A YOUNG love, two ancient religions ... a woman dying in a pool of her own blood after a very public stoning. This is the modern Iraq, for which we sent our troops to fight.
This is the freedom that exists ... and the reminder of how much more work there is still to be done.
For some, such as Du'a Khalil Aswad, this was the price of the so-called new freedom.
Of course, whether Du'a believed in the new freedom promised by the coalition forces will never be known.
All that we do know is that Du'a, young and in love, tested its limits only to see her new world come up terrifyingly, tragically, short. Her crime was to fall in love with a Sunni boy when her family practised the Yezidi religion, which does not allow marriage outside her faith.
The difference between her murder and the many other "honour" killings that also take place was that Du'a's death was captured by camera phone and sent around the world via the internet.
Never has the old world and new world come together more savagely.
A simple Google search will find the vision on any number of websites but it must come with a warning.
This is no Hollywood production. A woman dies before your eyes.
The blurred vision shows a crazed mob, jostling and crowing and jockeying for position, the cameraman struggling past the thousand-odd men who waited for Du'a to be dragged from the house of a tribal leader in a headlock so they could begin the killing.
More than anything the men are excited, which is as sickening to write as it is to accept.
In the mad scramble the cameraman finally gets close to Du'a, by which time she is already on the ground, her body sagging and struggling to stay strong.
Stones rain down on her. Her screams can be heard.
One stone, the size of a good Bessa brick, is catapulted with full force into her body.
As she tries to protect herself Du'a's hair is matted and strewn across her face. Again she screams.
To complete the shame somebody has ripped off her skirt, another man kicks her in the crotch.
For 30 minutes this goes on, until finally a stone knocks her unconscious and a deep, dark blood stream begins to run across the earth.
Du'a is dead.
This young woman, just 17 years old and whose crime was to fall in love, is now lost from this world forever.
If this is upsetting, then apologies. But this is the reality of our world, far from political spin, far from the lies of this "peaceful religion" we are force fed whenever racial tensions rise up.
It is abhorrent at every level. It must be stopped.
Du'a and her boyfriend, whose identity is still not known, had a plan to run away together.
Clearly aware that theirs was a forbidden love, it is uncertain whether their plan to elope was a result of having asked permission to marry and been denied or whether they planned it anyway, knowing how the answer would fall.
Regardless, they fled to Bashika but were betrayed by Du'a's family, whose "honour" had been besmirched.
They needed to cleanse the family and could do so only with Du'a's death.
Her parents did not want her to be stoned but, according to Diana Nammi, a leading Kurdish rights campaigner who fled to England, it is not certain whether they agreed to another form of death.
What is certain is that rather than a one-off, or a fading remnant of an old world that is thankfully disappearing, "honour" killings are on the rise in Iraq.
Nobody knows exact figures because exact figures are at best uncertain, at most shady, when it comes to happenings in Iraq.
But campaigners such as Ms Nammi say there is an "epidemic". The evidence is in the growing number of autopsy reports in Baghdad signed off with a simple verdict: "Killed to wash away her disgrace."
After Du'a's murder two men were arrested by Iraqi police but, according to Ms Nammi, were later quietly released.
Then last Saturday, 42 days after Du'a's murder, Iraqi authorities arrested four men in relation to the killing.
On the surface, at least, the arrests have been applauded.
"They (the crowd) brutally killed a young Yezidi girl in pursuit of out-of-date tribal rites," Tahsin Saeed Ali, the Yezidi religious leader known as the emir of the Yezidis in Iraq, said.
Is this a hope? Is this a sign of change, that maybe the coalition is making some headway, or merely a false dawn?
It is difficult to get too excited. The death came to light only after the image was released on the internet, after all, when the rest of the world had begun to vent its outrage. It forced the authorities to act.
Elsewhere the rise in "honour" killings suggests a descent into localised law, indicating it is getting worse rather than better. Maybe it has to before things are finally righted, which gives no comfort.