Sunday, October 30, 2005
Iraqi RhetIraq: From Baghdad
Who: Falah & Samira Kubba
Source: Knight-Ridder
Quotes: From News Article dated 10/24/2005;
Samira Kubba: "We do not think about how we live our days in Baghdad these days. We wonder whether we will survive them," she said. "No place outside this house is safe."
"I cannot sleep at night," Falah Kubba said, his eyelids sagging and bruised from rubbing. "In bed, my wife rests on one side, and my new second wife - a pump-action shotgun - stays in my arms on the other side. I am up all night, aiming at the doors every time there is a bump. This is no way to live. It is a way to die."
After the fifth child on their block was kidnapped this summer, he cleared out an old office connected to his house as a play area for neighborhood children. The doors and windows are covered by iron gates, chains and padlocks. A family member with a locked and loaded AK-47 automatic kneels in front of the only entrance. While the children play - the youngest with a collection of push toys, the older ones with bicycles or balls, the teenagers sitting and chatting on the steps to the second floor - Falah keeps his second wife at hand.
The Kubbas lives in Mansur, an area of large homes with marble entryways and exterior walls decorated with statues.
[Note: A quote from a Pentagon Report issued 10/13/2005; Three-quarters in Baghdad and eight out of ten Iraqis in Mosul say they do not feel safe in their neighborhood and region.]
Source: Knight-Ridder
Quotes: From News Article dated 10/24/2005;
Samira Kubba: "We do not think about how we live our days in Baghdad these days. We wonder whether we will survive them," she said. "No place outside this house is safe."
"I cannot sleep at night," Falah Kubba said, his eyelids sagging and bruised from rubbing. "In bed, my wife rests on one side, and my new second wife - a pump-action shotgun - stays in my arms on the other side. I am up all night, aiming at the doors every time there is a bump. This is no way to live. It is a way to die."
After the fifth child on their block was kidnapped this summer, he cleared out an old office connected to his house as a play area for neighborhood children. The doors and windows are covered by iron gates, chains and padlocks. A family member with a locked and loaded AK-47 automatic kneels in front of the only entrance. While the children play - the youngest with a collection of push toys, the older ones with bicycles or balls, the teenagers sitting and chatting on the steps to the second floor - Falah keeps his second wife at hand.
The Kubbas lives in Mansur, an area of large homes with marble entryways and exterior walls decorated with statues.
[Note: A quote from a Pentagon Report issued 10/13/2005; Three-quarters in Baghdad and eight out of ten Iraqis in Mosul say they do not feel safe in their neighborhood and region.]
