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Monday, May 14, 2007

The Flight From Iraq - N.Y Times
... On Sept. 2, 2006, Lujai’s husband went to work and prepared for the first of three operations scheduled for the day. At the end of his shift a patient came in unexpectedly; no other doctor was available, so Adil stayed to treat him. Adil was driving home when his way was blocked by four cars. Armed men surrounded him and dragged him from his car, taking him to Sadr City. Five hours later, his dead body was found on the street.
...
Abu Ziyad, for example, is a 60-year-old artist, a Christian, who used to have his own gallery in Baghdad’s Karrada district. Soon after the Americans arrived in 2003, he began to be threatened for reproducing the human image, which is forbidden by Islamic law. His gallery was burned in August 2004, and the violence seemed to be growing — and growing out of control. Neighbors were killed, houses exploded, with little evident pattern. “You go shopping in Iraq and an explosion happens, and you see a man dead on his steering wheel,” Abu Ziyad told me when I met him and his wife in January in Damascus. “We got headaches from the smell of blood and explosions in Iraq,” his wife added. In October 2004 their house was set on fire as they slept, and they escaped only by climbing from their roof to their neighbor’s. On the front wall of their house someone had scrawled, “Collaborators.” ...

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