Love and War

On a hot day in May, he met Ehdaa, a doctor looking for a job after leaving a hospital in the provinces where her Westernized ways were deemed too provocative. Ehdaa's gleamingeyes and wide smile brightened his day, and he tried to help her. But to many Iraqis their relationship only tainted her further. When he and a buddy who'd been seeing another Iraqi woman doctor decided to get married in a joint ceremony three months later, the judge told Sean of his new wife, "I urge you to protect her and preserve her honor." Sean kissed Ehdaa on the forehead. "Don't worry," he told her. "We're married now and there's nothing they can do."

The other marriage quickly dissolved. But Sean would not give up. After a year he got Ehdaa into the United States and took her to live in the little town of Pace, in the Florida Panhandle. Last December, their daughter, Norah Blackwell, was born, a beaming child who has her mother's large round eyes and her father's ears. Like other Americans who've married Iraqis, Sean feels as if he did something positive in this war by saving one life, perhaps, and creating another. "I got married for a lot of reasons, but none of them were love," he said. Not then, anyway. "I knew I was doing something good. I was either going to marry her, get her out of that situation and she'd at least be safe, or things would work out the way they have, and we would be together forever."

Sadly, even as these relationships continue and deepen, so does America's tragic relationship with Iraq. Some couples are reluctant to leave. In recent weeks, NEWSWEEK has interviewed an American accountant and his Iraqi fiancée—a petite, stylish bookkeeper in designer jeans—who've built a semblance of American suburban life in the confines of the Green Zone while they await her visa. Another couple, an American plumber and his Iraqi bride, live near a helicopter pad. The home he's cobbled together from a derelict house shakes and shivers every time one of the birds lands or takes off, but they've decorated it with teddy bears and a Santa Claus statuette, an Alpine scene and generic pictures of fresh-faced babies. Their own toddler, a big-boned boy who greets visitors with high-fives, is an American citizen reared all his short life in the Green Zone. His parents are in no rush to get to the United States. "Different place, different traditions," says the little boy's mother. "I don't have my best friends there. I like my country."

Among those who have left, some couples have felt the pull of Iraq as the war goes on and on. Ehdaa Blackwell, in Florida now, yearns to be reunited with the family she left behind. LH, with Vanessa Kirk in Maryland, says he is thinking of going back to try to "help our troops and to make Iraq safe again." Rich and Zena Allinger have settled into a comfortable life in Spokane, Wash., with his sons from a previous marriage. But recruiters for big contracting companies come calling, and for a lieutenant colonel, the financial temptation of returning to active duty is considerable.Leo Barajas, Mariam'shusband, says he recently got another offer from Halliburton, and the possibility of a lucrative position for Mariam was dangled in front of them, too. But "it's too dangerous for her," he says. "Even with the money, it's not worth it."

They know from experience. Lena's husband, Jimmy Ahearn, was redeployed to Iraq earlier this year, with a civil-affairs unit. His job was to try to reach out to the local population that he had come to know and respect, learning their needs, offering help if possible. As the husband of an Iraqi and a convert to Islam, he believed he was in a better position than most American soldiers to do the job.

Jimmy and Lena spoke on the phone or texted or e-mailed just about every day. On July 3, the eve of their third anniversary, he wrote to his father that he'd seen some early Fourth of July fireworks when "some jackass initiated his little bomb as my truck was passing by (somewhat little anyway)—scared the bejesus out of me but I'm fine … I'm getting way too old for this; tomorrow had better be a quiet day." And so it was. Then, on July 5, there was no phone call home, no text message, no e-mail. On his way to talk to a group of Iraqis, Jimmy's truck had hit another roadside bomb.