Living With The Fear

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Fear has crept into the family's very blood, says Dr. Radhy. "We can't eat well, we can't sleep well," he says. "We don't even want to work." Almost every member of the family is suffering from chronic depression, unable even to imagine how things might improve. "The young cannot think of tomorrow because they see only a dark tunnel," he says. Every night Ferial says she prays to God for a better future. "I just keep waiting," she whispers. Her daughter Nafret, 38, puts an arm around her shoulders. "If we don't have any hope," Nafret says, "how can we be human?"

Among all the potential dangers, the most frightening is the threat of kidnapping (see following story). While Western TV concentrates on the few foreign hostages, hundreds of Iraqis have been taken captive, usually for money, and some have been killed when their families could not meet the ransom demands. A neighbor's 9-year-old son was playing outdoors a few weeks ago when a man in a minibus stopped, got out and asked the boy for help restarting the vehicle. The youngster agreed and got into the front seat when the man asked him to push the starter. Before he could do so, an observant neighbor ran in front of the van shouting to the boy "Out!" As the boy fled, the driver jumped back into the car and sped away. "We didn't know if it was a kidnapping or a car bomb," says the doctor. "But that's the kind of danger we face every day." He knows two men whose sons were kidnapped and released after payment of large ransoms. Both families immediately left the country.

The lack of security is driving the country's best and brightest to leave, or at least send their children away. It's a particularly cruel option for Iraqis used to living together in extended clans. The doctor has two married daughters living abroad, and Nafret's dour husband Firas, 40, says his family would leave too if they could afford to. The couple and their two children share the home with Nafret's family. Firas can see no way out of Iraq's current misery. "Everything is bad," says Firas. "Very bad." He and his father-in-law squabble over whom to blame. "Real victory is raising suffering people up. That's what Bush promised," says the doctor. No, replies Firas, "he said only freedom and democracy. We have freedom and democracy, and we're worse off." But Firas insists today's troubles are the toxic legacy of Saddam. "After 40 years of damage by Saddam," he says, "Iraqis don't know how to use freedom." The doctor retorts, "If you keep blaming Saddam, we will not go forward." Radhy does not lash out at the U.S. the way many Iraqis do, but he is troubled by the occupation's failure to bring much more than hopeful notions to Iraq. "We keep asking ourselves," he says, "how a country as great as America, after one year, can't keep electricity running, can't keep us safe, can't bring us clean water. These questions need explanations."