..The doctors we speak to,
the United Nations observers
and workers, the papal nuncio
and the archbishop of Basra
all say children are dying in
inordinate numbers, of diseases
that should not kill, because of
the U.S.-inspired sanctions
imposed by the United Nations.

Nowhere is the slow dying
of Iraq
more evident or grotesque
than in its children.

From the shoeshine boys who
will follow a Westerner for
blocks before giving up the
chance for a few dinars, to
the increasingly frequent hints
of red in what should be rich,
dark hair - a sure sign, we
are told, of malnutrition - the
record that is building is a
jarring one. The relentless
flow into the now-primitive
hospitals of tiny bodies
racked with waterborne
diseases, pneumonia,
malnutrition and what
doctors say is a wildly
accelerating rate of childhood
cancers, is damning
evidence that the children
of Iraq are paying the
heaviest price for the
political and military
struggle in which they
have no say.

Baghdad and Basra, Iraq
The imam stood in the center of a circle of women who were kneeling, praying and studying the Quran at the mosque in the Adamia neighborhood of Baghdad. Abdul Gaforer Al-Quisi, spiritual leader of the mosque, introduced the American visitors, who had just sat through his extended tirade against the Clinton administration. He explained that every time the women studied Quran and prayed, they prayed "against the American administration."

His voice rising, he said through an interpreter, "Each of these women has lost a husband, a son, a brother in the war or children to the sanctions. So you can see how they hate America."

The pause that followed seemed to last forever, a deep silence begging some response, a defense, an explanation, something. Everyone, it seemed, was straining for what was to come next. Chicagoan Kathy Kelly quietly asked the imam through the translator if she could say something.

"Certainly," he motioned her to come forward and engage in the discussion.

She moved forward and knelt, filling a small opening in the circle of women. "Like all Iraqi women," she said softly, waiting for the translation, "you have taught us." Then, touching the arm of the woman next to her, she said, "And we are sorry." The gesture brought tears to those in the circle and some of the onlookers. The imam was silent. The woman leading the teaching, the servant of the Quran, walked across the circle with a cloth for Kelly to dry her eyes, and she, in turn, dried the eyes of the woman next to her.

As if on cue, the call to evening prayer sounded from the main part of the mosque. Time for the men to leave the women's section. Kelly dared one more request of the imam as the group was leaving. "May we," she said, motioning to include the other American women who had joined the kneeling circle, "stay and pray?"

"Of course," he said.

The moment disarmed, the discussion had gone where Kelly always wants it to go, person to person, beneath the hardened lines of battle. It is one of the guiding motives of the group she leads, Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq. Kelly, more than most, knows that the geopolitical conflict that has reached down into these women's lives is terribly complex and that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein bears a measure of responsibility for aggravating it. Yet she also knows those subtleties mean little to a mother who has watched a child starve to death or die of a disease that Iraqi doctors could have treated if there were no sanctions.

The scene incorporated the extravagant Arab hospitality for which this region of the world is known and Kelly's absolute conviction that pacifism is the world's only hope. In this case a moment was transformed. Perhaps it takes a dreamer to press on, for in the case of Iraq and the United States, there is an ocean of moments in need of transformation.