Back In Baghdad

Iraqis are trying to come back to Baghdad and live. They do not want to live as refugees. A Baghdad school bus driver and his wife and two children left their refuge in Syria to return home. They returned last summer. It had been two years since they had fled their home of al-Dora. This family had left because the al-Qaeda terrorists had killed the wife and son of Hammadi’s brother. Hammadi is the bus driver who returned to the city.
Hammadi works for $10 per day. His wife, Shada, helps by baking bread. They have two children named Ibrahim and Sajda.
The author of this report had lived in Baghdad for five years. He returned for a period of two weeks to witness the changes in the city.
There are several signs of change in Iraq but even though things seem positive there is a lot of tension in the country. The first sign of change the author sees is that he arrives on a big Airbus A320 plane. This must mean that the threat of a missile attack is less than before. While driving through the city he sees more changes. There are more shops and businesses open than there were one year ago. There are no lines at gas stations. Generators do not have to be used as much for electricity because 4-6 hours a day electricity is provided. There are several new restaurants and there are now murals painted on the protective walls that have been built around neighborhoods.
The biggest change is how the Baghdadis view the U.S. military presence. A year ago most Baghdadis saw the Americans as the source of their problem. Now they view Americans as those who are stopping the violence. “People think the Americans are like Superman, who can do anything.”
The worry now is what will happen when the Americans leave. Will the peace survive?