Death in Iraq Spawns Grim Subcultures

Published: 5/17/07, 5:46 PM EDT
By HAMZA HENDAWI
BAGHDAD (AP) - Abdullah Jassim expected ambulances and security forces to arrive first after a blast last month near his clothing shop. Instead, it was thieves.

"I saw them with my own eyes," said Jassim, who has survived a string of suicide bombings in Baghdad's well-known Shurja market. "Young men between 20 and 30 years old stole mobile phones, money and wrist watches from the dead and badly hurt."

The consequences of sudden and violent death - so commonplace in Iraq's relentless turmoil - have spawned their own macabre subcultures: the human vultures, grave markers with serial numbers for unidentified victims, tattoo artists asked to etch IDs on people afraid of becoming an unclaimed body amid the carnage and killings.

It's more than just another grim tableau in a nation brimming with sad stories. It points to how deeply war and sectarian bloodshed have reordered the way Iraqis live - and confront the constant possibility of death.

"As a society, we are finished," said Jassim, whose store is only several dozen yards from the site of a car bomb that killed at least 127 people and wounded 148 on April 18. "We may have hit rock bottom."

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the trouble with Americans is they've never had bombs dropped on their heads. That makes it SO EASY to ignore your post.

To those who can ignore the dehumanizing of the Iraqi people through the relentless violence our presence helps to perpetuate I say, "Think September 11th happening every month for the last four years".

for even 4 months? (Just trying to be conservative here. ;-) )

Please indulge me in an old lady's anecdote, LR. I attended a concert at one of the older churches in the European city I now call home. The Romans were here and there are artifacts all over the place. There was one column (obviously bomb damaged and purposely unrestored as a reminder) in the church that had a bronze plaque which said, "A warning to the living from the dead." I stood in front of it, unable to move and simply burst into tears. A tiny, elderly woman stretched out her hand to me. I then realized how many eyes of gray-haired people were fixed on me, ALL emitting a warm embrace that said, "AH, Jungfrau... we see you get it now. Peace be with you."

We have no idea what it's like.

YOU as an American DID KNOW. YOU FELT IT, did you not? You heard, as I did, the screams of pain, smelled the stench of death and saw the utter, wanton destruction in your mind's eye. YOU didn't need to experience it firsthand, coming in contact with the aftermath you simply KNEW IT.

The bodies frozen in the streets, the extreme hunger, the fear, the shelling . . . It overwhelmed me, and yet I knew that I didn't know it.

My Russian grandmother of the family I lived with during my semester, her father was a priest murdered by Stalin's KGB during the Purge. The pain in her eyes, and the rage at having her father taken away tore at me, and I also knew that there was no way I could ever truly understand, coming from my messed up but safer upbringing. Dark times, when I live in light, will always have a darkness I will never see to the edges of.

I don't know what else to say.