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BAGHDAD — The boy with the plastic AK-47 stood in the dust. He waited for others; they came, more boys with fake guns.
They scurried, ran around barbed wire and blast walls, shooting imaginary bullets, pretending to die. Their make-believe war was folded into a real one, and their laughter, echoing amid U.S. and Iraqi soldiers with real guns, was strange and paradoxical. The streets are safer in Baghdad these days. That’s why the boys were out playing, but they were playing with guns, plastic, shiny guns, in the sunlight.
The Iraqi government has urged shops to stop selling, and parents to stop buying, toy weapons. At a glance, the guns could be mistaken for the real thing. Los Angeles Times
