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DEL.ICIO.USOne week after bombing, residents of Tal Afar worry they will be forgotten
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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| Louie Favorite / AJC |
| Mohammad Kathem Kanbar Ahmo, who lost three of his children in last week’s bombing, clears debris from the ruins of his shop. |
Tal Afar, Iraq — The Iraqi schoolteacher beseeches the young American captain as though the latter were God.
“Please. We want you to turn our darkness into light.”
The two men stand near the blast site, surrounded by rubble yet to be cleared — and by scars that are indelible.
• See more photos from Tal Afar
One man’s life will never be the same, as much as the other man tries to help.
“We are waiting,” the teacher says. “We hope for something to cure our hearts.”
Today marks a week since the tragedy in Tal Afar, where 152 people were killed in a massive explosion in the poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood of al-Wahada.
Since then, other bombings in Iraq have overshadowed Tal Afar’s.
Since then, politicians, military analysts and journalists have debated whether the change in this city, quiet for 15 months, signals the start of another evil trend in Iraq. The phrase “model city” described the hopes for Tal Afar; “litmus test” more cautiously describes its status now.
None of this has meaning to the teacher, Haider Yaqub Salih.
What he knows is that on a sunny afternoon, he was sitting at a small shop talking with a friend. About school. About their families. About ordinary things in their ordinary lives.
Without warning came the noise louder than a thousand thunder strikes. Salih saw a speeding ball of fire shoot into the sky, twisting, breaking, mangling, crumbling everything in sight. Human body parts flew through the air.
One moment, Salih was in the neighborhood he has called home all his life. The next, nothing was intact save a brand-new building across the street from the shop and a nearby mosque.
A suicide bomber had driven a flour truck into the neighborhood shopping area and detonated 10,000 pounds of explosives. The Iraqi government says 152 people were killed, making it the single most deadly terrorist attack in the four years of the war.
The sun returned the next morning to al-Wahada, but the light was gone.
Salih is 59. He lived through years of Saddam Hussein’s repressive rule. He fought in the brutal Iran-Iraq war, and as evidence, points to the scars that crisscross his forehead. But nothing has taken his breath away like that instant when a truck driver decided to push the switch of a detonation device.
“What shall I do? What shall I say? Is there anything to say?”
He clutches a string of pale green prayer beads.
Almost every day in Iraq, there is another al-Wahada. Monday, a bomb exploded in Kirkuk. Sunday, it was Baghdad. Like this, more than 600 Iraqis have died in the seven days since the blast here.
Those who perished in al-Wahada are just numbers now, added to the tally of Iraq’s dead.
But Salih must look at the empty space where a friend’s house stood. He still sees the images of children’s limp bodies carted away. He taught them English. For what, he thinks? For what?
“We are like babies. Help us. We are an illness. Cure us.”
He fights the tears welling in his eyes. Crying is not for men in this part of the world.
The American captain, Todd Hopkins of Mount Dora, Fla., has moved away to speak to others. Salih pulls a reporter aside.
He wants to explain how his already meager existence will now be an unbearably meager one. There are still residents and shopkeepers of al-Wahada searching through the destruction for all that they lost.
The people here are without jobs, without money, without food. They were drawn to the bomb-laden truck because it was carrying free flour from a humanitarian agency.
And now, they are without loved ones. Will they become without compassion too, Salih asks?
This much tragedy can sour the soul. “Everyone will forget Tal Afar. Who will help us now?” Who, he asks, will bring back the light?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
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By charles corley
April 3, 2007 8:01 AM | Link to this
i see aa today as bill and bob saw it on june 10,1935. one drinker carrying the message to another drinker so hear my voice george and stop the killing.
By Drunk on Power
April 3, 2007 8:29 PM | Link to this
That’d be Dumbya - reaping havoc and death at every turn.
By Me
April 4, 2007 1:12 PM | Link to this
Drunk on Power @ 8:29AM: Be fair, now. As much as I dislike Bush for getting us into a war we cant win, it wasn’t him that killed these 152 people. It was radicals with a twisted view on their religion.