Word: sheherezade
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2007-2007
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When the U.S. invaded Iraq four years ago, Yasser Obaid Hussein's life was full of peril - but his mind was filled with hope. Night after night, his modest Baghdad apartment was shaken by the U.S. "shock and awe" bombing campaign. His pregnant wife Sheherezad was worried that a cruise missile might crash through the window. To calm her and their three children, Yasser tried to stay positive. "If we survive the bombs," he recalls saying, "we will have a wonderful new life...
Saddam's fall brought joy to most Iraqis, but Yasser had additional reasons to celebrate. A few days after the regime's fall, Sheherezad gave birth to twin girls: Tabarek and Aya. There were complications. The babies were premature, and Tabarek was weak. Much of the pediatric hospital's life-support equipment was lost to the looting mobs that rampaged through Baghdad after the collapse of the old regime, so doctors had to rely on one old, malfunctioning incubator. Tabarek later developed learning difficulties that, her doctors believe, resulted in part from poor postnatal attention...
...they tried to escape one nightmare, they confronted another. Shehere-zad had two children from an earlier marriage - Liliyan, 16, and Raed, 15 - and while Yasser had raised them as his own, their natural father refused to allow them to leave the country. This left Sheherezad with a terrible choice. Leaving Iraq could mean never seeing two of her kids again, but staying would gravely endanger the three others. She and Yasser decided to leave without the teenagers. Yasser had to sit down with the younger children and have the conversation he had hoped to avoid until they became adults...
| 1 |