There is no one word to describe a battlefield or the aftermath.

For the most part, all you find are traces of civilian lives, the lives that they left behind. Dusty photo frames, unfinished meals, a child's shoe.

During the November 9 battle for Haifa Street in Baghdad, all that was left behind in the luxury apartments U.S. and Iraqi troops had taken position in were these small clues of the life that once was Haifa Street.

Outside the firefight was still raging, an explosion shook the building, and someone yelled "mortar!" I was staring at a little yellow sequined flip flop. It was probably around hour five of what would end up being a 10-hour gun battle ­ and I was already exhausted. And so when I saw the dirty and dusty couch in the poorly lit entrance to one of these apartments and the unit that I was with paused for a moment - I sank into it. And then I saw the flip flop ­ discarded and dusty. Who was she? I pictured her as being slender, maybe eight years old, slightly curly hair in pigtails. Where did she go? Was she still alive? I could imagine her laughter echoing in the hallway and I wondered if it ever would again.

Back out on patrol the day after the second battle for Haifa in as many weeks - a quick embed facilitated by the 1-23 Stryker Battalion that we had covered the fighting with - we were finally able to snatch brief conversations with some of the civilians that endured life on Haifa street.

There's were stories of killing at the hands of the "others" (the insurgents,) fear of "down there" (where most of the fighting was centralized,) and raw anger at just about everything.

On the southern tip of Haifa life looked almost normal. Kids played soccer in front of the Stryker vehicles as if a major battle had not just raged for eight hours, as if it might not just flare up again.

"Down there" - an unnerving ghost town. Shops shut, laundry still fluttering from deserted apartments. Just the boots and chatter of Iraqi and U.S. forces and the knowledge that something probably still lurks in these buildings.

In the slums behind the luxury apartment complexes that line Haifa, not far from where a precision guided missile had flattened a building that insurgent machine gunners had holed up in, two women were walking around.

What were they thinking walking around what was once alley-to-alley fighting? They were in fact fuming. At the helplessness of their situation, at life that forced them to endure mortars falling in their backyard and snipers, at visions of dogs gnawing at dead bodies. They were stuck with nowhere else to go and no one to help them.