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Nafret sighs. Quarrels are to be expected among families cooped up so much of every day, unable to relieve the tension with a night out at a restaurant or by visiting friends. The children, she says, fight constantly as well because she must say no to almost everything they ask. "They don't behave normally anymore," says Nafret. "All they can do is watch Spacetoon." She kept her son home from kindergarten last year because she was worried about his safety. He missed nothing, her husband interjects, because everything about the school "is very bad." The only entertainment for kids and adults is endless television. In most houses, small private generators keep the TVs going through the daily blackouts. With school out and summer heat above 110F every day, young people stay up to watch TV in the cool of the night and then sleep till noon. Many Baghdad kids, notes the doctor, have acquired a pasty yellow pallor. Some are getting fat from lack of exercise. His son, an engineer who refused to work for Saddam and now cannot find a job, is hugely obese from years of idleness. The doctor chafes that he cannot use the Internet to refresh his medical knowledge. After years of being cut off from outside contact under Saddam, he had hoped that by now he could tap into foreign research. But the phone lines are too weak to connect to the Web. "I was so hopeful," he says, "and I still find myself contained in a box."
Baghdadis have learned to program their lives around the vagaries of electric power. When it's on, they rush to do everything that requires it, from running water pumps to powering the kids' PlayStation. In Mansour the Radhys have electricity four or five hours a day, no more than during last summer despite repeated promises of improvement. And they never know which four hours it will be, so the women can find themselves doing laundry at dawn or filling water cisterns at midnight. A male in the family has to go out every day for ice to keep food from spoiling.
