The yellow brick house that Fath Farat spent his entire life in seemed as substantial and safe as his neighbors -- until, that is, a US missile landed on his doorstep and sheared it in half.
Sunday, Farat stood at the lip of a crater 5m deep, gouged from the earth by what America would describe as a precise targeting operation by a laser-guided missile.
Until 7:30pm on Saturday night, his home had stood there. Hours later, it was as if it had never existed, aside from bits of furniture and crockery studding the slopes of the crater.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Farat's home gaped open like a doll's house; the upper storey of another house appeared on the verge of collapse.
"Everything is gone: my furniture, my money, my food," he said, too tired to protest as scavengers worked their way through his home.
"Those look like my wife's clothes," he said, as a bundle was carried off. "That red car belongs to my little girl."
On day four of America's war on Iraq, Farat can claim a dubious distinction. The missile which exploded on the middle class Qadissiya neighborhood of Baghdad just before dinner time marks the first occasion America has missed its intended target.
Farat's home and the four others destroyed on Saturday night are in a residential neighborhood far from Saddam Hussein's palaces or military installations.
"Smoke and rocks were flying everywhere, and the dust turned everything dark," said Ahmed Abdel Daem, whose home was also destroyed. "I couldn't see a thing. I shouted for my mother and my sister, and then I fainted."
Iraqi government and hospital officials say three people have been killed during the first three nights of the war. Fath and his family would have been among them had he not bundled his children into his car and sped off a few minutes before the attack.
Until the Qadissiya neighborhood took a direct hit on Saturday night, most of the wounded suffered relatively moderate injuries, from shrapnel and Iraqi anti-aircraft fire gone awry.
However, they included women and children, screaming with pain in the casualty wards of Yarmouk hospital as doctors extracted pieces of metal from their flesh.
Their only sin was to have stepped outside during the bombardments, or to sit beside a window.
Daem regained consciousness in hospital, with a bloodied and shattered right leg. But he counts his escape a miracle: had he not stepped out to his rabbit hutch, he would have been inside his house, and probably dead.
He had little patience yesterday for American claims that it was not fighting Iraqi civilians.
"America is always doing something wrong, and then saying it's a mistake," Daem said. "But I think they just want to kill us, to kill everyone in Iraq."
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