Women and children hit hardest. I can't wait till we read the bleeding heart stories about the arms resellers who can nolonger finance their inventory.
| Better not beat swords into plowshares anytime soon ... |
At what's believed to be the world's largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn't good. A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.
The tragedy of peace brings sorrow to many hearts.
Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq. "I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead," said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. "People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don't talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more."
Things were much better under Saddam. We wish to return to the good old days.
Dhurgham Majed al Malik, 48, whose family has arranged burial services for generations, said that this spring, private cars and taxis with caskets lashed to their roofs arrived at a rate of 6,500 a month. Now it's 4,000 or less, he said.
The Wadi al Salam cemetery— its name translates as "Valley of Peace"— dates to the 7th century. Its mud-brown jumble of crypts and rectangular and domed brick and marble tombs stretches to the horizon. It's six miles long, two miles wide and grows by acres every day. Imam Ali himself is said to have pronounced it the entrance to paradise. And so the Shiites come with their dead.
The burials aren't expensive, usually $200 or less, but many people draw their income from them.
The sights and smells of working with the bodies, particularly those torn by war, are hardly pleasant, but it becomes a mundane job like any other, said Jawad Abuseba, 40. His family has dug graves for more than 300 years, he said. His hands are thick with calluses after 22 years of digging with a shovel, basket and pickaxe. With their nails torn and their skin gray, his hands look as though they're dead, too. "There is nothing beautiful in this career, but I cannot do any another job," Abuseba said.
| Buy this man a backhoe ... |
For the laborers in the Valley of Peace, it was just another workday, one they faced with a matter-of-fact attitude unnerving to those who deal with death less frequently. "Certainly, when the number of dead increases I feel happy, like all workers in the graveyard," said Basim Hameed , 30, a body washer. "This happiness comes from the increase in the amount of money we have."
Baath party member? |