Iraq's wounded: on their own

The biggest break for Fouad Musa, who lost his right arm in a bombing in Baghdad five months ago, came two weeks ago when he got back his job as a cook in a restaurant at half his previous salary.

"I could not believe it when I got my job back. Knocking on the doors of government offices has gotten me nowhere, just empty promises," says Mr. Musa, speaking in the living room of his tiny Sadr City apartment, a giant poster of three revered Shiite imams adorning the pink and white walls.

He is surrounded by his three boys, Ahmed, Mohammed, and Laith, who sit shyly in their finest clothes, listening to every word.

For tens of thousands of Iraqis like Musa, who have been severely wounded or disabled in the war, the standard government response is, "You're lucky to be alive." In a country where the government is too dysfunctional and overwhelmed to meet their needs, and help from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is increasingly out of reach because of security concerns, many Iraqis find salvation and hope only when they take matters into their own hands.

In 2006, considered the most violent year since the US-led invasion four years ago, 36,685 Iraqis were wounded in acts of violence throughout the country, according to estimates by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq. The government does not release official statistics for the dead and wounded, but a source at the Interior Ministry put that figure at 15,143.

Short-order cook at 'Happy' diner

Musa's life was turned upside down in early November when he was returning to Sadr City with his best friend and neighbor, Saeed Rasoul, from work at the Al-Saeed (Happy) restaurant in the Karrada district.

The men had been making the same daily journey for nine years, leaving at dawn and returning at noon in a taxi. Musa prepared short orders for breakfast and then cooked lunch while Mr. Rasoul manned a stand outside selling gaimar, a popular dish of fresh cream topped with honey or jam.

Musa was paid 15,000 dinars ($12) a day and cooked at weddings and funerals for additional income. Last year, he started getting a monthly pension of 98,000 dinars ($77) from the Ministry of Transport, where he had been employed for years as a public bus driver before he was fired in 1997 for political reasons, he says..

The extra cash enabled him to move out of his parents' home and rent out his own place in the Habibiya Apartments, a housing project built in the 1980s for the families of soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq war. He bought a new refrigerator, stove, and living room set on an installment plan.

"I wanted to turn the place into our own little kingdom," he says with a hint of irony in his voice.

Musa, a stocky man in his 40s with a neatly trimmed beard and dressed in a red-and-blue track suit, wells up when he recalls the bombing incident.

The taxi he and Rasoul were riding in was the first to leave a traffic light when it hit a roadside bomb most likely planted for the police behind them.

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