Who was in the room next to Jessica Lynch?

From TomDispatch.com: Award-winning foreign correspondent Ed Vulliamy finds stories of ordinary Iraqi civilians. This excerpt from a 2-part article tells one story: the family in the hospital down the hall from Jessica Lynch.

Iraq: The Human Toll
by Ed Vuillamy, UK Guardian Observer
July 07, 2003

The southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah, where the American ground offensive began in earnest during the last days of March, will before long be known not because Nasiriyah was once the cradle of the Sumer dynasty and thus of civilisation; not because here, 6,000 years ago, the first syllabic alphabet was devised and first mathematical schema developed (around the figure 60, still the measurement of time). Or because the first legal code - including laws governing the conduct of war - was written and enforced.

No, Nasiriyah's fame will be enshrined in Hollywood lore because it was here that US special forces rescued Jessica Lynch, who went astray and was captured by the Iraqis. None of the major American television networks that covered the fantasy version of the dramatic rescue (Doctors and staff recall the episode differently: as the Americans blasted and kicked their way in, they were welcomed and shown to Private Lynch's ward, with no resistance offered) bothered to visit a few doors down from Jessica's. In there lie Daham Kassim, aged 46, and his 37-year-old wife Gufran Ibed Kassim. Daham has his arms bound, and a stump where his right leg used to be. Gufran will probably never again move her arms, wounded by gunshots.

Kassim speaks in English, an educated man and, until a few months ago, director of the Southeastern electricity board. His torment began 24 March, when - after heavy US bombing in his neighbourhood - Kassim decided the family would leave Nasiriyah for the safety of his parents' farm 70 miles away.

Shortly after noon in Kassim's new car, they reached the American checkpoint at the northern gate to the city. (Significantly, the suicide bomb which killed four US soldiers at a road block and was credited with inflaming American behaviour at check points, occurred a full four days later on 29 March at Najaf. This was the incident described by the Washington Post as, 'The first such attack of the war.') 'I could see two tanks,' recalls Kassim. 'They were sand-coloured. I was afraid and stopped my car 60m away. Less than a minute passed.' [The American tanks kept their hatches down. The Marines inside would have been looking through their green-tinted rectangular window, at a civilian car carrying a couple and four children.] 'I was frozen with fear, watching their guns moving down. Then there was a terrible noise, and my car was buried in shooting.'

Kassim's voice begins to crack. 'I saw my eldest daughter, Mawra, die. She was nine; she took the first shot, opened her eyes, and closed them again.' Gufran, his second daughter, was killed immediately. 'But my son Mohammed, six, was still breathing. And my Zainab, five, was also still alive, although she had been shot in the head.'

Two Americans approached the car. 'They took out my two dead children, then tried to give my son oxygen, but it was no use. He died there, at that moment. There, the Americans had established a field hospital, where they bandaged up the surviving child, father and mother. On the third night, that of 27 March, 'there were some Americans wounded that night, in the fighting. Maybe they needed the beds. I heard the order - "put them out" - and they carried us like dogs, out into the cold, without shelter, or a blanket. It was the days of the sandstorms and freezing at night. I heard Zainab crying: "Papa, Papa, I am cold." His wife continues the story of the night. 'What could we do? She kept saying she was cold. My arms were broken, I could not lift or hold her. If they had given us even a blanket, we might have put it over her. We had to listen to her die.'

'What for? For oil and a strategic place for America? Why did they put my Zainab out into the cold? I tell you Mister, she died of cold, she died of cold.' He asks us to have her buried 'with her brother and sisters. Please, Mister, I cannot move; you must go and ask how we can take my Zainab to Najaf.'