by George Capaccio

It was the night before Christmas and my first time in the home of Um Haidar. Her name in Arabic means Mother of Haidar. She is not like anybody I have met in Iraq. When she enters a room, she is all there is to see. Her beauty is strength drawn from the deepest well on earth. The lines of her face travel as far as the most distant stars and there they conceive of heaven. But here, among us, her life is sorrowful. She bears her grief with the dignity of women who have carried water long distances on their head.

A few years ago an American missile destroyed the homes on her street, wounded many of her neighbors, and killed her little boy. She is not afraid to talk about that time and how she found his body and carried him inside and how he never rose from the dead to finish the game he’d been playing. After his death, she took his name, Haidar.