This is the hairdresser who was shot dead outside of my house. Her body was lying there for four hours before an American patrol came and cleaned the scene up. I couldn’t get close enough to get a clearer photo because we weren’t sure whether the body was booby trapped—or being watched by snipers. Photo by the author.
 

Running for your life from fundamentalist bandits, helplessly watching innocent women being shot in the street, and car-bomb explosions that shatter your bedroom window… Just another humdrum day in the life of a student in Baghdad.


Last June, just a few days after I had finished my final exams for the second term of pharmacy school in Baghdad, I traveled to Jordan and stayed there with my family for over three months. Eventually, we had to return to Iraq because it was getting increasingly difficult for Iraqis to remain in Jordan for long periods.

I returned to Baghdad on October 10 via the land route. The trip was the most horrifying experience I’ve ever had in my life—and I’ve taken this route at least twice every year. We were constantly watching out for fake patrols or being chased by bandits. It took us almost 15 hours to reach Baghdad. It usually takes eight hours from Amman.

There were hundreds of army men and vehicles at the gates of Baghdad. They were searching every car that entered the city. After they checked ours and let us in, I looked around the streets. My city was completely changed. It was nothing like the Baghdad I’d left just months before. The streets were packed with US and Iraqi army and police patrols, checkpoints, and concrete blocks. Many buildings were dusty and destroyed, the streets were desolate, piles of garbage were accumulating on sidewalks, and traffic lights were broken.

It looked like the apocalypse had come.

I went to see some of my friends soon after I got home. They told me about the dead bodies lying on the streets because of sectarian violence, and how formerly mixed neighborhoods were turning into Sunni or Shia neighborhoods. People were being forced to leave their homes because they were from the wrong sect for their particular area.

I was very troubled with what I heard and I was afraid to leave the house for over two weeks. As the days passed by, however, I got used to this new situation, and I also grew accustomed to hearing almost every day that one of our relatives, friends, neighbors, or loved ones had been killed due to sectarian violence, car bombs, random shootings, or IED explosions.

After only three weeks back in Baghdad, I witnessed several incidents that have changed my life forever.

The first was when I was chatting with a group of friends on the street in front of my house. Suddenly, out of the blue, a strange-looking man rushed out of a house 20 meters away from us. It was like a scene out of a horror movie. He was blindfolded, his mouth was duct-taped, and his hands were tied behind his back. There was blood all over him. The man blindly crossed the street and stopped outside a store. “Untie me! Open my eyes, please! Help!” he was screaming. A few people ran out to help him. He kept saying, “Please take me to my house, they will kill me,” over and over again. Someone put him in a taxi and they drove away.

At first we concluded that he was kidnapped and being held in that house, but then we heard his story from the family that lived there. They said that they were sitting in their backyard, waiting for sunset—it was Ramadan and they were fasting—and suddenly what seemed like a corpse was thrown into their yard over the back fence of the house. They thought he was dead at first, but the body just stood up and moved. There were girls sitting in the yard as well, so they began to scream when the man started running around, because it was such a strange scene. I mean, I freaked out when I saw him too. “Please, don’t scream. I’m kidnapped. They will hear you,” he begged them. The girls kept screaming, so he ran out to the street, where we saw him coming out.

I can’t deny that I was terrified. I stood like a statue until the whole scene ended. I wanted to cry after that. We can’t even know if our neighbors are friends or enemies.

Another incident was five weeks after my return, and it was even more disturbing. The life of an innocent young hairdresser ended horribly and I saw it happen.

She was about to go home. After she closed up her shop, around 5:30 PM, she stopped a taxi. Just as she was about to get in, another car with four young men inside screeched to a halt, blocking the way of the taxi. One gunman—he couldn’t have been over 18—leapt out of the car and dragged the bewildered woman out of the taxi. He put a black plastic bag on her head as she kicked and screamed, and then he shot her. He got back in and their car screeched away as bystanders stared in disbelief. The hairdresser’s corpse remained lying in the middle of the street for about four hours. An American patrol arrived later and picked up the body. They had to shoot the body several times before going near because they were afraid it was booby-trapped.

I took a photo of the body from a distance as she lay there because I had to document the terrible things happening in this unfortunate country.

Two weeks later, rival sectarian militias started firing mortar shells indiscriminately against my neighborhood. Over 50 shells were fired. I was in my room that night perusing the internet when I heard an ear-shattering blast. Dust clouded my room immediately, and I was shocked, trying to grasp what had just happened. Then, I heard the voice of my mum from downstairs, “Nabil! Nabil! Are you OK?” I rushed down to my parents and everyone was fine.

Meanwhile, we heard people in the street, saying that a mortar shell hit a store that is owned by a friend of mine.

We went outside, but it was too dark to see. There was no electric power. A few neighbors had flashlights, and one of them passed our house, stopped and shouted to us, “Here. Here it is. It fell here. Here is the blast.” There was a gaping hole on the street just outside our front door. We were lucky.

Just a few weeks ago, there was a car-bomb explosion about 20 meters away from our house, close to where the hairdresser was killed. The car blew up when an American army patrol was passing by. Fortunately, there were no injuries among American troops or residents of our street, but all phone and electricity lines were cut off, and our neighborhood has been without electricity since. I was sleeping when this explosion took place. My bedroom windows were shattered and I woke up with shock. I went downstairs to check on my parents, and there was broken glass and dust everywhere in the house. All our windows were destroyed. Rumor in the neighborhood was that the car bomb was planted there by strangers, just minutes before the explosion.

Just recently, I was about to go out to school one morning, when I saw masked gunmen pasting posters, photos, and statements on store windows on our street. The posters, signed by Ansar al-Sunna, an insurgent group, warned Sunni college students and professors from going to their schools to avoid being targets for abduction or assassination by Shia militiamen and death squads. One statement said that they canceled this academic year in all universities, institutes, and private colleges in Baghdad until they’ve been “cleaned” of the death squads. Just days after the posters were distributed, suicide bombers attacked Mustansiriya University, killing and wounding dozens of students.

Since then, I have tried to avoid going to school as much as possible. But I don’t have much of a choice. If I cannot leave the country, then I have to go on with my life or die from fear.

NABIL KASIM
Nabil is a 20-year-old student in Baghdad and is the author of nabilsblog.blogspot.com