Wings of a Bird

For Fallujah Family, a Daring Escape: After Hiding for Days, 10 Relatives Flee U.S. Assault Across Euphrates River
With his 4-year-old son hitched to his back and his wife clinging to his neck, Abid Mishal plunged into the Euphrates River. The muddy water was moving fast, too fast, and he lost control when a mortar shell landed in the river five yards from where he was swimming. His son slipped into the water.
Mishal let go of his wife and ducked underwater to look for his son. By the time he reached the little boy and pulled him up, he was almost dead. "He hardly breathed," Mishal said.
The family had hidden in their home in central Fallujah for four days last week while U.S. artillery and aircraft pounded the buildings around them. Water stopped running from the pipes, so Mishal dug a well in the backyard. The orange and peach trees in the backyard provided enough fruit for the family to survive on for a few days.
When Iraqi security forces began searching house to house for insurgents and weapons, the family grew more afraid. Then shrapnel from a rocket hit their house, damaging the ceiling, and Mishal said he knew it was time to go. ...
So last Friday, Mishal, a grocer, gathered his family and told them that they would leave Fallujah the next day. The only way out, he said, was to cross the river.
Mishal, 46, his wife, their seven children and a daughter-in-law went to the river Saturday but found no boats. They did not want to return to their house, so Mishal decided they would swim.
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the situation in Baghdad was not much better than in Fallujah. "There we got rockets," she said, "and here we get sickness." Her children suffer stomach and skin problems because of unclean water and food, she said.
The family sleeps in a tent that is about six yards wide. There are three mattresses, three blankets and three pillows that the 10 family members share.
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