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War Every Day (eIraq Blog)
Baghdad's funeral banners

Jeff Severns Guntzel, Electronic Iraq

Oct 6, 2008

Reporter Corinne Reilly, with the help of two Iraqi journalists, presents a vivid picture of a city drowning in violence--and funerals.

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.

Read the rest here.