NYT: A Cruel Sequel: Bombs Destroy Children’s Memorial

A Cruel Sequel: Bombs Destroy Children’s Memorial

Damien Cave | New York Times | August 16, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 16 — The explosion that awakened Muhammad Khaitan at dawn today seemed sadly routine. The dust rising skyward a few blocks from his home suggested yet another attack on a police checkpoint.

But for Mr. Khaitan, the target proved far more personal and depraved. Two bombs, witnesses said, shredded a memorial commemorating the death of his 14-year-old son and two dozen other children who were killed last summer when a car bomber sped into a crowd receiving candy from American troops.

A monument to life — a statue of debris from the attack set on a pedestal with the victims’ names — had become another casualty of what many here now consider an undeclared civil war.

“All they left was the foundation,” said Mr. Khaitan, 41. “They don’t want the next generation to remember how we suffered.”

If grief comes in waves, the memorial’s destruction clearly yanked Mr. Khaitan, like an undertow, back into the sorrows of the past. During an interview at a Baghdad hospital where he works as a medical assistant, his eyes glossed with tears. Though his boss looked on, he relived his past and current horror without being asked.

“I was at the market, shopping like usual,” he said. “And my son was with his uncle, my brother.”

Suddenly, he said he heard an explosion. Sectarian violence had already started to erupt in the capital but his neighborhood of New Baghdad, a predominantly poor Shiite area to the south, still seemed safe. He didn’t panic. “When anything happens, we depend on God,” he said.

The calm quickly shattered. His aunt and a cousin ran to his car when he arrived home, frantically shouting. Mr. Khaitan’s son, Saif Muhammad, and his best friend, Hassan Mujid, who lived with the family, had been injured, they said, and possibly killed in the blast.

Not knowing if they were dead, “I lost it,” Mr. Khaitan said. He threw the bags of food in anger and rushed a few blocks away to where the attack occurred. Colored slippers, car parts and bloodied flesh covered the street. The bomber had used a sport utility vehicle and the blast shattered the windows of several buildings.

Mr. Khaitan discovered from neighbors that his brother had taken Saif to a local hospital. “I tried to go,” he said, widening his eyes to keep from crying, “but I didn’t get there in time.”

The doctors told him his son died minutes after the attack from two pieces of shrapnel that punctured his chest.

Mr. Khaitan paused. Unlike many Iraqis who appear far older than their age, he looked young, in striped acid-washed jeans, with only a few strands of gray hair. Dr. Shaalan Joodah al-Abboudi, the hospital’s director general, looked up and shuffled a few papers. He said that another one of his employees had been missing for eight days, and appeared to have been kidnapped. Mr. Khaitan’s tragedy, he said, was one of many among the hospital’s staff.

“I feel like his pain is my pain,” said Dr. Abboudi. “This is the life we live here. We must face it.”

Mr. Khaitan held up the cover of an old copy of a local newspaper showing snapshots of his son and the other children killed. They all smiled from within small circles that would fit in a locket.

This, he said, was what the monument represented. He said he didn’t know who the attackers might be, but he had his suspicions. “All I can say is that the police checkpoint was only 150 meters away,” he said.

There was no anger in his voice. He said that he kept despair and vengeance at bay with the help of God. A few months ago he said he had been saved from death while on his way to a funeral for an in-law. At a fake checkpoint, a man in a police uniform, in a moment of mercy, told him to flee. Minutes later, shots rang out.

Mr. Khaitan said he trusted that it was God’s will to protect his life and take his son’s. In Iraq, he added, after so much war, how could anyone be surprised by death and destruction.

“It is the fate of humankind always to suffer,” he said. “Nothing happens without the order of God.”

Wisam A. Habeeb contributed reporting for this article.