By BBC
By Kevin ConnollyBBC Middle East correspondent
As the US military fought their way into Baghdad 10 years ago, the life of one Iraqi girl was changed forever when she was gravely injured in an air raid. Marwa’s story, and charitable efforts by outsiders to rebuild her life, reflect the wider struggle of millions of Iraqis over the past decade.
On 9 April 2003, at about the time that the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was coming down, Marwa Shimari was waking up.
The first thing that came into focus was her mother’s face looking down on her in her hospital bed. She was trying to look reassuring, but you could see that she was frightened.
Marwa’s brothers and sisters were there too. They were too young to understand what was really happening but she knew they were frightened too – their lively, mischievous big sister had been asleep for more than a day. They had been scared she was never going to wake up.
All of that seemed to register like a flash photograph in that split second between the last moment she was asleep and the first moment when she was really awake.
Then came the pain.
For someone who’d only ever felt the bumps and bruises of childhood there was something frightening about how much it hurt. It was like living in a world where there was nothing but pain.
Marwa can’t remember when she first noticed that her right leg was missing – cut off far above the knee. The idea that her life had changed forever at the age of 12 was just too big for a child to understand.
and still no apology from the USA, not to speak of compensation …