year-old Ahmed, who runs a CD and DVD shop with three brothers in a distant district, sent two of his sisters to serve as matchmakers – to find "a girl with a mole."
"We are looking for a bride," the two told Methboub.
A deal was struck. And the first time Hibba saw Ahmed, the couple exchanged rings. They have met one other time so far, and plan to marry in July, after Hibba finishes high school, and turns 16.
"They are not rich, but they are good boys with good morals," says Methboub, nothing that Ahmed's father is a muezzin, who sings the call to prayer at their local mosque. Methboub herself was married off at the age of 12, so she's not uncomfortable with a young marriage.
But Hibba feels her young life is slipping beyond her control. She tells her family she does not want people to know that she is spoken for, and that the wedding may not happen at all.
"I'm not happy with this engagement," says Hibba, her eyes welling with tears. "I just said 'yes,' I don't know why I said 'yes.' "
"No one forced her to," says her mother, plainly at a loss.
Fatima, who as the oldest daughter left school when she was 14 to help her mother look after the other children, expresses her own private reservations about "some habits" of her fiance, Bashar. And she frequently warns, in keeping with her hard-to-get history, and to rile her mother: "I might change my mind. The marriage contract won't prevent me."
Still, Amal lets slip that for three nights before signing the marriage contract, Fatima was so excited that she could not sleep. "I swear, God hear me, that she is telling the truth," confirms their mother.
Later, Bashar arrives. In his presence, Fatima pulls on a black head scarf and respectfully serves tea and collects the tiny empty glasses. But when the pair pose for a few photographs together, their mutual joy could not be more evident.
The fiery pair joke with each other, laughing often. At one point Fatima grabs Bashar by his jacket, in mock anger; in another moment, he gently wraps his arms around his fiancée, unable to mask his beaming smile.
"We are tired of the situation – there are so many troubles," says Bashar. "It's a suitable time to marry, but the wedding parties are not as big as before. We have to marry, but if we are to live, we must move outside Iraq."
Bashar is likely to go to Dubai for some months later this year, to explore safer options for the couple. One of his partners, in a 2004 laundry project at Abu Ghraib prison, was killed by insurgents in late 2005. Bashar just turned down a small contract to supply gravel to a US base, because the risk was too high.
"I am very happy about my marriage," says Bashar. "But sometimes when you go out onto the street, you forget your happiness..."
