Family may decide teen's choice of candidate

Baghdad: Nada Hatem Farhan toys with a heart-shaped red pen at the small desk in her bedroom and talks about the gap between the life she expects to have and the one she really wants.

The March 7 Iraq elections are her first opportunity to vote, but in her tightly constricted world, she doesn't think any politician in the parliamentary contest will have an effect on her future.

"There are many things I want to do, but our society doesn't allow one to become a lawyer or a journalist," says the 19 year old. Instead, she says, the plan for her is a more respectable route for a woman in this conservative city: She'll go to teachers' college.

An only child, Nada has been raised in the home of her maternal uncles, who make all the major decisions affecting her life.

"I would love to study law and become a lawyer," she admits. "But if I were to graduate from law school, what would I do? Even if I became a lawyer, where would I work? The profession is considered more for men than for women."

She adds: "In Fallujah, especially, people would criticise that I go back and forth to different places, and there are security issues as well."

Pressure

On the wall of Nada's room is a photo of her father, who died the year she was born. Next to it, in her parents' wedding photo, her mother's curly hair cascades onto an elaborate Western wedding dress.

When her maternal grandfather died, Nada's other relatives pressured her mother to remarry. As is often customary, her mother had to leave Nada to start a new family. Her mother comes over every day — they would like to live together, but both know it would be impossible.

Nada has been engaged for a year to her cousin. Fallujah, which had become an Al Qaida stronghold, was almost levelled in 2004 in the fiercest urban fighting by US forces since the Vietnam War. As occurred in many families, her fiancé left the city and dropped out of school in Grade 9. He now works with his father's transport business.

Nada says she doesn't want to finish high school and get married, she wants to finish college. Nada says the most important issues for young people are security and the lack of jobs — both, she says, are keeping young people, and particularly young women, out of university. She says families are afraid because of security issues.

Nada has little faith that politicians will make things safer, but adds that she doesn't want to leave and "live among strangers."