An Iraqi mother’s most dreaded mission

BAGHDAD - Six p.m., and 27-year-old Riyah Obeid hadn't come home. Fahdriya Obeid kept watching, waiting for the dark silhouette of her eldest son to loom in the doorway of the simple home he and his brother had built with her out of bricks.

...snip

Riyah and Saffah had grown up in Sadr City, playing soccer with Shiite cousins and swarms of other children — families run big in Sadr City. Half of their family was still there, doing better now that President Saddam Hussein was gone and the old clerical clans of Iraq's Shiite majority were in power. One cousin whom the boys had played soccer with now had a job with the government's most powerful wing, the Interior Ministry, which oversees the country's commando forces.

...snip

One of Fahdriya's brothers received the first. The caller identified himself as a Ministry of Interior official: "Come and get your boys. They're in the morgue."

Then a second call, also to the Sunni side of the family: "We don't want to ever see you at Sadr City. Or the morgue."

...snip

A functionary behind the desk took the names of the night's missing. Using a ruler, he tore off squares of photocopied paper, handing one to each of the bereaved when he or she had finished speaking. It bore the party's emblem and phone number.

...snip

The red-haired man from the day before was back — minus his two brothers, including the one who had vowed to find the detained husband of their sister. Interior Ministry forces had come to their homes that night, the red-haired man said, and taken his brothers away.