"Baghdad, the city that dreams of death", Robert Fisk, again!

[anarchy1999]

Suicide bombs are now daily occurrences in Iraq. But what of those who escape death? Robert Fisk recounts the story of Abu Ali, who survived an attack that killed eight

By Robert Fisk

02/03/05 "The Independent" -- The suicide bomber came in mid afternoon.

The few survivors who saw the pale-faced man described him as red haired, with a long beard. "He asked some of the people at the gate if they would be kind enough to move their cars so he could park," Abu Ali says. "He was very polite. He was driving a Caprice. Then people noticed he was parking in a way that wouldn't let him drive away." The one memory all of them had was that the bearded man was playing music and Koranic recitations on his cassette player. "In one sense," Abu Ali remarks, "he was already dead."

Baghdad today is a place without names. Abu Ali, the "father of Ali", really does have a son called Ali but he pleads for me, as he nervously stirs his over-thick cappuchino again and again, to cross his family name from my notebook. Each time I meet Abu Ali, he has survived another catastrophe. Last year, it was the kidnapping and release of Ali. Now he has escaped his own death, but it cost five weeks of painful recovery in­ the Yarmouk Hospital. Even the Arab company for which he works must remain anonymous. It had already received a threat, "a phone call from something called the "20th Battalion" of some organisation with a religious name", but the company's officials had not yet found out what they were supposed to have done to upset the caller. The office building stood close to the road. Then the bomber came. Abu Ali talks quickly, anxious to recall every detail so he can reassess his own miracle of survival.

"I had brought my brand new BMW to work for the first time and I was worried it might get scratched if I parked it in the garage so I parked in the street outside and asked the security guard to keep an eye on it." His name was also Ali, and Abu Ali noticed he looked miserable. "The poor guy was just sitting there and he told me, I don't feel all right this morning. I feel upset'. That's why he was reading the Koran. He read it all day, right up to the last moment."


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7959.htm