March 20, 2003- A little child named Layla cries in the corner of her house as soldiers and planes burst over her country and no one knows what's going on. Then the Iraqis realize that war has been called for. This war wasn't a complete surprise to the Iraqis though, they knew the U.S. President George W. Bush had been threatening war for a while now and the Iraqi's thought nothing of it. Bodies were everywhere including her father's and she had no clue about it until her mom came home balling her eyes out and the poor child still didn't know. Finally after her mom stopped crying she told Layla the extremely unfortunate news about her father whose last words to her were “SIT DOWN IN THAT CORNER AND DON' T MOVE!!” She kept thinking about those words all night and wondered if she ever said I love you to him. At 1:00 AM she finally fell asleep. She wouldn't sleep for long though as she was rudely awaken at 3:38 AM by more gunfire and planes.

Layla new a pattern. Every day she would notice that gunfire usually didn't start until 8:30 AM. She would wake up at 5:00 AM before anyone else and go look around for places to hide incase someone tried to take her away. Layla found a big hole under a rock and she knew that no one would ever find her there. She would wake up every day and go to that same spot because she knew that Saddam Hussein was taking kids away to a safe place. Layla did not want to go to this safe place because she didn't want her mom to be alone because she knew her mom wouldn't feel safe during this war. One day after the normal routine of going to her secret place she came back to find that she no longer had a home, and she didn't see anything around where her home used to be except for ashes and sirens from ambulances. She was so shocked she couldn't even cry, she could was standing there in disbelief. After an hour the tears finally started to flow and she ran back to her hole under the rock.