LATimes: The Selfless Iraqi Burial Society

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bury22oct22,0,7899128.story?coll=la-home-headlines

The selfless and the dead
An Iraqi burial society pays its respects to unclaimed war victims.
By Raheem Salman and Doug Smith, Times Staff Writers
9:07 PM PDT, October 21, 2006

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The depth of his commitment is astonishing.

Each two-day trip begins at 4 a.m. after morning prayers. Sabbar walks three-quarters of a mile from the Ur neighborhood of Baghdad to a mosque in Sadr City, where several of the men converge. At the mosque, they pick up two or three caskets, which they tie to the roof of the bus.

The bus drives to the Baghdad morgue, an impersonal building of yellow brick, where other men arrive in their cars. They load the truck with bodies that have been unclaimed for two weeks — at that point, the morgue has to clear them out to make room new ones.

Leaving Baghdad at 7 a.m., they must traverse Latifiya, an insurgent stronghold and one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. Kidnappings, shootings and roadside bomb attacks occur there almost daily.

The caskets on the bus could be a liability in the Sunni Arab city, giving the impression that the men are Shiites on the road to Najaf. But they also ensure speedier passage through the many checkpoints on the 110-mile highway. Mourning parties are less likely to be stopped for identity checks.

About noon, the bus arrives at the cemetery. The men say their midday prayers before they unload the bodies on stretchers into the desert heat, loudly chanting, "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God." They remove the bodies from black nylon sacks. To each they attach a tag bearing all that is known about the deceased.

Some are headless, some bloated and purple. If the body is too decomposed to wash, the men perform what is called the tayamum, rubbing the face and hands with clean sand, in accordance with Islamic tradition.

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Think Grapes of Wrath set in Mesopotamia. It's a tragedy, but you are also seeing the best that people can do alongside the worst.