Monday, September 26, 2005

Tour of Wars: Kevin Sites' Post

She pulls back the material covering her right arm to show me a brown, leathery roadmap of scar tissue that runs from above her wrist to below her shoulder. The arm is nearly worthless, Maria says, useful now only as another reminder of that day.
That day, Oct. 3, 1993, became known as the Battle of Mogadishu, when an American mission against Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid went terribly wrong.
The Somalis shot down not one but two Black Hawks that day -- one of them, call sign Super Six One, would change Maria Osman's life forever.
"I hate the Americans," she says, her eyes maintaining their empty sadness rather than shifting to anger. "I hate them for what happened to my daughter. If I saw one I would cut them up into so many pieces."
The crowd that has gathered around us laughs, but some begin to eye me suspiciously.
Most of those who live here are part of the Habr Gedir clan -- connected by blood to Aidid.
Maria and her husband have three more children, she says, but both parents are jobless so they can't always afford to feed them.
"I have no hope," she says, eyes downcast. "No hope for Somalia."

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