"Before the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraqi citizen Marwa, 22, and her
family fled their home just south of Baghdad and took refuge with
relatives northeast of the capital. When they returned, they found
that their house had been reduced to rubble by U.S. missiles."

"Both of my parents are gone. It's not worth losing them for
democracy."

------------------------
"Iraqi family endures the loss of both parents, looks for renewal at
the polls"

By Leila Fadel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 8, 2010; A01

BAGHDAD -- Marwa Riyadh put on pink eye shadow to match her silky
scarf. She donned a skirt and put on her best white boots. Then she
and her siblings walked to the polls on Sunday morning from the shabby
three-room home where they live as squatters.

Maybe voting would soften the pain caused by the death of their
parents, bystanders who were killed in separate clashes between U.S.
troops and militants. Maybe it would fade the memories of a sectarian
war that still roils beneath the surface. Maybe it would spur Marwa,
22, to celebrate her birthday again.

Marwa is one of millions of Iraqis who in the past seven years have
endured a foreign occupation, a raging insurgency and ultimately the
polarization of a nation. Sunday was their chance to vote -- to reap
the rewards, however modest, of the sacrifices they were forced to
make.

With heads held high, Marwa and her siblings navigated through lakes
of raw sewage and mounds of garbage piled on unpaved roads. Stepping
carefully, they left the complex where they and thousands of other
displaced families built cinder block and concrete shacks in what was
once an army base.

It was all they could find after their mother's death in 2008, when no
one was left to care for them. They hope the next government will not
force them out.

The day before the vote, they sat on the concrete floor in the starkly
furnished space that doubles as the family's living room and bedroom.

"We hope that it will change our life," Marwa said about Sunday's
vote. "We hope it gets better."

Every day over the past seven years, they have lost pieces of
themselves.

"Both of my parents are gone," Marwa said. "It's not worth losing them
for democracy."

Before the U.S. invasion in 2003, Marwa and her family fled their home
just south of Baghdad and took refuge with relatives northeast of the
capital. When they returned, they found that their house had been
reduced to rubble by U.S. missiles.

Marwa's father, Riyadh Mohammed, began to rebuild. They found shelter
with hundreds of others at another abandoned military base nearby, and
Mohammed did contract work with the U.S. military.

In May 2004, as Mohammed drove home, he was caught in the crossfire
between the U.S. military and insurgents.

The family asked for compensation. They saved the rejection letter,
now worn with time, and their father's green death certificate.

"Cause of Death: U.S. bullets," it reads.

After the seventh day of mourning, the Shiite family fled once again.

They resettled in Sadr City, a Shiite district of Baghdad. Marwa's
mother, Iman Abdul Kareem, started to work. Marwa married, even though
she said her heart belonged to a man she fell in love with in 2003 and
lost to violence in 2006.

On her wedding night, she said, her husband told her he was a fighter
in the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia that then controlled the area. The
group promised protection for Shiite Arabs from Sunni Arab insurgents
during the bloodletting of Iraq's sectarian war. But it grew into a
widely feared militia accused of killing indiscriminately.

Her husband told her about the people he had slain. Marwa left him.

She and her siblings -- there are eight altogether -- tried to move
beyond the death of their father. Every year on Jan. 1, their mother
would put together a party for Marwa's birthday.

In spring 2008, when the Mahdi Army rose up against the U.S. military
and Iraqi security forces, Abdul Kareem was shopping one day in a
market with her son Karar. A stray bullet pierced her head and Karar,
now 13, watched his mother die. There's been no party since.

Abdul Kareem had saved nearly $3,500 for her son Ali. It was enough
for him to furnish a room and propose to a future wife. Instead, the
children used the cash to pay for a funeral and a burial plot next to
their father.

"When our parents died, all of our hope died," Marwa said.

She pulled out a box marked "Defense Personal Items Pack." It was
filled with pictures and keepsakes. She had been given the box as a
gift when her father worked with the United States in the days before
she developed rage toward the American military. It once held a
soldier's soap and shampoo.

"The beautiful days will never return," she said as she sorted through
pictures of her smiling next to her mother and father. "I didn't think
about money or food. No one was displacing other people. Now there is
slaughtering, killing, sectarianism."

Marwa, her one unmarried sister and her sister-in-law rarely leave the
house. They're frightened that someone else will die.

But through their sadness they have found strength. They cobbled
together cash to provide Ali with a furnished room in their squatter
home so he could finally marry. The women gave him their jewelry.

Still, some days they cannot afford food.

On Saturday, Marwa reflected on what has changed since the 2003
invasion. Her family has traded lives and security for some freedoms,
she said. Still, some things have remained constant. "We are what we
used to be," Marwa said. "Poor people -- that's all we are."

On Sunday, they woke up to the booms of back-to-back explosions.
Still, they walked to vote.

At a polling station for displaced citizens, they sorted through voter
rolls for their names. Only 17 of the hundreds who had come to the
site by noon were on the roster, officials there said.

To vote, they would have to return to Sadr City, the eastern Baghdad
slum where their mother was killed. They had no way to get there from
the northwest side of the city and were too afraid to try.

Like thousands of registered people who could not find their names at
polling stations, they would not vote Sunday.

"We're lost," Marwa said when they returned home, defeated. "We're
lost."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/07/AR201...