One mom's horrific day in Baghdad

From Editor & Publisher:

A few months ago, the McClatchy bureau in Baghdad -- from which some of the best reporting on the war (going back to its Knight Ridder days) has emerged -- launched a blog featuring dispatches by some of its native-born correspondents. Their first names are deleted for security reasons....

Feb. 12:

We were asked to send the next of kin to whom the remains of my nephew, killed on Monday in a horrific explosion downtown, can be handed over. The young men of the family, as was customary, rose to go.

NO! cried his mother. Isnt my son enough?? Must we lose more of our youth?? You know there are unknowns who wait at the Morgue to either kill or kidnap the men who dare reach its doors. I will go.

So we went, his mum, his other aunt and I.

I was praying all the way there.

I never thought a day would come when it was the women of the family, who would be safer on the roads. All the men are potential terrorists it seems, and are therefore to be cut down on sight. This is the logic of today, is it not? To kill evil before it even has a chance to take root.

When we got there, we were given his remains. And remains they were. From the waist down was all they could give us. We identified him by the cell phone in his pants pocket. If you want the rest, you will just have to look for yourselves. We dont know what he looks like.

Now begins a horror that surpasses anything I could have possibly envisioned . We were led away, and before long a foul stench clogged my nose and I retched. With no more warning we came to a clearing that was probably an inside garden at one time; all round it were patios and rooms with large-pane windows to catch the evening breeze Baghdad is renowned for. But now it had become a slaughterhouse, only instead of cattle, all around were human bodies. On this side; complete bodies; on that side halves; and EVERYWHERE body parts.

We were asked what we were looking for, upper half replied my companion, for I was rendered speechless. Over there. We looked for our boys broken body between tens of other boys remains; with our bare hands sifting them and turning them.

We found him millennia later, took both parts home, and began the mourning ceremony.