Schoolgirls find Iraq less free

By Deborah Horan
Chicago Tribune

DANA SMILLIE / CHICAGO TRIBUNE From left, sisters Mina , 11, Farah, 17, and Mais Sami, 15, spend most of their free time in their Zayouna home in Baghdad. As affluent daughters of a pharmacist, their world was simpler and safer when Saddam Hussein was in power.

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They also rarely venture outside their upscale home in central Baghdad out of fear of explosions and violence.

Most days, the Iraqi schoolgirls say, they can hear gunfire ring out in the distance, and sometimes closer to home. When a bomb detonated in front of the Red Cross headquarters in October, the explosion was so close to Mais Sami's Tigris Middle School that the ninth-grader thought the school grounds were hit.

In April, insurgents aiming for an adjacent Iraqi police station launched a mortar round into the field behind the school, sending Mais and her classmates home for 10 days while school authorities determined whether holding classes in the building was safe.

"We thought it was the al-Mahdi Army," said Mais, a thin girl dressed in faded jeans and a green T-shirt. At 15, she knows all about the black-clad militia loyal to rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that has been battling U.S. troops.

Their teenage world was simpler when Saddam Hussein was in power.

Back then, they said, they hung out with friends at the Pharmacists Club, a swanky place with a swimming pool to which their father, the vice president of Iraq's Pharmacists Union, belonged.

They watched the latest American and French movies on a television station called Shabbab, "Youth" in Arabic, that was run by Saddam's son Odai, who pirated the latest flicks from the United States and Europe and showed them for free.

"Before, we would have fun," said Farah Sami, 17, a dark-haired girl wearing a frilly white top and jeans. "I used to go see my friends. I would even go walking. Now the city is not safe, and I'm afraid."

These days the girls ride in a private taxi their father has hired to take them to school each morning at the exorbitant price here of $25 a month per child. There are no school buses in Iraq — there never were — and taking any taxi on the street is considered unsafe.

Farah doesn't play basketball with her friends anymore; school authorities looking for ways to shorten the school day for safety reasons have canceled all after-school sports, intramural competitions, even painting classes until Baghdad's bombings subside, she said.
 
Mina Sami, 11, no longer rides her pink bicycle around the neighborhood. If friends come over — a rare treat — they play in a front-yard garden hidden from the street by a high wall.

The family's two-story home is stately by Iraqi standards, with brown bricks laid at angles rising from the manicured garden. Inside, red curtains cover 15-foot windows in a formal living room filled with ornate wood furniture and statues of elephants.

Iraq's new freedom — or chaos, depending on your point of view — has imprisoned the girls; going to school has become their only social outlet.

"Now we began to love school," Farah said. "I get bored at home."

For home entertainment, the girls watch American movies such as "Gladiator" — called "The Wrestler" in Arabic and shown on satellite movie channels — as well as Middle Eastern films starring Adel Imam and other famous Egyptian actors.

Sometimes they surf the Internet, still a curiosity to many Iraqis because Saddam limited access to the Web. They send e-mails and chat online with friends, including an American who wanted to know about the U.S. soldiers who patrol Baghdad's streets.

"The tanks and weapons are frightening," Farah said. "When I see the soldiers, I keep still in the car. I'm afraid that if they see me move suddenly they might shoot. But if they are here for the benefit of my country, I want them to stay."