Iraq reporter's diary

I'm still waiting.

At work I try not to react to jungle outside, even if for a few minutes a day. Sometimes I succeed. But today the events came rushing in and rudely intruded upon my precariously sustained neutrality.

I was called from home to be told that a nephew of mine was killed in the explosion in the city center. The explosion went off in a central, much frequented market, so there was no doubt it was targeting civilians. Then they called me to say it may not be him after all because there was no way to identify what was left ... only his cell phone in the pants' pocket.

Now I'm waiting, fearfuly, for confirmation either way.

The problem doesn't end there.

If it isn't him, it's someone's son anyway. But if it is him ... whom are we willing to risk going to the Morgue to receive the remains?? If and when we receive him ... where do we burry him?? Almost none who take the path to Abu Ghraib Cemetary return unscathed.

Perhaps we should revive the tradition of burrying our dead in our gardens. It's certainly a lot better that loosing other members of our family on the way to the cemetary or on the way back.

All this is contimplation. For I'm still waiting.
Posted by Correspondent Sahar

At the morgue

At the Morgue.

We were asked to send the next of kin to whom the remains of my nephew, killed on Monday in a horrific explosion downtown, can be handed over. The young men of the family, as was customary, rose to go.

“NO!” cried his mother. “Isn’t my son enough?? Must we lose more of our youth?? You know there are unknowns who wait at the Morgue to either kill or kidnap the men who dare reach its doors. I will go.”

So we went, his mum, his other aunt and I.

I was praying all the way there.

I never thought a day would come when it was the women of the family, who would be safer on the roads. All the men are potential terrorists it seems, and are therefore to be cut down on sight. This is the logic of today, is it not? To kill evil before it even has a chance to take root.

When we got there, we were given his remains. And remains they were. From the waist down was all they could give us. “We identified him by the cell phone in his pants’ pocket. If you want the rest, you will just have to look for yourselves. We don’t know what he looks like.”

Now begins a horror that surpasses anything I could have possibly envisioned .We were led away, and before long a foul stench clogged my nose and I retched. With no more warning we came to a clearing that was probably an inside garden at one time; all round it were patios and rooms with large-pane windows to catch the evening breeze Baghdad is renowned for. But now it had become a slaughterhouse, only instead of cattle, all around were human bodies. On this side; complete bodies; on that side halves; and EVERYWHERE body parts.

We were asked what we were looking for, “ upper half” replied my companion, for I was rendered speechless. “Over there”. We looked for our boy’s broken body between tens of other boys’ remains’; with our bare hands sifting them and turning them.

We found him millennia later, took both parts home, and began the mourning ceremony.

Can Hollywood match our reality?? I doubt it.
Posted by Correspondent Sahar