For Iraqi Street Cleaners, Scraps Include Human Flesh

For Iraqi Street Cleaners, Scraps Include Human Flesh

By STEPHEN FARRELL
Published: December 31, 2007

BAGHDAD — It must be a candidate for the worst job in Iraq.

It falls to Baghdad’s street sweepers to pick up the fingertips and scraps of flesh left behind after the emergency workers haul away the torsos and heads of bombing victims. They do the job without gloves, in all but the coldest weeks of winter.

If the attack comes while they are off duty, they get roughly $8 extra for cleaning up. Despite the grisly work, and the sadness at the deaths, that is a welcome sum when they are each paid about $6 a day. There were many such bomb bonuses paid in 2007, though markedly fewer than in past years.

But on Sunday, at year’s end, two municipal street cleaners, Imad al-Hashemi and Laith Mahdi Latif, said the bonuses would be something they could happily live without in 2008.

They were outside the Faqma ice cream shop in early August, when at least 15 people were killed at one of central Baghdad’s most popular refreshment spots in the Karada district; outside the numerous attempts on the Sayyed Idris shrine nearby; and at the market where more than a dozen people were blown up on Dec. 5. Across town, their colleagues had to clear up Ghazil animal market last month, and Tayaraan Square last Friday, hurling bags of debris into a battered white Scania truck after a car bomber killed eight people.

“Things have got better over the last few months, maybe 70 percent, and God willing, they will be better again next year,” Mr. Hashemi said. “Although we get a 10,000 dinar bonus” — about $8 — “for each bomb, we do not want to see explosions, we don’t want to see this. They are Iraqis, Sunni, Shia or Christian, they are all Iraqis.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/world/middleeast/31baghdad.html