Mahmoud, 34, was an Arabic teacher. He showed up for work early on Monday morning only to hear that the school was closing up for the day. Mortars were crashing down around the city and violent clashes were breaking out between Shia and Sunni gunmen. Two days before, a huge truck bomb targeted a Husseiniya, a Shiite place of worship that is part mosque and part community center, in the nearby city of Haswa. The bomb leveled the building and at least 10 people were killed. The next day, the reprisal killings kicked off in Haswa and Iskandiriya. Locals blame the Mahdi Army. As Mahmoud made his way home on Monday, he was pinned down by a gunfight near a bridge. When there was a lull in the shooting, he made a break for it. A bullet clipped him in the chest. A nearby shopkeeper who knew Mahmoud pulled him into his shop and eventually got him to a local hospital. He probably died before he could even get medical treatment.
When Majid first heard the news, he was in shock. For several hours, he agonized over the situation, trying to decide whether he should head to Iskandiriya. “I just wanted to hold my brother. To hold him and kiss his face one last time,” he told me in a distraught phone call. It was heartbreaking. Majid had done his best to be careful. Among our staff, he had usually been wary of working in dangerous areas and had recently moved his family to a safer neighborhood in Baghdad. After a good deal of soul-searching, he decided he had to go. On the outskirts of Baghdad, the Iraqi police turned him back at a checkpoint because of nearby clashes.
Majid’s disturbing day didn’t end there and neither did the violence. Later in the afternoon, a group of relatives and friends gathered to prepare Mahmoud’s body for burial. They broke up into two groups: one group would wash the body, the other group would dig the grave in the family plot. As Majid explains, it’s not uncommon for friends and family to take up these duties now because of the inherent risks. Shiite funerals get targeted by Sunni gunmen and vice versa. The cemetery is primarily used by Sunnis and the surrounding neighborhood is mostly Shia. In mid-afternoon, the group that was going to dig the grave contacted the Iraqi police for protection and headed out to the cemetery. The police posted six cars around the area. As the group held a prayer session at the cemetery, two gunmen snuck onto the grounds and sprayed them with AK-47s. Four members of the burial party were killed and three were injured. Among the dead were two of Majid’s cousins and a brother-in-law. Another family member who had just left the cemetery heard the gunfire and ran back. He saw two gunmen, who had wrapped their faces in headscarves, blaze away on motorcycles. The police didn’t stop them.
Mahmoud was finally buried last night in a plot beside the Euphrates River, not far from Iskandiriya. The other four victims were also buried in the same cemetery. Majid plans to transport his brother’s body over to the family plot when the attacks stop, which may not be anytime soon. This morning, gunmen burned a small building at the cemetery in Iskandiriya and scattered flyers in the surrounding neighborhood. The flyer read, “You dirty Sunnis have to leave. Otherwise you’ll see a black end.” Majid is now trying to get the rest of his family to Baghdad. But he asks himself, will they be any safer here?
