Iraqis get tattoos for ID purposes-Beheadings, burnings can result in unknown corpses

[babylonsister]

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_5723184

Iraqis get tattoos for ID purposes
Beheadings, burnings can result in unknown corpses
By Christian Berthelsen
Los Angeles Times

Baghdad, Iraq - The ghastly procession of decapitated corpses and mutilated bodies that has defined death in Iraq drove Firas Adil Saadi to do something that once was the province of convicts and degenerates in Iraq: He got a tattoo.

The 28-year-old Shiite Muslim has a marking on his right shoulder so his family may avoid the despair of not being able to identify his remains. In ornate Arabic calligraphy, it says "My brother Husam," after a cousin who suffered such a fate. Saadi also carries paper identification, but he believes it would be burned beyond recognition in a bombing.

"The idea came to me after seeing these daily incidents during which some corpses are mutilated and distorted, some were even headless, and the fact that the identity cards are either lost or destroyed," said Saadi, a trader who works in Baghdad's Shorja market, which has suffered numerous bombings. "Even the water of the firefighting equipment is destroying them, so I thought about an irremovable identity card, which is the tattoo."

In Iraq, it has come to this: Faced with the omnipresent specter of death, an increasing number of people, mainly Shiite men, are willing to contravene social taboo to accommodate it.


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[Skidmore]

1. The only thing I can think of right now is that

Iraq has become one giant defacto concentration camp.

[Monkeyman]

2. yep

[Fridays Child]

3. A very astute observation. eom

[az chela]

4. How heatbreaking this is .Innocent people who have suffered

so wrongly for so many years because they live in a country that has lots of oil and the criminals in this country want that oil!!!!!
IMPEACH NOW
END THE WAR

[MikeNearMcChord]

5. I guess a better version of Hell for those who got us into

this (and those who supported)war is to see the faces of those who died plastered everywhere forever and listen to the wails of the bereaved forever. God I am ashamed these people living in my country.

[babylonsister]

7. Every day I'm ashamed, and no one shows any conscience or

care about what's going on.

[Solly Mack]

6. ...

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