"Man, did you have to be just another muj?" Fenezia mused of the baby's missing father, employing American shorthand for Iraq's insurgents -- mujahedeen -- or Muslim holy warriors. "Couldn't you have stopped shooting at us and watched your baby grow instead?"
U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to fight sporadic gunbattles with rebel holdouts as they clear Fallujah of weapons. On Friday, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said only about half the buildings in the city had been cleared even though organized resistance has collapsed.
But as the battle calms, U.S. forces are reflecting on the fight, their often-unseen foes and the future of a city that lies in ruins.
Fenezia, of Red Bank, N.J., also turned up a bayonet, ammunition and a baby photo -- all lying amid walls shattered by the Americans' devastating firepower.
A burst of gunfire rattled nearby in southern Fallujah, but the Marines shrugged it off.
"They have no idea what they are shooting at. It's just mental games they play. They know they've lost and there is no way out," says Lance Cpl. Brian Wyer, 21, of Chouteau, Okla. "This is nothing, not after the intense battle here."
Marine, Army and Iraqi troops opened their Fallujah assault Nov. 8 with massive artillery and air strikes pounding the city before tanks, armored vehicles and troops on foot pushed in from the north.
They battled for days with rebels who had been fortifying the city since April, when planners called off a Marine assault amid widespread outcry over reports of civilian casualties emanating from Fallujah's hospital, numbers U.S. officers called inflated.
The U.S. military says upward of 1,200 insurgents died in the latest offensive. More than 1,000 suspects were captured, and more than 50 U.S. forces along with eight Iraqis were killed.
Marines are now clearing weapons from the city on the banks of the Euphrates River and preparing for the return of civilians, who once numbered up to 300,000 by some tallies, though U.S. officers estimated that only 50,000 to 60,000 were in the city before the well-publicized attack.
Nationwide elections are scheduled for Jan. 30, but some Marine estimates say Fallujah may not be fully repopulated by then. And on Friday, leading Iraqi politicians called for a six-month delay in the voting because of violence in the country.
As the fight dies down, Marines are finally finding free time to reflect on the furious battle. The Americans wonder how Fallujah could have devolved into what officers say was a center from which rebels spread bombings, beheadings and attacks across Iraq.
Cpl. Perry Bessant, 21, says Marines are "like a detective agency, coming to investigate, to put the pieces together of what Fallujah was."
"It was a space for so many foreign fighters. I just can't believe the locals tolerated them," adds Bessant, from Mullins, S.C.
"Maybe they were terrified of them. Maybe I'd feel like that too if someone said they'd kill my family," replies Staff Sgt. Alexandros Pashos, 38, from New York City.
New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Oklahoma: The Marines' homes are all a far piece from this central Iraq city in the middle of dusty plain, once dominated by Muslim men in red-checkered scarves and black masks who try to kill the American "infidel" invaders.
When Fallujans do return en masse, they will find many parts of their city in ruins, with bank buildings scorched, mosques bombed, shops destroyed, cars burned, doors to their homes forced open and their cupboards and drawers rifled by foreigners.
"It's going to be difficult putting Fallujah together again, but not impossible," said Pashos. "That is the saddest, to have it all come to this, all these people's homes destroyed."
But even before air and ground assault, Fallujah was poor by the Marines' standards, with many of its people living in mud-brick homes in tight, crowded neighborhoods.
"After we rebuild Fallujah, it will be a lot better place to live," said Wyer, the Oklahoman, "something that was worth our sacrifice."
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