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NAJAF, Iraq — As the
usually joyful Eid al-Adha holiday began in the
Shiite Muslim heartland of Iraq, relentless violence
and disappointment trumped centuries of tradition.
This holy city's renowned cemetery lacked the
multitudes who have made their way here for
generations. Relatively few visitors appeared Friday
along the forlorn pathways that slice through
endless acres of headstones.
"It's half-empty," lamented Naja Hussein, who
ventured here for the annual three-day Muslim Feast
of the Sacrifice, which marks Abraham's willingness
to offer his son at God's request. "With all the car
bombs and violence, no one will drive."
Across Iraq, some people expressed hope that the
muted holy day would give way to an honest vote in
the Jan. 30 national election, but there remained a
palpable sense of anxiety and uncertainty. U.S. and
Iraqi officials have been blunt: Things may get
bloodier before they get better.
In Najaf, the threat of ambushes, kidnappings and
killings — particularly on the perilous road from
Baghdad — kept many Shiites from embarking on the
annual journey of remembrance.
In the largely Sunni Arab city of Mosul, parents
were fearful of letting their children play outside
during a time typically filled with festive family
get-togethers and tributes to departed loved ones.
But the darkest cloud over the day was in Baghdad,
where a car bomb targeting a Shiite mosque in a
working-class quarter killed 14 and injured 40.
Authorities said most of the victims were worshipers
leaving the mosque after morning prayers.
At the capital's Yarmouk Hospital, Um Hussein, a
middle-aged woman shrouded head to toe in black,
beat her chest and asked God to have mercy on her
two children, Hussein, 7, and Amna, 4, both
seriously injured in the blast. "They are all I
have," she moaned. "Don't take them from me."
Word came later that the boy was going to lose one
of his legs.
It is unclear how many families are facing the Eid
holiday in mourning.
There are no reliable estimates of how many
thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed or
injured since U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein's
regime in April 2003. The Ministry of Health has
stopped making public tabulations of the dead. It is
not even possible to judge whether the wave of
pre-election violence has caused an uptick in
casualties.
In Najaf, people are chillingly aware that
bomb-wielding insurgents seem drawn to crowds, be
they in mosques, on the streets or at the graveyard.
"How can you ask me to celebrate the Eid?" lamented
Abbas Eissawi, who lives on the edge of the great
cemetery. He lost his father and brother in last
summer's U.S.-led offensive against Al Mahdi
militia, which featured ghoulish scenes of combat
amid the tombs. "How can you ask me to feel
festive?"
Despite the ouster of their longtime oppressor,
Hussein, Najaf residents say the last year has
brought precious little reason to rejoice. Najaf's
Old City is still in ruins from the battles between
U.S. and Iraqi government forces and the militia of
radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. The masses of Iranian
religious pilgrims, who produced a huge income
stream, are long gone. Even Iraqi religious tourism
has plummeted to a fraction of pre-2003 levels.
Still, the despair is tempered in some quarters,
especially here in the Shiite heartland, with the
hope that the national election can somehow
dissipate the pall of violence, atrocity and
economic distress. The country's Shiite majority is
widely expected to finally ascend to power. The
learned men with beards and turbans have preached
that voting is a duty, a sacred trust.
"I wish it were today," Eissawi said as he
supervised a pair of butchers carving a dangling
sheep carcass, its blood pooling on the cobblestones
in front of a war-damaged home. "It will solve all
of our problems. We can't wait."
In accord with Muslim teachings, Eissawi said, he
planned to distribute the meat to Najaf's poor in
memory of his father and brother. Five months after
their deaths, the black funeral banner still hung on
the crumbled exterior wall of Eissawi's family home.
Opinion polls have consistently shown that Iraqis,
with some exceptions, are eager to participate in
the elections, despite the campaign of intimidation
that is especially lethal in the Sunni Muslim areas
of central, northern and western Iraq. That
enthusiasm for voting was evident in interviews with
Iraqis across the country at the holiday's outset,
although the Sunni Arab minority, the insurgency's
main source of strength, stood as an exception.
"The elections are coming and we are going to vote,
and hopefully the next Eid will be better," said
Majida Alyas, a 42-year-old Baghdad mother who came
to a jouba, or outdoor meat market, to collect her
freshly slaughtered lamb for the traditional holiday
stew. "We have to be optimistic."
Nowhere is the sense of a new beginning more
evident than in Iraqi Kurdistan, in the north. The
region is comparatively unscathed by violence and
full of enthusiasm for the first elections since
Hussein's overthrow.
"Everyone is happy that none of our relatives are
held in Saddam's jails," said Hamid Ali, a
24-year-old office worker in the Kurdish city of
Sulaymaniya who spent much of the first day of the
holiday visiting friends and relatives and wishing
them Eid mubarak, or blessed Eid.
Yet even as Kurds celebrated and Shiites voiced
guarded optimism, members of Iraq's other major
group — Sunni Arabs — are reeling on this holiday.
Long the nation's dominant faction despite making up
only about 20% of the population, many Sunni Arabs
view the coming election as a U.S.-backed
contrivance to ensure their permanent subjugation to
rival Shiites and Kurds.
"No, I will not participate in the election because
there is no election under the American occupation,"
Sheik Amir Ahmed Azzawi said Friday during his
sermon to the Sunni congregation at the Muhammad
Qubancy mosque in Baghdad. "Anyone who is
participating in the political system today entered
the country sitting on an American tank, so anyone
who collaborates with them now we consider part of
the occupation."
In the largely Sunni Arab city of Mosul, Omar Abdul-Ghani
said his three children awoke on the first day of
Eid and were eager to go to a playground. But Mosul,
Iraq's third-largest city, has been transformed into
a battlefield.
"To be truthful, I didn't take them out because I
can't guarantee that I could protect them if
anything happened on the street, such as a blast or
the crossfire of a gun battle," said Abdul-Ghani,
33. "They had tears in their eyes because they
weren't able to go out and have fun. They kept on
looking at me as if I were to blame."
At the great cemetery in Najaf, scattered groups
picked their way among the graves, sprinkling
rosewater and leaving incense burning at the plots.
One tombstone bore the somber inscription: "You who
reads my writing, cry over my youth/Yesterday I was
alive and today I am dust."
The size of the burial ground — it is among the
world's largest — dwarfed the visitors. Shiites
across the globe yearn to inter their dead in
Najaf's sacred soil.
Saadoun Daoud, a grizzled 75-year-old in a white
head cloth, dishdasha gown and circular shades, spat
pumpkin seeds out the passenger window of a van.
Starting from Baghdad, about 100 miles to the north,
he and 13 family members spanning three generations
chanced al ziyarah, or "the visit," in the predawn
darkness.
"Either they kill us," he said, shrugging, "or we do
what we want."
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