Fat Kid’s note: The Shadow initially came out of retirement to cover Jared’s disappearance, but having gotten a taste of his old journalistic fervor, he has taken it upon himself to do some real reporting. Noticing that other people his age had no idea what (other than fighting) was really going on over seas, he booked a flight to the Middle East, and slowly made his way toward Baghdad. This the first in a series of articles aimed at informing twenty-somethings who don’t much care about stuff, and junk.
The Shadow reports, on location in Baghdad
BAGHDAD. As the rosy-fingered dawn brightens this ruin of a city one is reminded of history’s most dramatic sieges and sickening sights – the earthquake addled walls of Jericho, the degradation of Hektor’s corpse at the fall of Troy, the firing of V-2 rockets into London, and the concentration camps at Dachau, Auschwitz and others during the Second World War.
Through a gap in a crumbling wall I see guerrilla warriors run past, spraying shots at no one, just trying to cover themselves until they reach the shelter of the next burned out car or pile of rubble. It seems like the end of civilization, and it’s only spreading.
This morning, a bomb went off in a crowded market place, killing forty-three of those guys whose names I can’t remember, either Sunnis or Shiites, and that group’s leaders vowed revenge. An enraged guy with a turban rattled on for half an hour about how the world belonged to Allah, and that he would help them smite those other guys, who were definitely big jerks.
The first group, however, claims that Allah is totally down with them, and that they were only responding to the other guys who killed some of their boys down by Akbar’s house the other night. Akbar’s house exploded, and has not been seen since, so we are still not sure exactly where the alleged incident took place.
One of those UN guys said that the first group shouldn’t do that anymore, and that they should use their words instead of hitting, or shooting rocket propelled grenades into maternity wards full of orphaned and widowed single mothers with terminal illnesses.
I had no idea, but it turns out that the two groups are not only fighting over whose religion is less silly, but also over certain recently blown up bits of desert. One particular patch of useless sand is particularly sought after for some stupid reason, like maybe the scorching heat there is slightly less scorching than it is everywhere else. One of those groups is willing to stop at nothing to get it back from whatever group of crazy guys with machine guns controls it now.
On the scene of the explosion, lots of ladies with long clothing literally wailed, while the men shouted slogans like, “Only violence can end violence!” This one guy, apparently a cleric of some sort, with at least fifty hit points and a +1 AK-47, spoke to the crowd. “The violence that was the cause of this retribution must be repeated, so we can keep them from further retaliating against us for retaliating against them for retaliating against us for retaliating against them for retaliating against us. . .” and his speech went on like that for at least another ten minutes, when he finally got back to the incident that sparked the whole thing – back in 1992 some guy from some religious group stepped on the Air Jordan sneakers of a guy from another religious group. “I know it didn’t work last time,” that religious guy continued, “but if we retaliate just one more time that’ll be it. They’ll give in, and then we’re the winners. Allah be praised!”
That other guy, the guy whose Jordans got slightly dusty, returned my phone call just before press time, saying, “I forget which group I belong to, but we’re the real Muslims. We believed in Allah first, and had his book way before it got all popular. Those guys are such poseurs.”
I spent yesterday hiding on a rooftop, staking out insurgents from some group waiting to see who they were going to make up an excuse to kill. Peering over the edge of the building, I could see nothing but desolation: smoke rising from several places along the horizon, disheveled cars screaming past at top speed, soldiers yelling all loud and doing military stuff. In the space of a day I heard as many shots as you could hear in an hour in Camden, NJ, so it’s clear that tempers are running high.
This morning things look worse yet.
Comments (1)
I smell a Pulitzer! Most certainly a Pulitzer if the Shadow ends up on Al Jazeera and its sister network CBS stylin’ headless like David Pearl.
Posted by Decanus | February 21, 2007 4:21 AM
Posted on February 21, 2007 04:21