Free Children of War by Deborah Ellis Page A

car bomb or some
     other kind of bomb. Does it matter?
    When we had to leave Iraq, I left so many of my things behind. The thing I
     miss most is my computer, and of course my friends and uncles and aunts. I loved playing
     computer games. My favorite is Tomb Raider. We had to leave all that behind, and bring
     just a few clothes.
    My father is a very brave man. He has moved us around to keep us safe. We
     moved several times in Baghdad, then to Aleppo, then to Damascus, and now we are
     here.
    My father and his family are from Fallujah. He was there when we were in
     Damascus. He’s a writer, and he writes about Iraq for newspapers and magazines.
     He’s been on Al Jazeera television, shouting about what is going on.
    He had a contracting business for twenty years, working with the Japanese
     and other nations. He had a plastic bag factory, a weaving factory. He did many
     important things, even worked with the UNHCR. He had to sell one factory. It was worth
     half a million dollars and he had to sell it for $6,000, because our family was starving
     because of the war. Someone now will get rich from our misfortune. The building alone
     was worth a lot of money, but people said, “Either you will sell it to us at this
     cheap price or we will blow it up.” Maybe they had a car bomb. I don’t
     know.
    Then the Americans blew up my grandfather’s housein Fallujah. It was a big, good house, and they sent seventeen missiles into it. It
     still didn’t come down, so they blew the rest of it up with TNT.
    When fighting started in Fallujah, my father and his friends organized a
     clinic to take care of wounded people. They even had an ambulance. It wasn’t a
     secret ambulance. It was a very clear ambulance, perfectly marked so everyone would know
     what it was. It got shot up and destroyed.
    They used white phosphorus bombs that set things on fire and make them
     keep on burning.
    That didn’t stop him. He saved a lot of families. There were so many
     bodies in the streets. He got people to a safer place and made a refugee camp for
     them.
    He tried to make an agreement between the resistance and the American
     army, to stop the fighting. He told the Americans he could get people to stop carrying
     weapons in the streets and to obey local authorities, if the Americans would agree to
     stop all the missiles and bombs. He thought he had everyone agreeing, but the next day,
     the Americans dropped a one-thousand-pound bomb on the city.
    So everybody became mad at my father after that. They blamed him for
     trusting the Americans. He says now that it would be better for him and his
     family’s reputation if he had fought and been killed instead of trying to
     negotiate with monsters. He means monsters on both sides, but I don’t think he
     really wishes he had picked up a gun. What good would it do us or anyone if he had
     died?
    Now he writes and helps an American group called NoMore Victims. They bring children out of Iraq who have been hurt by American
     soldiers. They find towns in America who will take the children and pay for surgery. I
     get to meet the children, and the American man, Cole, who helps them. He often stays
     with us.
    I know there can be good people and bad people in every country. All those
     people in America who help with No More Victims. They don’t have to do that. They
     could be like their government and say, “It’s just an Iraqi child. It
     doesn’t matter.” But they don’t. They try to fix those mistakes.
     I’m glad there are people like that.
    I wish Iraq had no oil. Then people would leave us alone.
    I don’t know what will happen in the future. So many people have
     left the country. As long as the American soldiers are there, things will be bad, and
     people will be killed. I worry that too many people will become used to all this killing
     and forget that there is a better way to do things.
    Jordan is okay, but I don’t