Thursday, April 08, 2004

Days I do not want to forget.

The day, Tuesday, the 8th of April 2003.

The fighting continues in many neighborhoods in Baghdad and the sound of machine guns is heard everywhere in the city. The scene of the day is that of the American tanks standing at the bridges; they were not crossing the bridge and I don’t know why but they were shooting at targets on the opposite bank where there were some men dressed like civilians and carrying RPG-7’s, those are mainly Fedayeen and Arab volunteers.
Some press workers were injured today in the fights.

People are traveling in Baghdad carrying white flags on their cars; now it’s almost impossible to reach some areas in the city as there’s great danger of being accidentally shot by fire.

Sahhaf is still lying in a crazy way but it seems that yesterday’s bombing in Al-Mansour has cut the communications among the commanders and no one is receiving instructions from the “higher command”.
My -friend and neighbor- Ahmed rushed to me, I knew from the look on his face that something wrong has happened, he said “come quickly, my grandfather has passed away”
My father, Ali and I went to Ahmed’s house to see that the old man has died an hour ago; he was over 90 years old. Yesterday we visited them in their house when the old man’s health deteriorated and I remembered his son telling him “Saddam is gone” the man smiled in his bed and I don’t know whether ho got the idea or not but I know that he always dreamed to see Saddam gone.
We were confused, how to deal with the situation? How to get to their family cemetery in Najaf? It’s impossible and most of the roads are blocked. So we decided to bury him in Baratha cemetery here in Baghdad near the river. Ali and my father went with Ahmed to the hospital to deal with the paper work and when he came back he told me about the situation in the cemetery. It was a tragedy.
The funeral was held in Ahmed’s house in the garden, in an atmosphere of explosions, bombing and exchanged fire.

By Mohammed.

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