Iraqis Denounce Slaughter of Innocents

BAGHDAD —  He was a blacksmith with a new job and a baby on the way when a bomb killed him in the morning light Sunday.

He and his father had hustled through a cool dawn past razor wire and tanks to wait in line to be searched by U.S. soldiers guarding the Green Zone, the sector of Baghdad where the Coalition Provisional Authority is headquartered. The two men worked for the CPA, happy to be employed in a country where jobs seem like miracles. They stood together talking, and then, at about 8 a.m., it happened -- an explosion, a whirl of flame, another black smear on the skyline.

Hassan Jasim Salman Merza died with shrapnel in his neck before the smoke lifted from a place called Assassin’s Gate.

He was one of at least 18 Iraqis killed Sunday by a suicide bomber near the most heavily guarded U.S. compound in the world. Many of those in line were poor men like Merza -- laborers, blacksmiths and cleaners working for the CPA on the vast grounds around one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces. It is calm inside those walls, and for the Iraqi workers, it is an escape from Baghdad’s angry streets.

But in a nation seething with bombers and insurgents -- who condemn even a bricklayer working for the occupation as a traitor -- such privilege has a price.

Merza’s body was brought to the morgue shortly after noon.

His uncle, Qasim, collapsed against a brick wall. “Why?” he cried. “My nephew was going to his work. Now they’ve taken him from me. Why? He’s just like my son. I gave him my daughter for marriage.”

The blue, iron gate to the morgue opened. A dented pickup truck entered. In the back, under a blanket, lay the body of Mehdi Abbas, a traffic policemen killed by the same bomb that claimed Merza.

A group of young men gathered and stared. A security guard held a Kalashnikov rifle; another snapped on rubber gloves. A door creaked and a big man wearing white rubber boots and green scrubs wheeled a bloody gurney to the pickup. He cranked it, grabbed the blanket and steered Abbas away.

“What kind of holy war is this?” asked Jabbar Challub, a neighbor of Merza’s. “Is it holy war to kill innocent Iraqi people? They should kill Americans. These workers have harmed no one. They were waiting in line to go and make a living. We are living in such a bad time that we can only depend on God.”

“It’s hard to get jobs these days, and Hassan was glad to have his,” said Tahseen Ali, another neighbor waiting at the morgue.

“The Iraqis need to control their own security. Only then will the bombing stop,” said Challub, a former Iraqi army officer.

Hassan Flayeh rushed into the morgue’s courtyard with a group of relatives.

“We haven’t heard from my father and three nephews,” he said. “They work as cleaners for the CPA. Normally they leave the house at 6 a.m. and arrive at the Green Zone at 7.

“We are very worried. I checked three hospitals. I didn’t find them and I came here. We are living in too much pain.”

His father was not in the morgue, so Flayeh left for another hospital.

Another man ran into the courtyard -- Merza’s brother, Haider. He fell to the ground next to his uncle, Qasim.

“Oh, my brother. Oh, my brother.”

“Why,” whispered Qasim, “did we let him go to work today?”

Merza was 25 years old. He married his first cousin, Qasim’s daughter, Zahraa, in what is a common Iraqi practice. In a few months, she will give birth to their first child in Sadr City, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Baghdad. Merza earned about 5,000 dinars -- or $4.50 -- a day.

Workers next door to the morgue were building a new office. There was the clatter of bricks, scrapes of chisels. The sun was strong.

Merza’s father, Jasim, walked through the morgue’s gate. Young men kept their eyes on him and stepped back.

A thin man in stained overalls, Jasim had bandages on his hands. Blood had dried on his face. It could have been his; it could have been his son’s.

He leaned against the wall and crouched. He listened to conversations around him and lighted a cigarette. He didn’t know what to do, and neither did anyone else.

Jasim stood up and walked to the window of the morgue office. He leaned in and said to the man shadowed inside: “Please. I’m asking nothing from you. Just please give me the body of my son.”

“Not today,” said the man in the window. “The doctors aren’t here and your son must be examined. Come back tomorrow.”

Jasim shook his head. His family and friends led him to a van. The door slid closed.

Some read verses from the Koran, keeping count on their prayer beads. The van drove away with an empty coffin on its roof.