Childhood cut short in Baghdad
Many children in Sadr City shoulder responsibilities beyond their age,; some not in their teens yet but earning a living to support their families. School, and a better life, are just a wistful dream.
BAGHDAD — Come to Sadr City and follow the children, the one hauling flour on his donkey, the one collecting garbage on his tractor, the two brothers with bowl haircuts and greasy hands hoisting mufflers and car batteries in the late morning heat.
A lot of kids here can't tell you what 6 x 3 is. They can't read. They have no time to play. They work from dawn until after the moon is high. They are children in size only.
The new school year began recently, but not for Karrar Raad, 12, and his 10-year-old brother, Allawi. They work for car mechanics in adjacent garages that are smaller than a rich lady's closet. Their father is ill and has no job, and the boys have to support eight children and two adults. They earn $2.70 a day, plus tips.
"I'm making a living for my family," said Karrar, a willowy kid with nervous eyes and oil-stained trousers. "I'd like to go to school. I've never been in one. Not a single day. My friends tell me school is very beautiful."
Ali Rashed owns the muffler shop. A big man with nicked hands and seven grown children of his own, he spotted Karrar and Allawi collecting tin cans in the street months ago and offered them jobs. He said boys shouldn't live off tin cans, and, besides, the streets are too dangerous to be picking things up. Cans can be booby-trapped with gunpowder and fuses.
"There are too many poor families and too many children working in Sadr City," Rashed said. "It's better for these boys here than in the streets where they face bombs and explosives. I don't think they will have a good future. They are not educated and their family can't help them. They sometimes don't have anything to eat. How can you have a future if you have nothing to eat?"
What does a boy think when he listens to this? To hear there is nothing better than what he sees right now: blackened walls, mufflers dangling overhead, a hacksaw on a hook, a poster of the Imam Ali the only color in the dim.
The Raad brothers, and tens of thousands of children like them in this poor walled-in Shiite Muslim neighborhood, have been shaped by war, honed by poverty. They are witnesses to sectarian violence, Shiite militias, angry sermons echoing through mosques, Humvees gurgling through streets and pictures of religious leaders and wanted men hovering on billboards. These children may not know grammar and punctuation, but they know what to do when the bullets come, how to take cover, to hide from the kidnappers, the militants and the soldiers.
