Word: khardeh
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...into the distance in the midday haze, vegetable farmer Shadat Dafeh Hamed mumbles, "I can't see them, but I know they are there." Hamed, 70, lives closer to the enemy than any other Iraqi. His mud-and-concrete house is scarcely 500 yards from the ridge; his village, Khardeh (pop. 280), adjoins the border post of Safwan, where Iraq signed the cease-fire agreement to end the Gulf War. Hamed is head of a family of 32, including two wives, 11 sons and 12 grandchildren. His memories of 1991 are a bit muddled, but he remembers how one morning...
...ordered out all the adult males and trucked them to a prison camp in Saudi Arabia, he says. Hamed was spared because of his age, and his sons escaped the punishment because they were all away, in Basra. Hamed says it was five months before the young men of Khardeh returned. In the meantime, the womenfolk and old men had to tend the crops and collect the harvest. "It was a terrible, terrible time," Hamed says, squatting on a carpet in his furnitureless living room. "It's because we know what war is like that we don't want...
...American G.I.s return to Khardeh, they will again find it undefended: the village is in a U.N.-mandated demilitarized zone, and the nearest armed Iraqi is six miles away. "We may have to defend ourselves," Hamed says, "like the Palestinians, using rocks." But this attempt at a brave face is betrayed by a weak smile and a resigned shrug. "God willing, our army may be able to get here quickly and save us," he says, without conviction. Does he feel safe in Khardeh? "Our safety," he says, "is in God's hands...
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