When the Bombs Hit Home

Early in the war, three generations of women from one Iraqi-American family set up a loose vigil around the TV in their small, crowded Davis apartment.

The television was not large, not obtrusive. It sat in a corner, off to the side of three couches that formed a U along the boundaries of the living room. Like many of us in the past month, the women found the TV an irresistible magnet. They watched for hours at a time, spellbound by the bombings, the fires and the steady progression of the allied forces. But for them, the war was not happening in a foreign country. Through TV, they saw their homeland blown to bits, an experience that many Americans can't comprehend.

After the first days of the bombing, the Arabic television station Al Jazeera, via the Dish network, showed again and again the dramatic images of two dead siblings, so tiny that their bodies shared one stretcher. The little girl's uncovered feet rested along one side of her brother's head.

"These are scenes that CNN and MSNBC, they really don't show," said Geed, a young woman who could not turn away. (She and her family did not want their last name used.)

Graphic images of unnaturally bright blood, deep wounds prodded by gloved fingers, and Iraqi civilians wailing in grief passed across the screen in the evenings, coloring the family members' earliest perceptions of the war and frightening them with examples of what could happen to their close relatives in Baghdad. With phone lines down, the family got no direct news, only these televised images from a land with limited medical care, no electricity and sporadic access to water.

As they watched Iraq's defenses weaken and fall, Geed and her family considered their complex relationship to their homeland, and each reacted differently to the destruction of what he or she had left behind after the Gulf War. One woman was so angry, she rose to protest aggressively for peace. Another sought solace through her faith in Islam. The one member of the family who had tried to avoid the war altogether reluctantly submitted to a surprise interview with the FBI's joint terrorism task force.

Looking through the portal that Al Jazeera offered, each member of the family viewed the future through the eyes of Iraqi citizens.

"Iraqis say there was no victor," said Geed's mother, Rihab, as the fighting subsided. Until the Americans have found or killed Saddam Hussein, Rihab explained, they will not have won the war.

"I really don't know what's going to happen, good or bad," said Geed's brother, Asef. "With Saddam, you knew when to keep your mouth shut, and you knew when to speak. ... Now, I don't know what to think."

At 18, Geed was a passionate, smoky-voiced college student and the family's most active critic of American foreign policy. She sat nearest the television one evening struggling to express her fear and anger and found a dozen different ways to say the same thing: "I'm not too happy about what's going on," she said, her eyes straying repeatedly to the magnet, the television. "Innocent people are dying -- kids and families. ... I mean, this is really getting out of hand. The whole country is getting destroyed. ... Those people are, like, dying. ... It's just making things really, really worse. ... They really need to put an end to this." Eventually, she gave up. "I feel really bad and horrible," she concluded.

To show her pride in her Iraqi heritage, Geed had begun parading a full-sized Iraqi flag around Sacramento during anti-war protests.

Asef also wanted the war to end, but he avoided lingering around the television. The 17-year-old spent most of his time at school, working, hanging out with his friends or playing soccer. When he was at home, Asef could sit right next to the TV and willfully ignore it. It made him angry to watch mainstream American news, he said, and then compare that with Al Jazeera's reports of "what really happens to the people." But in a way, the war affected Asef more personally than it did Geed. He was the one interviewed by the FBI's terrorism task-force agents. For nearly half an hour, he said, he'd tried to assure them that he was not guilty of terrorist activity and that neither he nor his family members knew where Saddam Hussein had built hidden bunkers. It still made Asef uncomfortable to talk about it.