Every Man in This Village Is a Liar_ An Education in War - Megan K. Stack [54]
There had been suicide bombings in Kurdistan, at the headquarters of the two main Kurdish parties. There were a lot of people dead. How many? A lot, a lot. Dozens, for sure. Maybe seventy. Maybe a hundred. We were the closest and so we should rush there as fast as we could. In my mind I released the story of sacrifice as I’d released so many other stories when news broke—let go the string and let it rise into the sky until it disappeared.
Driving into the mountains of Kurdistan is like leaving Iraq for another country. The Kurds are not Arabs. They had problems of their own—the civil war fought among Kurdish parties; the armed Muslim fundamentalists the Kurds had allowed to flourish in the hills near the Iranian border. But there were moments when the rest of Iraq came barreling up to Kurdistan, and all their internal rivalries drifted off as light as blown dandelion seeds, forgotten for the night and collected again in the morning. This was one of those times: suicide bombers had blown themselves up at the same minute in the headquarters of the two rival political parties. Because it was a holiday, the party faithful—the men and their children—had called on the headquarters to pay respects. The message was meant for all Kurds, and it was not hard to translate: We hate you, and we will slaughter you.
We found Irbil smothered in thick clouds. A cold nosebleed of rain dripped down over empty streets. By then we knew at least one hundred were dead, maybe more. A middle-aged man limped through the wet dimness, his pants and shirt smeared with blood. He was cut by shrapnel and he was in shock, stumbling homeward.
“We didn’t feel anything,” he told us woodenly. “The place. It was all fire and smoke. Until now, I cannot hear anything.”
He had gone to pay his respects to the Kurdish Democratic Party. He had been caught up in the explosion, and now he wandered the streets.
“Why do you think this is happening?” I asked.
“You understand the matter better than I do,” he said coldly, staring at my American face.
It was quiet for a minute. I heard Raheem groping for another way to phrase the question. The man snorted.
“This is the freedom of sacrifice,” he said. “It seems we must sacrifice for Iraq’s freedom. First we got rid of a bloody regime, and now we must sacrifice still more blood.”
And then he limped off, into the rainy night, into the great uncertainty of Kurdistan and Iraq beyond.
A long driveway stretched down and then twisted around to the side of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Kurds came from the shadows, gathered around, and bore us inside. They were angry and they wanted to show their wounds to the world. Tattered party streamers still flapped in the naked winter trees. A green banner announced: We welcome our respected guests.
A hurricane had been locked inside the main hall. The couches were blasted open, the tiles peeled down from the ceiling, speakers thrown askew, empty plastic chairs strewn like toys. Plastic flowers oozed on the ground, scorched and gummy. There were tangles of ribbon, hats, and shoes that had been blown off the victims. Children’s shoes, too, and gaudy little hats like Easter bonnets. I looked at all those hats and shoes and knew the people who had put them on this morning were probably dead. We were stepping around in wet puddles, and in the back of my mind I was remembering the cow, and the spreading tide of its blood. It seemed like a long time ago. But this is not blood, I told myself, this will be … water from broken pipes, or gasoline, or just anything else, something ordinary, the fluids of a building. But then I looked down and saw what I’d already known: Blood. Puddles of blood spread over the floor, and pieces of flesh floated in the red slicks. It was on my shoes; I waded in it. Animal blood in the morning and human blood by nightfall. The blood was fresh under my feet.
One day killed the next in Iraq, and the months rose up to murder their forebears, and it all piled up into one year and then