In Iraq, a boy named 'War' turns 6

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In Iraq, a boy named 'War' turns 6

Leila Fadel / MCT

Born on the day of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Harb Zaid will turn six on March 20, 2009. His parents selected the name Harb as it is the Arabic word for "war." | View larger image

By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers


BAGHDAD — Iman Kadhim felt the contractions at 2 a.m. on March 20, 2003. The streets of Baghdad were deserted; people cowered in their homes awaiting the threatened U.S. invasion. But the baby wasn't going to wait.

A neighbor with a car gave Iman and her husband a ride to the hospital from their southern Baghdad neighborhood.

Nothing was easy that night. Kadhim heard the baby's first cry before dawn and held him in her arms. Then they heard the first explosions that heralded the arrival of the U.S. military.

She named him Harb, Arabic for war. His full name, Harb Zaid, translates as Zaid's War.

Neighbors joked that the child named War would only bring damar, or destruction. She worried about him, the boy with a difficult name and an uncertain future.

"I was scared. We didn't know how our life would go forward," she said in her small home in New Baghdad. "We didn't know the future."

War's six years have been scarred by violence — bombings in marketplaces, a foreign occupation, roadside bombs, sectarian killings, massive displacement and flight and a new — and often broken — political system.

On his birthday and the anniversary of the Iraq war, Iman's uncertainty about the future remains that of six years ago. No one knows the future of the nation or War's.

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