In 1998, when Sifo reached age 19, she escaped with the help of a sympathetic aunt and went straight to Saadi's home. "Marry me, or I will find my own life," she told him. "I will marry you," he said, and they wed the very next day. Life wasn't easy. Her family ostracized her after she converted to Islam, out of love for her husband rather than obligation, she says. Saadi had left the army and earned barely enough to get by as a car mechanic. But they were happy. "I married him because I wanted to marry for love," Sifo says, referring to the prevalence of arranged marriages in Iraq. "But after marriage he became more than a husband. He was my best friend." Their daughter, Mariam, arrived a little more than a year later. Then came a son, Majid, a week after conquering U.S. soldiers arrived in Baghdad in 2003. He was born at...
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