Dreams of bombs, bad guys haunt Baghdad's children

Aseel Kami and Ahmed Rasheed, Reuters

Iraqi children are haunted by dreams of bad guys wielding knives or kidnapping relatives. For some, like 13-year-old Zaman, the nightmares become reality. She was abducted, beaten and threatened with rape. "Zaman suffers from shaking, nervousness, a stutter and sleep disorder," said Haider Abdul-Muhsin, a psychiatrist at Baghdad's Ibn Rushd hospital who treats children suffering the consequences of war, four years after the U.S. invasion. Abdul-Muhsin said Zaman was abducted in Baghdad last month on her way home from school. Zaman was not at the hospital when Reuters visited, but Abdul-Muhsin said few children he had treated recently had affected him as much (...) Nearly every family with children has stories of nightmares or changed behavior. "My 6-year-old grandson told me the other day he dreamt that he was walking with his mother near his house when they saw me heading toward them," said Najat al-Azzawi, 55, a retired engineer. "But a masked man came and snatched me."...

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