Reporter Corinne Reilly, with the help of two Iraqi journalists, presents a vivid picture of a city drowning in violence--and funerals.
"The Dalfiyah family mourns the deceased, Mohammed
Nafil Akseer al Dalfi, father of Jassim, Qassim, Hashim and Bassim. The
funeral will be held at his house in Habibiya in front of the power
supply station."
It reads like an obituary, but in Iraq,
only the deaths of the rich or well known appear in the newspaper.
Instead,
this announcement, scrawled in white and yellow Arabic on a black cloth
banner, hangs at a busy intersection in a popular shopping district in
Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood. It was strung up by a relative of the
dead man it honors the day after a double bombing killed nearly two
dozen people there.
This
is the way almost all Iraqi families announce the deaths of relatives.
When a loved one dies, hanging the banners is the first order of
business.
If it was a violent death, as many here are, a banner
is hung at the scene of the attack. Another is nailed up at the
victim's house, another along the main road into his neighborhood and
perhaps another at his mosque.
They are always made from black
cloth, and the names of the dead are always painted in yellow. The
other details — a list of relatives left behind and the place and dates
of the funeral — are usually painted in white. Most banners are around
four feet long and three feet wide.
It is a custom that existed
here long before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, but over the last five and
a half years, the banners have taken on new meaning. They are an
informal measure of security, a way for residents to gauge whether
their neighborhood is becoming more or less dangerous.
Between
2005 and 2007, at the height of violence, the banners blanketed
Baghdad. They still hang on buildings and blast walls across the
capital, but in far fewer numbers.
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