Meet the Issawis. They are from Falluja.
At least, they were.
Once, it was a peaceful city, home to close-knit families, government employees and businessmen, dusty in the summer, cool in winter, unremarkable in many ways with its date palms and fruit tree groves, many mosques and low-rise homes.
“Life was easy and beautiful,” recalls Reema al-Issawi, one of an extended family of at least 40 people – brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents – who lived for generations in the city 40 miles (65km) west of Baghdad.
Locals would sit on the banks of the Habbaniyah lake or lose themselves in the groves and plantations, settled lives for the 300,000-odd people living on the doorstep of one of the Arab world’s great capitals.
“I had many houses to move between, my uncles’ and aunts’ houses; they were built close to each other,” says Reema. “There was not any worry about income or security, and if any problem took place, the sheikhs would meet to sort it out quickly.”
All that changed, as so much does, with war. Despite strong competition, there is perhaps no other Iraqi city that has become as synonymous with the catastrophe of conflict as Falluja.
Since 2004, the Issawis have abandoned their homes not once, but on at least five occasions, during which the enemy was first the Americans, then the Iraqi government and then Islamic State (Isis) before the militants were finally driven from the city this summer.
Issawi men have been shot, killed in air attacks or forcefully disappeared. The women – three generations of them – have become used to the dusty drag with its dangerous checkpoints that leads to Baghdad.
And the children? They have grown up knowing peace to be a fleeting concept that can vanish overnight, along with their home, and the people in it.
“The children are confused and they ask about their dads most of the time,” says Reema. “The game they always play after paying a visit to their dad’s grave is how to stretch your body on the floor like a dead man.”
Now, with locals starting to drift back to their obliterated city, the Issawis (those that are left) are facing a choice: return to ruined houses and risk another frantic exodus further down the road. Or forget their city forever.
1991
Coalition bombs are raining down on the “city of mosques”.
Its proximity to the Iraqi capital means Falluja and its predominantly Sunni population are hit hard as US-led forces slap down Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in the first Gulf war. About 200 civilians are killed when bombs targeted at the city’s bridge over the Euphrates fall on crowded marketplaces.
For Reema at least, there is something to be happy about: she is getting married. And escaping.
Her husband-to-be, Ibrahim, a cousin on her mother’s side, lives in a big house in Baghdad with his family. The distance between the two cities is small, but the change in Reema’s life is great. She leaves behind her home – its clean streets, its generous inhabitants, its shops laden with cheap, locally grown vegetables – for the capital.
Even now, more than 25 years later, she can remember exactly what she loved about Falluja then, and about a life that was once “easy and beautiful” and has now been lost.
“The Euphrates in Falluja shimmers like silver when it is stirred by the wind and fills fishermen’s nets with the most flavoursome fish in Iraq,” she recalls. “The dense groves of Falluja with their narrow paths were full of pomegranates, apples and oranges.
“There was no stranger in Falluja. People knew each other and were proud that there was no poor family in the city, thanks to almsgiving that most were happy to distribute among families of low income,” Reema adds. “Generosity was the stamp of the city. The restaurants were different in Falluja to any other part of Iraq; generous with food and not charging much.
“The locals believed that every newcomer was their guest.”
As 17-year-old Reema moved out of Falluja, she left behind a mother and father, two brothers, five sisters, three uncles, their wives and children, little thinking that many of them would be living together again, this time in much darker circumstances a decade later.
April-Nov 2004
After the US-led invasion in 2003, Baghdad was clearly the prize and Basra the challenge – but Falluja quickly emerged as the thorn in the side.
When US troops killed protesters in Falluja in April 2003, resistance intensified in the city and it rapidly embodied the kind of defiance that American forces wanted to vanquish.
In April 2004, a series of airstrikes sent at least half the city fleeing. Reema’s family was no exception.
More than 20 adults and 10 children fled to her family home in Baghdad, where she lived with Ibrahim and their five (later six) children. It was a large house but still a squeeze for so many people. Beds and blankets came from a nearby mosque. After 25 days a truce was agreed in Falluja and the family went back.
It was only a temporary respite. By November the Americans were back and this time it was brutal. Falluja was becoming a magnet for the resistance, with hundreds of armed fighters hiding among ordinary families. The US military faced its heaviest urban combat since Vietnam. More than 100 coalition troops died and more than 600 were injured.
On this occasion, the Issawis disagreed over whether to leave or not. Many of the women and children left for Amiriyat Falluja about 12 miles to the south. Some uncles and cousins moved to Baghdad. As much as 90% of the population fled before the onslaught.
But Reema’s father, Ali Jassim, and brothers Ziyad and Muneer stayed on. The brothers ran a meat stall in one of Falluja’s markets. They believed they could always dash for the suburbs if things got really bad. Which they did.
More than half of all homes were destroyed or damaged, along with dozens of mosques and schools as a US-led ground and air offensive intensified.
After two weeks, Ziyad and Muneer fled to Amiriyat Falluja to join their wives and children.
But Reema’s father and uncle Sadiq would not move. The Iraqi relief committee found Ali Jassim’s body under rubble at the end of November 2004.
“It has become like a debt that we, people of Falluja, have to pay off – a man or two with every new wave of violence,” says Reema. “My father and uncle Sadiq and his two sons Thamer and Jaber were trying to stick it out till the end of the battle, but US warplanes did not differentiate between a fighter or civilian, they were hit by a missile and their bodies could hardly be recovered from the debris.”
July 2005
Falluja does not have a monopoly on tragedy and slaughter in Iraq. Reema was pregnant with her sixth child when Shia militiamen wearing police uniforms stormed into her Baghdad home hunting her husband and brother.
“There were lots of men armed with rifles, one of them was wearing a mask, I think he was nothing but an informant,” she recalls. “He said, ‘There should be three men in this house’. I explained, ‘My brother in law and his son are not at home, only my spouse’.”
Reema was asked where her husband was from. Falluja, she replied. In that moment, his fate was sealed. It was dark except for the flickering lights of torches held by the armed men who ran up the stairs into the bedroom. They seized Ibrahim. Reema gave chase but a gunman turned to her and said: “If you keep following us, I will shoot you right now.”
That night, a dozen Sunni men were taken from the district. Some of their bodies were found the next day, dumped in a remote part of eastern Baghdad. Reema has not been able to find her husband’s body to this day.
This time it was not war that prompted her family to leave Falluja, but grief. Her family came to Baghdad to mourn Ibrahim’s death with Reema. She would soon find herself homeless after her husband’s family sold the house. Only the generosity of relatives and neighbours enabled Reema to pay for new lodgings with her six children. She has been eking out a modest living ever since, baking meat pies for her daughters’ school for about £50 a week, or doing odd jobs for neighbours.
“Some of the relatives and neighbours offered to pay the rent for the small house I found in the same neighbourhood for a month or two, then I had to find a job to earn my family living,” Reema says.
A year later, her family finally received compensation for the destruction wrought in 2004 and were able to rebuild their Falluja home. For several years, an uneasy hiatus persisted. Female family members came to see Reema again in 2007 when her brother-in-law was murdered and she was briefly homeless. Menfolk stayed behind as Baghdad was deadly for men during the sectarian war.
The “surge” of US troops through 2007 put a lid on violence, but with the US military exit in 2010 and the transition of power to Iraqi authorities, a new insurgency began to bubble up in the so-called Sunni triangle.
2014
It was early in the morning when a car with three women and four children arrived at Reema’s house in Baghdad. Isis had stormed through Iraq to take Mosul earlier in summer, and was advancing south-west towards Ramadi province and Falluja. Fear of more upheaval in the city was driving locals to flee.
Reema’s mother, Zahra, and two of her sisters were among the exodus, along with their five children. Her two brothers Ziyad and Muneer and their children stayed in Falluja.
“I felt sorry for my sister Reema, that she had to host 17 relatives in her tiny house at this time,” says Samer, one of the sisters who had abandoned her home. “But I couldn’t afford renting a house for my three kids. Not only that, being Falluja resident, it is not easy to rent a house in Baghdad.”
“The situation here is awful; you have to wait for hours to have a shower given the large number of the people who live in the house,” she adds. “But what can we do? Our house in Falluja has been taken over by Isis.”
Reema’s mother kept in constant contact with her two sons in Falluja to make sure they were safe. As the war intensified, she desperately begged her sons to come to Baghdad. The two brothers were running a butcher’s shop and sharing the family house with their nine children. They would flee to the suburbs of Baghdad whenever the aerial bombing became too much.
“Isis militants began to arrest men of Falluja who were in the security forces despite the fact that they have declared their repentance,” says Hana Hassan, one of Reema’s sisters-in-law, married to brother Muneer. “Several people disappeared, then, their bodies were found at the edge of the city. As a woman, it became increasingly awkward to go for shopping in Falluja. Isis hisba (religious police) would be shouting in my face, ‘Why aren’t you wearing socks? Why aren’t you wearing a veil?’ though the weather was boiling and I always wear hijab.”
Bombing raids escalated. They would start at 11pm and continue through the night, Iraqi warplanes dropped barrel bombs, followed by US missile attacks. “Most of the victims were civilians as Isis militants and their families live in the most densely populated areas in Falluja,” says Hana. “Lots of people left the city to escape the shooting. Only young men of Falluja admired Isis’s doctrine of jihad. Tempted by money, they joined the fight for £275 a month.”
Reema’s mother sent £300 for her two sons to pay for transport to Baghdad. They still needed permission to get through checkpoints, having been turned back by Isis on several occasions. “Isis were warning families against going to the ‘land of infidels’, meaning Baghdad,” says Hana.
Reema’s youngest brother got a medical report for his youngest son stating that he needed an eye operation in Baghdad. Soon, the two brothers packed their belongings and took the road leading to the Bazbaz bridge to cross the Euphrates river to Baghdad. At a checkpoint, an Isis official stopped their car and ordered them to step down.
“The Isis militant handcuffed my husband and his brother,” says Hana. “They suspected them of being collaborators with the Iraqi police. They said whenever you come to this checkpoint, the warplanes come to attack the site.
“All of a sudden US warplanes started to bomb the place and Isis militants dispersed. A lorry offered to take us all with him. We took a route through some groves to avoid the bombardment, we had to stop a few times till we finally got near Bazbaz bridge.
“We stayed for five days near the bridge, waiting for the security forces to let us get into Baghdad,” Hana says. “My son and his cousin ran towards an army officer and begged him to let them get into Baghdad to do their final exams. The officer checked our IDs and said women and children could cross the bridge, but he would keep the men to check a few details.”
And so it was that when her nine grandsons ran into Reema’s house with Hana and Samer, the men were not among them. They will come soon after they finish with the police, Hana said to her mother-in-law.
But they didn’t. Reema and her mother began to worry. They contacted all the people they thought might know the whereabouts of the two brothers. They engaged a solicitor, whose early searches in detention centres in Baghdad proved fruitless.
“We were distressed but we thought they were held by the police because they were from Falluja,” says Reema.
Eventually the solicitor called.
“I’ve found your two brothers, but I’m sorry to tell you that your eldest brother had died under torture in the detention centre,” he said. Reema did not know how to tell her mother and sister-in-law, let alone the children, that he was gone.
“The whole world was spinning in front of my eyes, I took a few deep breaths and ran towards my mother to give her a big hug and said ‘you need to be patient, your eldest son, Ziyad, has died in the detention centre’.”
All the way to the morgue accompanied by her mother and sister-in-law, Reema kept recalling the day she went to identify the body of her husband, Ibrahim, in the same place in 2006. She was praying that the man in charge of the morgue record would not find the name of her brotherand the solicitor would be proved wrong. She only regained her focus when she was taken to check the body.
“I was almost too afraid to get into the morgue,” she says. “I choked when my eyes fell on my brother’s body, I passed my hand on his black hair and was struck by the big wound on the head blanketed by clotted blood, bruises were all over the body. I turned to the guy and said I wanted to take the body with a death certificate that read he died under torture in a state detention centre. The man would only write that the cause of death was a heart attack.”
After burying her brother in Adhamiyia cemetery, which holds hundreds of Sunni men killed amid sectarian conflict in Baghdad since 2006, Reema and her mother were desperate to know about the fate of her youngest brother.
It was months later that they found him, again with the help of a solicitor. When they got to the detention centre, they could hardly recognise the thin, pallid, sick man in front of them.
“I dream all the time that my youngest son would be back and we could go back to our hometown, Falluja,” says Zahra. “Reema can’t have us with her forever. The worst has happened, I already lost my eldest son, Ziyad. I keep receiving calls from people who vow to help release my youngest son or let me see him again, they ask for lots of money but they never proved to be honest.”
September 2016
Reema’s mother, sisters, sisters-in-laws and their children have not been back to Falluja, even though it has been cleared of Isis. Seventeen of them still live in the tightest of confines with Reema in Baghdad. They scour Facebook pages about displaced families and speak to a relative working as a policeman in the city to find out when it might be safe to return.
“The return is still uncertain, only governmental employes, army and police recruits and teachers are allowed now to head back to Falluja,” says Reema. “Other families have to wait for six months.” The policeman told her all their houses had been destroyed, so there would be no place to stay in when they do return.
“When my sisters-in-law lie in beds with their kids, they keep thinking about the future waiting for them if they get back to Falluja without their husbands and having no shelter,” says Reema. “They hardly sleep at night.”
* Names have been changed
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