DAHUK, Iraq — Along the foothills of a towering mountain range, Ali Sadi Hussein spreads a blanket under a cluster of pines while his family carries containers of rice and lamb and a large flask of tea. The sound of water cascading down a stream accompanies them on the walk from their car.
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QANDIL, Iraq — First, the neatly typed photocopies arrived, warning of the coming bombardment.
Then, as promised, volleys of rockets whistled over the jutting peaks of the surrounding mountain range, crashing into homes, livestock pens and grazing lands.
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SULAMANIYAH, Iraq — The Kurdistan region of northern Iraq has withstood the destruction of its villages and deadly gas attacks at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Now, as the semi-autonomous Kurdish government strives to increase its independence, the region is coping with another adversary: a cholera epidemic.
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SULAMANIYAH, Iraq — Siham Mustafa sits behind the radio microphone and clutches a piece of paper.
She is ready to fight.
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TEENA, Iraq — Something seems out of place in the little village in the valley.
First, there are the low-slung homes with the pastel exteriors — yellows and pinks — that scream for attention against the rugged backdrop of pine trees and mountain peaks.
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CLEVELAND — Johanna Orozco and Juan Ruiz had known each other since second grade, when they attended Walton Elementary School together. They stood next to each other in a school picture, and waved in passing, but they were never close before high school. For months, after a chance meeting in the summer of 2004, they talked on the phone, on and off.
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CLEVELAND — Johanna Orozco's grandmother clasped a bath towel to the darkening pit where the 18-year-old's jaw was supposed to be.
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CLEVELAND — Johanna Orozco closed her eyes, fearing for her family — her brother, Kevin, and her grandparents — sleeping just rooms away.
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CLEVELAND — Dr. Michael Fritz gulped the first time he saw Johanna Orozco's smooth face looking up at him from the front page of the newspaper on March 11.
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CLEVELAND — Johanna Orozco modeled a pair of movie-star sunglasses with rhinestones arched across the crest. Striking exaggerated poses, she shook her hips to a bumping beat coming from a metallic pink iPod sent to her as a get-well gift.
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CLEVELAND — "I want to go home," Johanna Orozco told her aunt on Easter Sunday, five days after the 13-plus hour surgery that gave her a new jaw.
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CLEVELAND — Johanna Orozco wriggled into a silky emerald-colored dress with a plunging neckline and sparkly silver accents.
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CLEVELAND — Johanna Orozco weaved though the hallways of the downtown Justice Center, following Assistant Prosecutor Pinkey Carr. The 18-year-old had tucked the bandanna she usually wore over the lower half of her face into her purse.
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CLEVELAND — When Juan Ruiz smacked her, pushed her to the ground and berated her, Johanna Orozco buried her torment in a journal. As she was raced to the hospital, her face blown off and bleeding, Johanna remained stoic. When she was trapped in the hospital, wondering whether she would ever be beautiful again, she put on a brave face for everyone.
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CLEVELAND — It's a sunny spring afternoon, and the only people on the new playground at Kerruish Park near Cleveland's Lee-Miles neighborhood are city workers, scrubbing away graffiti.
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Steve Politi knew he wanted to become a sportswriter when he was a 12-year-old paperboy reading The Star-Ledger as he dropped it off on doorsteps. He joined the staff in 1998 and started writing a general sports column seven years later.