Thousands of Iraqis from the besieged town of Falluja have entered Baghdad in the last week. Graham Usher spoke to one of them Salim Mubarak sits on a high chair in a small house in Baghdad's Amaria neighbourhood, surrounded by men and women bearing gifts. Dressed in a long grey gown, he is 61 years old and a merchant by trade. His long, leathery limbs and equine features exude nothing if not dignity. But "you cannot live in dignity without sacrifice," he says. Mubarak is a refugee from Falluja. For four days the town was under siege and bombardment by the US marines: retribution spurred by the slaughter of four American security contractors at the hands of an outraged mob on 31 March. Doctors in Falluja estimate that some 600 Iraqis were killed and 1500 wounded in the assault. The Iraqi Red Crescent says 1,000 families (perhaps 6,000 people) have been forced to leave their homes and 60,000 have fled the city. Falluja has 200,000 people. On 9 April the marines suspended their offensive, pending cease-fire talks with Iraqi fighters defending the city. Mubarak, with 19 members of his family, used the reprieve to escape. He left Falluja at 9am, arrived in Baghdad at 8pm, a journey that takes an hour by car. This is his story of the siege. "My son is a doctor in a clinic in the centre of Falluja. He couldn't reach the main hospital -- it's on the other bank of the river, which is under American control. I tried to visit the clinic every day. It was risky, but I wanted to see my son. I saw a lot of injuries there. Many people had terrible wounds to their legs, as though a bomb exploded within them. I saw one whole family -- 24 members -- dead ..." He wiped a hand the size of a fan across his face. "I saw children and women whose bodies looked as though they had been through a meat-grinder ..." The hand folds into a fist and he starts to cry. Uneasy, the men shift in their chairs. The women have left the room. We feel we are the bringers of bad tidings. He sobs for a minute, but then hauls himself back to his high chair, purging grief with rage and a torrent of questions, directed at us. "Why do the Americans do this? Where is their humanity? They say they are after the resistance, so why bomb homes with women and children? There were very few fighters but the Americans fought us as though we are an army. They should be held internationally accountable for what they have done in Falluja. They said Saddam Hussein dug mass graves. There are mass graves in Falluja. What's the difference? They would drop leaflets from their helicopters telling us not to leave our homes, not to go onto the streets. But they were bombing homes!" How did he manage to escape? "We heard the army had opened a road out of Falluja -- not from the Americans, from the mosques. We saw whole families leaving, so we followed them. We walked a dirt track, kicking up storms of dust. After I don't know how many kilometres we reached an American checkpoint: there were thousands there, maybe tens of thousands, in cars, on foot, on wagons. The Americans let everyone go, on condition that no one would return." Does he think there can be a cease-fire? "No one wants to die for nothing," he shrugs. "The cease-fire depends on whether the Americans will observe it. If they do, any Iraqi will accept it." His son, Fouad, feels compelled to speak. "When we were leaving Falluja we saw truckloads of American soldiers going the other way. Why do you need troop reinforcements if there is going to be a cease-fire? I think the Americans are using the cease-fire to strengthen themselves, so they can occupy the town completely." And what about the resistance? "If you see a young man sacrifice his life for his city, you respect him. Yesterday he was an ordinary man. Today," says Mubarak, searching for the right word, "today, he is something more than this." And Americans? "They are occupiers."
