The last thing Omar Alshujery remembers seeing when the first US bombs hit Baghdad in 2003 was a “great light.”
“I saw a huge light,” Omar says, “and I yelled, ‘Get cover!’ Then the earth shook.”
Alshujery, then only 12 years old, screamed as the force of the explosion slammed him into the wall.
Seconds later, as the next wave of bombs roared outside the thin plaster walls that cradled Alshujery, his parents, and his five siblings, the power went out, plunging Alshujery’s childhood home into darkness, a darkness that would eventually end. it would swallow his grandfather and his uncles. .
Despite reports, war is not a pretty thing. It is not sterile or photogenic. It is complex and convoluted; it is bloody and chaotic; war is a dirty, ravenous, thousand-toothed beast, and it feasted on both Iraqis and Americans.
Death figures vary. When the Iraq war “ended” on December 18, 2011, the Associated Press estimated 100,600 casualties between March 2003 and April 2009, but a 2007 independent British report put that figure closer to 1.2 million between March 2009 alone. 2003 and August 2007. What neither of the figures explains are the soul-killings suffered by survivors like Alshujery, a survivor of a war between enemies who claimed his family as casualties.
During the early stages of the invasion, Ashuljery watched as the US Army’s Third Division swarmed the streets of Baghdad, the ground shaking under the weight of the onslaught.
“We hear the F-16s and the Humvees,” says Alshujery. “Then my uncles and my grandfather cried because they knew that our country had disappeared, destroyed.”
Baghdad fell into chaos after the invasion. The streets were littered with corpses and the city reeked of rotten meat. Alshujery and the other 6 million residents of Baghdad spent almost seven years without electricity or running water.
“Life was good before the war,” says Omar. “It was peaceful. We had security. We were working, doing business and traveling outside the country. Everything was fine.”
After the invasion, all that changed. The country fell into chaos, with Iraqi civilians caught in the crossfire of US and Iraqi soldiers, thieves and bandits, and Iraqi resistance fighters, also known as “terrorists.”
Suddenly Baghdad, “gift from God,” in translation, was the most dangerous place on earth, and every day was filled with new horrors for Omar and his family.
In 2005, US soldiers broke into his home in the middle of the night and attempted to rob his family at gunpoint. When Omar and his relatives refused to give their money to the soldiers, the Americans arrested his father.
A year later, when Omar was 16, he was kidnapped at gunpoint a second time, this time by Iraqis.
Omar and his uncle, Saeed, were driving through the desert near Anbar, Iraq, when armed men forced their vehicle to stop. After getting out of the car, they were beaten, tied up and thrown into the trunk of a dark green 1993 BMW at a temperature of 104 degrees.
After driving for almost half an hour, the armed men stopped the car and pulled Omar and his uncle out of the trunk. One of the gunmen pointed a gun at Omar’s head and ordered him to lower his head and look at the ground.
“At that moment, I wasn’t afraid,” says Omar. “It was just zero. I accepted it as it is and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to die.’ I didn’t close my eyes. He was thinking, ‘Will the bullet get through or not?’ And, ‘Will I see my blood before I die?'”
Omar and his family finally fled to Syria in 2006 after the kidnapping and murder of his uncles and grandfather.
“We had enough. I saw how my uncle Salem was kidnapped by armed men and my grandfather Taha had been missing for over a year,” says Omar. “After discovering Salam’s body with more than 30 bullet holes, we finally had him. We crossed the border into Syria that night.”
He lived in Syria for nearly two years before the International Organization for Migration helped Omar and his family move to the United States in 2008.
“The war took everything and left us with nothing,” says Omar. “It destroyed our homes, our businesses and our lives.”
Despite all that the war took from Alshujery, the 22-year-old still has his home. Today, Omar shares a modest apartment in Portland with his mother, his father, his five brothers and his sister.
He is studying engineering at Portland Community College, a degree he dreams of using one day when he returns home to Iraq, after the war and occupation, after the violence and bloodshed, when his country can be rebuilt, brick by brick. and life to life.
“I look through the past and I see pain and darkness,” says Omar. “My life was a night with stars and a light that guided me through the darkness. I lost the stars. But I have the light and the stars are in my heart.”