THE American warplanes are getting closer as Iman Mohammed Ali bends over the cooker in her shabby Baghdad home to prepare an evening meal of rice and stew.

By day, Iman, 35, can just about bear the thud of exploding munitions that echoes across the city, shaking the 100-year-old house. A mother of three, she has little time between washing clothes, cooking and catching up on lost sleep to ponder her fate.

As darkness falls, however, Iman, who is four months’ pregnant, struggles to suppress her terror as she comforts her children. Hamoudeh, 12, hides behind a door, a curtain wrapped around his head; his brother Ali, 10, is even more terrified.

Iman’s thoughts turn to her unborn child. ‘I do not even know whether the heart beats or if the baby is okay, but I know one thing: I am constantly afraid,’ she said. ‘My fear and stress mean I will give birth to an abnormal child — and it will be America’s and Britain’s fault.’

I first met Iman, who also has a daughter, Hamsah, 13, just after the start of the war when I visited the extended seven-member family living in her house. Now she and her husband Farouq, who spent seven years in Britain studying civil engineering, put on a show of bravado, but I am struck by how much tenser they have become.

It is not the only change: Iman’s sister Athraa, 38, is no longer there. Ten days ago her daughter Nour, 17, married and Athraa moved with her into her new home. Iman talked about the marriage in a matter-of-fact manner. There was little mention of love, no fanfare and no wedding pictures.

Nour had dreamt of being a teacher, but it looks unlikely to happen. Her destiny now will be to serve her husband and bear children.

With schools closed since the start of the war, Ali spends his days playing football in the street and chasing his neighbour, eight-year-old Sarah, with whom he is infatuated. Hamoudeh works in the shop where his father hires and sells videos and CD-Roms.

The boy insists he would rather be at school, but in the meantime he has become an expert on the latest films from the West. The new James Bond, Die Another Day — or a pirated version of it — was a hit among Iraqis. Hamoudeh prefers Charlie’s Angels because of the combat skills of its high-kicking heroines.

Farouq is almost embarrasssed to admit that business is good — ‘in fact, better than in normal times’. Prevented by the constant bombardment from going to work, many Iraqis spend their day watching videos between news broadcasts. It may not last; two hours after we met, the power went off, plunging the city into darkness.

Iman, meanwhile, spends her little spare time reading the Koran and praying — that Britain’s and America’s day will come ‘and God will punish them’.

‘I pray that if they are not struck by us Iraqis they are struck by Allah,’ she said, ‘that Allah will strike little Bush, his mother and Blair and make them suffer as they have made us suffer.’