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Living life under siege

WASHINGTON POST, Baghdad
The melancholy wail sailed across the city and pierced the walls of the middle-class Baghdad home. The sleepless family listened in silence until the mother, her face lined with fear and pain, shook her head. "Siren," she whispered.
At that, her daughter jumped up and threw open the door.
She ran to open the windows next, fearful the blast would shatter them. The son sprinted outside, hoping to spot a low-flying cruise missile that would send the family huddling, yet again, in a hallway.
And they waited for the bombs. "It's terrible," the mother said, as the minutes passed.
"We really suffer, and I don't know why we should live like this."
Her daughter nodded. "I get so scared, I shake," she said.
"I'm afraid the house is going to collapse on my head."
While the outside world has grown accustomed to detached images of fire and fury over Baghdad, and the government here boasts of victory over the invaders, this rattled family of five in the middle-class neighbourhood of Jihad has watched war turn life
upside down. Their world now is isolation, dread and a bitter sense that they do not deserve their fate.
"We're in a dark, dark tunnel, and we don't see the light at the end of it," the daughter-in-law said.
The family met privately with a journalist, without the presence of a requisite government escort and with a promise that their identities would not be published. Over a lunch of Iraqi dishes -- pickled mango, kibbe, kufta and chicken cooked with rice, peanuts and raisins -- they spoke with unusual candor about politics and war. At times brashly, they discussed subjects that are usually hinted at, as if Baghdad were already in limbo between its past and its future.
"Iraq is ready for change," the father said. "The people want it; they want more freedom."
But family members expressed anger at the US government, which has promised to liberate them. They criticized President Saddam Hussein and his dictatorial rule, but insisted that pride and patriotism prevent them from putting their destiny in the hands of a foreign power.
They spoke most fervently of a longing for routine the most mundane rituals of going to work,
sharing dinner on a quiet night and sleeping at a set hour. They predicted little of that stability ahead. From a bloody battle for the capital, to lawlessness, to the humiliation of an occupation, they braced for a future that hardly anyone in Baghdad dares predict.
"Everything is turned around," the daughter-in-law said.
For weeks, the daughter-in-law helped prepare the house for war. She and her husband hauled a mattress downstairs, setting up their bedroom in the dining room. The family rearranged furniture so that they could sprint to open the windows. Sofas and tables were cloaked in dust cloths to protect them from flying glass and debris. Two rifles and bags of ammunition were propped against the wall.
Scattered around the two-story house were supplies to help them withstand a siege. Two tanks were filled with kerosene for cooking in case the electricity went out. The mother filled every pan, kettle and thermos with water, in case the pumps stopped working. Flour, sugar, rice, beans, powdered milk, biscuits, jam, cheese, macaroni, wheat, rice, flour and cereal filled bag after bag.
"These will last three months,"
the son said, surveying the stockpile.
His wife interrupted to disagree. One month, no more. "The men in our family have very big appetites," she said.
It was a rare moment of levity in a city with little joy.
The family members gazed out the window at a sky shrouded in black smoke from fires lit by Iraqi forces to conceal targets from US strikes. The oil pits burned for a second day, turning a sunny, cloudless Baghdad sky an eerie gauze. In vain, the family hoped the smoke would limit the air assault.
"They were powerful, really powerful," the mother said.
"They came one after another."
Baghdad is a city that takes pride in its toughness. Residents are fond of listing the challenges history has thrown before them. The men in the family sounded a similar theme.
"When somebody comes to attack Iraq, we stand up for Iraq.
That doesn't mean we love Saddam Hussein, but there are priorities."
A friend of the family interrupted. "Bombing for peace?" he asked, shaking his head.