Everybody's dead. I've been trying to call the family in Fallujah with whom I stayed last year for months now. Finally today - the day before I am to leave - I called again and got through. I asked to speak to Mohammed - the eldest son of the house.
The old woman on the other end of the line paused. "Who is this?"
"I'm Tarek Lubani, the man who visited last year."
She remembered me immediately, asked a few questions to confirm, then cut right to the chase:
"Mohammed intaha" - Mohammed finished. Mohammed is finished. Mohammed was finished. I can't quite translate it.
I knew it, actually. The chances of any individual surviving a full year in Iraq can't be that good, especially living in Fallujah. He died in the second siege of Fallujah.
Ibrahim - his brother and the awkwardly quiet man who I spent the most time with - also died. He was unarmed and refused exit by the US forces in the leadup to the same second siege. In the days (or weeks?) before the second siege of Fallujah, the US occupation forces started turning away MAMs - Military/Marriage-Aged Males and stopping them from exiting the city. I guess Ibrahim waited too long, so he was sent back.
Everybody I asked about, every name I could think of, was dead. Every house I had visited was destroyed. Only the woman remained, the mother of a household that was now full of her grandchildren but not her children.
The only exception was the man who stole my money. He's alive, though most of his family is dead. This contains no irony for the people I told. Islam teaches that the martyr (shaheed) is chosen by God, and that only very special and deserving people are honoured with such a death.
After I ran out of names, the old woman reminded me of more. Remember this one? He's dead. That one? His whole family's dead. The other one? Him too. It was numbing. "Inna lillaah..." my voice trailed off. We belong to God (and to him we shall return).
"Come visit us, Tarek. I want to see you and make sure you're safe. You know voices on telephones. It's just not the same. Come visit us my son."
tarek
Epilogue (The day after):
I didn't visit, but on my way out of Iraq, I stopped on the highway to take a good look at what had happened in Fallujah. A good deal of the fighting happened in neighbourhoods adjacent to the highway, so the damage was obvious. Everything is destroyed. It looks like the scenes of World War II that I thought were so primitive and so last century.