Fallujah may be admired as a bastion of resistance by those opposed to the US presence in Iraq but the battle-scarred city is slowly emptying of its inhabitants because of insurgent activity and a continuing rain of US bombs.
"I was born in Fallujah, I was married in Fallujah and I lost my first teeth in Fallujah. I never left, and now (US President George W.) Bush has chased me out," says Tarfa Frayyeh Ali, her face etched with tribal tattoos.
She says she has five daughters and six sons, before catching herself and blinking tears from here eyes. "I lost a son in an American raid. He left a widow and six children who now have no income and no home."
This aged Iraqi woman, who is unsure of her own age, now lives with 50 other relatives in a house in the capital, Baghdad, far from her friends and her fields.
"We left because of the bombs. The explosions terrified the children," she continues, surrounded by a cluster of young curious onlookers. Living conditions have deteriorated along with security in Fallujah which is often sealed off from the outside world.

"They lack everything. If you have lunch, then you don't have dinner," she says.
The men of the household follow the news to find out how talks are progressing between the city's leaders and the government.
"If they reach an agreement, we'll go back immediately," says 26-year-old Ibrahim Rachid.
"But the last time they did a deal, we ended up with bombs falling on us again," he says, referring to an agreement in April aimed at ending fighting in the Sunni city between US marines and the leaders there.
Agreement or not, 48-year-old Faraj al-Obeidi, has no desire to go home to Fallujah, where more than 200,000 people once lived.
"I spent 15 years in Saddam's prisons. I never imagined the situation could get worse after his fall," he says. Obeidi has rented a house in Baghdad, where three families are staying, including that of Khadija Hadi, who arrived three days earlier with her husband and two children.
"We didn't want to leave our home but it was hit in a raid a few days ago. We fled with nothing more than the clothes on our backs," she recounts, adding that her Al-Askari neighbourhood is now deserted.
"We resisted the urge to leave in April but my husband has no job and I haven't been paid in four months. (The Muslim holy month of) Ramazan is coming, we're lost," she whispers in a voice tinged with embarrassment.
She is sceptical of the negotiations with the US-backed Iraqi government.
The Americans "talk peace during the day and at nightfall start dropping bombs" says the 37-year-old teacher, her four-month-old baby in her arms.
The US military says it is targeting the hideouts of Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Mussab al-Zaraqawi, a person said to have links to al Qaeda who is blamed for a string of attacks and abductions in the strife-torn country.
"What Zaraqawi? There's no Zaraqawi in Fallujah. The people fighting the Americans are those who have lost a father or a brother (in a US attack). They are the sons of Fallujah," says Obeidi.
"They say they're after Zaraqawi. Then in the morning we find children in the bombed-out ruins of houses," he rages.