Esra, 9, watches cartoons in her Baghdad home March 8 while her father and brother joke with American soldiers. An insurgent mortar attack targeted at American soldiers blew off Esra's left leg and killed her 13-year-old sister. (James Warden / S&S)
BAGHDAD - Toma is Mohammad Hassan’s home.
Hassan has been living in the Baghdad neighborhood for 55 years. He was here during Saddam’s rule. He was here when the Americans came five years ago.
And he was here when an insurgent mortar targeted at the Americans landed next to his two daughters instead.
The attack happened the first festival day after Ramadan — about six months ago. Hassan heard the explosion from his home. He heard the crowds rushing to the blacksmith’s shop where his daughters had been playing. When he arrived, he found his 13-year-old daughter dead and his 9-year-old daughter with wounds that would cause her to lose part of her left leg.
Like the Toma neighborhood itself, Hassan’s family was broken.
Hassan is an electrical engineer.
Whatever Iraq’s fortunes, he always had work, unlike many in his neighborhood. Not that the work necessarily paid well. The $100 a month that the family spends on rent eats up a large part of Hassan’s salary.
“I’m not a rich man,” he said. “I’m a poor guy.”
But steady work only means so much in a nation at war. Toma residents talk in detail about how hard the past five years have been on them: shootings, killings, bombs.
But it’s not his neighbors, Hassan explains. “Bad guys,” Hassan calls the attackers. “Strangers. Al-Qaida.”
But Hassan stayed in Toma through it all. He even moved from his family’s home to his own place 18 months ago. Fleeing just wasn’t an option:
“It’s our muahalla [neighborhood],” he said.
They would be there when this broken neighborhood started healing.
Esra, the younger daughter, remembers an American soldier picking her up after the mortar blew off part of her leg.
The soldiers stayed with her as she recovered. And now that she’s stronger, a soldier will be helping Esra with the physical therapy she needs to walk again.
Hussan welcomes the Americans into his home now. They walk in as guests and greet Hassan and his 16-year-old son cheek-to-cheek in the Iraqi fashion.
These same Americans are helping Toma pick itself up. They stood up a local volunteer security force to guard against attacks. They built walls to restrict access to the area. They met with people like Hassan and got to know them.
The attacks have since dropped off. Toma is still lacking many services, but Hassan doesn’t complain.
His broken neighborhood, at last, is healing.
Esra spends her days at home now.
She does her schoolwork there and in her spare time watches the American cartoons she loves — especially “Tom and Jerry.” Often she and her brother will coax their dad into watching the children’s shows with them. He concedes he’s not always good at telling them no.
Esra has decided she wants to be a doctor when she grows up. Her explanation is simple, really: She’s known what it’s like to be broken.
Now she plans to do what she can to heal her neighbors.
