Baghdad diary.

March 18

This afternoon, I went to see Karima, who has eight children. Karima was away when I first got there. The eleven-year-old twins, Duha and Hibbe, told me that tonight or tomorrow Bush would hit Iraq. Then Karima arrived, and she began to cry as she told us that all but two of her new neighbors had packed up provisions and left the city. Now she has no one to rely on. Her best option, once bombing begins, she says, is to grab blankets, water, and some food and move the family to the first floor of a building under construction, near the river.

"Near the river?" I asked Mohammed, her second-oldest son. "Is that wise?" I worry that they'll be harmed or killed by bombs aimed at likely targets on the other side of the river. "Yes," said Mohammed somberly. "Better than here."

Karima's eldest son, Ali, is in the military. He has been on a brief vacation and now must return to Mosul, where he is stationed.

Martin Edwards, who recently joined our peace team, quickly recognized that our emergency preparations hadn't included procuring equipment to dig ourselves or others out of rubble. Setting out on a shopping expedition, Martin reached a side street lined with hardware stores. The shopkeepers were shutting down and had already moved many of their wares into storage areas, lest looting break out if war begins. But within minutes, several merchants dispatched runners to fetch items they thought Martin would need. After loading him up with crowbars, pliers, a shovel, plastic safety construction helmets, and buckets, they insisted, "No, Mister, no need to pay money." He couldn't convince them to accept a single dinar for their help.

I felt a bit guilty for not setting my alarm to wake up and hear President Bush's speech, but I knew that Neville Watson, a barrister and minister from Perth, Australia, would tune in. Neville awakens for daily meditation at 3:30 a.m. every morning. Last night, he received twelve phone calls from Australian news agencies, eager to know what he thought about the President's speech. Neville nearly always chooses his words carefully, and he has a distinguished yet engaging way of expressing himself. But his response to the President's speech was summed up in one little phrase. After listening to a few minutes of predictable cliches, he merely groaned, "Ah, shut up."

A jovial hotel worker who heard a summary of the speech had a similarly laconic response. "Mr. Bush, shit," he muttered.

March 19

What can we possibly say to the children who will suffer in the days and nights ahead? What can you say to a child who is traumatized, or maimed, or orphaned, or dying? Perhaps only the words we've murmured over and over at the bedsides of children dying from sanctions in Iraqi hospitals: "I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.

One of my fondest childhood memories is that of holding my baby brother, Jerry, and pointing his gaze toward a beautiful sunset. I wanted him to feel the awe I felt. And I remember, as a child, feeling great awe when genuflecting before the candle-lit altar in our neighborhood church. Now the world's greatest killing machine perversely appropriates sacred awe as a moniker for the infliction of terror.

It's a sad and tragic irony that on the eve of warfare we can presume that today may be the last day of the cruel, perverse sanctions regime. We had to starve you so that we could stop bombing you. Now we'll bomb you so that we can stop starving you. Was that the logic of nearly thirteen years of an abysmally failed policy?

But the global peace movement gives me hope. And lines from Leonard Cohen's song "Anthem" keep running through my head: "Ring the bell that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in."

March 20, Day One of the War

Here in Baghdad, along the Tigris River, a gentle dawn and the sweetest of birdsongs were more precious than ever following a horrific night of bombardment.

With the calm morning came relief after learning that the families of friends who work at the hotel are "OK." Abu Hassan and Riyadh live in the impoverished Saddam City section of Baghdad. Hassan, a pro at charades, pantomimed what happened in his home. He pointed to the windows in my room, held up five fingers, touched the floor, and then affirmed, "Finished." Five windows had shattered. Then he swung his arms around to imitate a ceiling fan, also "finished." It had crashed to the floor. Next he crouched down with his hands on his head to indicate what the children had done. Riyadh told us that his brother and father were "finished" in the 1991 Gulf War, and he wiped imaginary tears from his eyes to explain that his mother had wept all through this first night of bombing.

At 8:00 p.m. last evening, I sat on a second-floor balcony of our hotel, watching tracer lights flash across the sky. The first round of bombing seemed distant, and Neville decided to take a nap, but not before joking that bombing would begin forty-five minutes after he lay down. He was unfortunately right. "You'll just have to stay awake now, Neville," said Ed. Our levity was broken by thundering explosions that repeatedly shook our hotel building.

I darted to my room, swiftly poured a cup of coffee, pocketed a handful of cotton swabs, grabbed my journal and a few books, and then hurried down two flights of stairs to join other hotel residents and staff in the ground floor "tearoom."

I saw Marwan, age twelve, and his nine-year-old sister, Dima, surveying the adults' faces. Thankfully, we were managing to appear calm, and Marwan and Dima followed suit.

A Christian woman made the sign of the cross while a Muslim man unrolled his prayer mat.

We settled in to endure a long night of bludgeoning attacks Baghdad. The cotton swabs were handy for playing pick-up sticks and making a tic-tac-toe grid.

My colleague Cathy Breen produced a few lumps of clay, which we made into markers. Mohammed, our friendly cab driver, picked up a tiny pink lump and popped it in his mouth, expecting it to be a gumdrop. Did he do it on purpose? Anyway, it was a clever distraction that sent the children into gales of laughter. Tiny Zainab and Maladh, daughters of the hotel night manager, let me rock them to sleep.

Now, as I write, I can hear explosions in the distance. Clouds of smoke are billowing in every direction. We've heard that last night's casualty list includes 207 wounded, four of whom died in hospitals. News reports say that 1,000 cruise missiles were launched last night, and the U.S. may be planning to release many more tonight. On a beautiful spring day, welcome to hell.

March 21

The bombings last night were intense for about thirty minutes beginning at 9:10 p.m. But, compared to what people were bracing themselves for, which was the "Shock and Awe" saturation bombing, these attacks have seemed limited. We're getting rumors and some hard news, mostly from journalists who tell us what seems to be going on.

Today I had a chance to go and visit families in three different neighborhoods, which were fairly calm. There is still not much in the way of a military presence on the streets other than sandbags piled up at various intersections.

I visited the family of a friend who left for Amman a few weeks ago. There is no man in the house, and the women are full of energy. They welcomed us warmly and didn't want us to go.

The grandmother clung to me, "Please, please stay and spend the night here with us," she said. But I would be no protection. They are quite close to what I believe is a military storage depot.

March 22

I try to think of what people in Chicago would be doing if they had been bombed as the people in Baghdad have been last night and the previous morning. Would they carry on with their everyday activities as people here do? In part, people here have become inured to warfare, and in part, their attitude reflects the amazing courage and dignity of the population here.

I love Chicago; I miss it. I think it's a city that's full of a terrific diversity of people. But if Chicago were under attack--and people known to be from the attacking country were in Chicago--it's hard for me to imagine that they'd be sitting in a hotel tearoom together.

March 23

Amal Shamuri is Karima's fifth child. Irrepressible and precocious, Amal joked last January that she wouldn't mind a war if George Bush would only bomb her school.

Today was a different story. Today, Amal celebrated her thirteenth birthday, even as black smoke surrounded the city and darkened the sky. Her family and friends gathered with members of the Iraq Peace Team in a small garden near the Tigris River to mark the occasion. We blew balloons and soap bubbles, strung party streamers, played tag, and ate barbecued chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs, and chocolate cake. True to form, the kids ate the cake first, before serving the rest of the meal to the adults present.

Cruise missiles exploding to the south and east occasionally interrupted the party, one powerful enough to rattle tableware and party-goers alike. The explosions temporarily silenced the festivities, but within moments the garden once again erupted into laughter. Boisterous childhood games resumed beneath rising plumes of air-borne debris and smoke in the distance.

Lisa Ndejuru, age thirty-two, one of our colleagues from Montreal, quietly remarked, "What a day to be thirteen."

Karima sat silently to one side, watching her kids play. Her husband died in a car accident eight years ago, leaving her to raise their eight children by herself. To her credit, none of them beg in the streets, and all except the oldest remain in school. Amal dreams of becoming a lawyer one day.

When asked what she wanted for her birthday, Amal--whose name means "hope" in Arabic--smiled and replied, "All I want is peace."

Kathy Kelly is the founder of Voices in the Wilderness, a human rights group based in Chicago. She also helped organize the Iraq Peace Team which is serving as a witness to Bush's war. For more information, contact [e-mail]. call [phone], or visit www.iraqpeaceteam.org or www.vitw.org.