The last thing Omar Alshujery remembers seeing when the first US bombs hit Baghdad in 2003 was a “great light”.

“I saw a huge light,” says Omar, “and I yelled, ‘Cover!’ Then the earth trembled.”

Alshujery, then only 12 years old, screamed as the force of the blast slammed him into the wall.

Seconds later, as the next wave of bombs roared out of the thin plaster walls that cradled Alshujery, his parents, and his five siblings, the power went out, plunging Alshujery’s childhood home into darkness, a darkness that it would eventually swallow his grandfather and uncles. .

Despite the reports, war is not a pretty thing. It is not sterile or photogenic. It is complex and convoluted; it is bloody and chaotic; war is a dirty, ravenous, thousand-toothed beast, and it feasted on both Iraqis and Americans.

Death figures vary. When the Iraq war “ended” on December 18, 2011, the Associated Press estimated 100,600 casualties between March 2003 and April 2009, but an independent 2007 British report put that figure closer to 1.2 million between March 2007 alone. 2003 and August 2007. What none of the figures explain are the soul casualties suffered by survivors like Alshujery, a survivor of a war between enemies who claimed his family as casualties.

During the early stages of the invasion, Ashuljery watched as the US Army’s Third Division swarmed through the streets of Baghdad, the ground shaking under the weight of the onslaught.

“We heard the F-16s and the Humvees,” says Alshujery. “Then my uncles and my grandfather cried because they knew that our country had disappeared, destroyed.”

Baghdad fell into chaos after the invasion. The streets were littered with corpses and the city reeked of rotting meat. Alshujery and the other 6 million Baghdad residents were without electricity or running water for nearly seven years.

“Life was good before the war,” says Omar. “It was peaceful. We had security. We worked, we did business and we traveled outside the country. Everything was fine.”

After the invasion, all that changed. The country fell into chaos, and Iraqi civilians were caught in the crossfire of US and Iraqi soldiers, robbers and bandits, and Iraqi resistance fighters, also known as “terrorists.”

Suddenly, Baghdad, “gift of God” in translation, was the most dangerous place on earth, and each day was filled with new horrors for Omar and his family.

In 2005, US soldiers broke into his home in the middle of the night and attempted to rob his family at gunpoint. When Omar and his relatives refused to give their money to the soldiers, the Americans arrested his father.

A year later, when Omar was 16, he was kidnapped at gunpoint for the second time, this time by Iraqis.

Omar and his uncle, Saeed, were driving through the desert near Anbar, Iraq, when gunmen forced their vehicle to stop. After getting out of the car, they were beaten, tied up and thrown into the trunk of a dark green 1993 BMW at a temperature of 104 degrees.

After driving for almost half an hour, the armed men stopped the car and took Omar and his uncle out of the trunk. One of the gunmen pointed a pistol at Omar’s head and ordered him to lower his head and look at the ground.

“At that moment, I was not afraid,” says Omar. “It was just zero. I accepted it as it is and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to die.’ I did not close my eyes. He was thinking: ‘Will the bullet go through or not?’ And, ‘Will I see my blood before I die?'”

Omar and his family finally fled to Syria in 2006 after his uncles and grandfather were kidnapped and murdered.

“We had enough. I saw how armed men kidnapped my uncle Salem and my grandfather Taha had been missing for more than a year,” says Omar. “After discovering Salam’s body with more than 30 bullet holes, we finally had him. We crossed the border into Syria that night.”

He lived in Syria for almost two years before the International Organization for Migration helped Omar and his family move to the United States in 2008.

“The war took everything and left us with nothing,” says Omar. “He destroyed our homes, our businesses and our lives.”

Despite all that the war took from Alshujery, the 22-year-old retains his home. Today, Omar shares a modest apartment in Portland with his mother, his father, his five brothers and his sister.

He is studying engineering at Portland Community College, a degree he dreams of using one day when he returns home to Iraq, after the war and the occupation, after the violence and bloodshed, when his country can be rebuilt, brick by brick. and life to life.

“I look through the past and I see pain and darkness,” says Omar. “My life was a night with stars and a light that guided me through the darkness. I lost the stars. But I have the light and the stars are in my heart.”