“They are here! Finally, they are here!” Qassim joyfully whispered to Layla, his life-time sweetheart and neighbor, expecting her to share this long-awaited moment with him.

However, his fiancée froze, looking at him in total shock and disbelief. Layla’s kind, gentle face changed. The familiar worry lines around her eyes were more visible, as they always were when she was upset. Her dark eyes narrowed with fury. “How dare you!” Along with a slap on the face, that was the only response he got.

She glared at him, turned around and left… He stood there, under the tree, their tree… The tree that witnessed their love for each other grow… The tree that witnessed their ambitions and listened to their dreams of a free democratic country, where everyone could freely express their feelings and speak their minds without fear of the “Tyrant of Baghdad.”

Qassim stood there, with small tingling beads of sweat making his favorite Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt stick to his body. It was very hot, with the warm, dusty wind starting to pick up momentum. Too hot for jeans. Qassim looked enviously at a sweets-seller across the street wearing a traditional galabiya. The cool fluidity of the galabiya looked so much more comfortable than his own clothes.

The Americans have finally unleashed their full firepower against the Tyrant, to liberate us… We can finally get married and bring up our children in a better world, like we had always dreamed… What is wrong with her?

Qassim just could not get it.

Why has Layla reacted in this way? Has she forgotten about the long days and months I suffered in the detention camps of the Tyrant, for expressing my views on the way he ruled us?

She had cried when I showed her the scars on my back and chest. Has she believed the empty, meaningless slogans the Tyrant’s dogs have been repeating during the past months? Has she bought their calls on us to stand up to the invading and occupying forces?

Questions kept rolling into Qassim’s head… They remained questions… with no answers…

The sound of sirens went off again… Another raid by the liberation forces, Qassim thought. The heavy sound of bombardment was coming closer… Slowly, Qassim started walking home, deciding not to join the others in the shelters nearby… “It’s OK, honey… I know once the Tyrant is gone, once you breathe the breeze of freedom, you’ll calm down and we will be together forever,” he thought.

Heading home, Qassim saw a couple of his friends and neighbors standing in the neighborhood, carrying their rifles and shouting; “God is great! We will be victorious”… “Come down here, you cowards, we will teach you a lesson you’ll never forget”… “With our souls, we will defend our homeland against invaders and occupiers”…

“Idiots!” he thought.

The sounds of the bombing was getting closer… He went inside his house. Not bothering to switch on the lights, he moved in the dark to his room, and stretched out on the bed… Too tired and too excited to do anything, he closed his eyes… A powerful boom made him jump to his feet… “Oh, my God, that was close!”

His windows were shattered, the whole building was still shaking… “I don’t remember seeing any military or even official buildings in this area… That must have been a stray shell by the Tyrant’s stupid air defense systems…”

Looking through his shattered windows, Qassim’s heart stopped… “Oh, my God! Where is Layla’s home?” The whole neighborhood was flattened… He realized how lucky he was to be still alive.

Rushing out of his house, he joined the others in looking for survivors… It was horrible… A huge pile of rubble, dust, debris, mixed with charred human limbs… “This is insane,” he thought, suppressing an urge to vomit.

He kept digging away at the debris away in the spot where Layla’s home used to be… Struggling to keep his eyes clear of the tears that amassed behind them, he knew that it was in vain, no way can they be any survivors…

But wait, “Yes, that doll!” He spotted a half-burnt doll that he got her 20 years ago when she was only six. He reached out for the doll, but his hand froze… Burnt fingers were around the doll… Layla… He could not take it any longer… He passed out…

Again the raid sirens woke him up… This time, he was not in his bed. Looking groggily around him, he tried to see through the confusion. This looks like a hospital bed… People running back and forth… Explosions are getting closer again… “Oh, God! Not a hospital!… young people, men and women, children, babies.. all were there with different injuries and handicaps…

“Such a small price for the liberation of the Iraqi people,” Qassim tried to assure himself.

A few hours later, he checked out after donating some blood to a severely injured friend, and went home… Home alone, his heart ached… “Oh, Layla! I wish you were still here to witness the fall of the Tyrant”… For over eight years now, Qassim never mentioned the name of Saddam Hussein, not even in arguments with friends… He knew there were informants…

Ever since that day nine years ago – when he was arrested along with others during a demonstration against a local Baath official – Qassim had been dreaming of the day this corrupt regime would go to hell… That day is almost around the corner… America is a great free, democratic nation… The Americans will bring their model of freedom and democracy to Iraq… Yes, that’s the only thing that matters now, Qassim kept reassuring himself.

He turned the radio on, listening to Radio Sawa… “The coalition troops are about to liberate Baghdad… According to U.S. military officials, the regime of Saddam Hussein is no longer in control…”

It was a matter of days, during which Qassim never left his home, watching his neighbors move in and out with their rifles… Each time, there were fewer and fewer of them… Faces he knew kept disappearing…

“The military ruler of Iraq, General Tommy Franks, is speaking to you,” the voice came out of the radio in heavily accented Arabic.

“Wow! They did it!” Qassim finally shouted… “No more whispering… Freedom, freedom, freedom! Oh, Layla! How much I miss you! The Tyrant is no longer around…” Qassim wept. For joy, in disbelief. He felt he was dreaming, floating in a fantasy.

“Free people of Iraq, your country has been liberated… For your own safety, no one is allowed out of their home. In my capacity as the military ruler of Iraq, I hereby, declare marshal law… Any one in the street will be shot at sight, thank you, free people”.

Looking through his window, Qassim saw coalition troops take their positions in and around the area. “Oh, those crazy people! They are carrying an anti-tank weapon! They will fire it at the American guys!… No… Too late, the shell went off.. it missed the target, however…

Then, hell broke loose… Qassim’s voice was lost among the deafening sounds of tank shells and missiles raining down on the whole area… In a few seconds, no building was standing, no one was alive…

Blood everywhere, unable to move, Qassim heard an echo… “Qassim, I hate him, too, but how can we wish for another people to come here and occupy our beloved country to get rid of him? Change must come from within, from us, to be genuine, to be true, to be meaningful, to be peaceful, and lasting…”

On its way up, the last image Qassim’s soul had from earth was the sight of “coalition troops” looking at destroyed buildings and burnt body parts – including Qassim’s – and … smiling.

Khaled Mamdouh is an editor and staff writer in the News Desk of IslamOnline. He is also a radio announcer, journalist and translator for several Arabic magazines.