We arrived several hours too early. From the roof of the mosque, we watched the street below slowly fill with al-Sadr men, the leaders putting their prayer rugs down first. By the time the sermon was set to begin, there were thousands who jammed into the streets under the furnace sun. Abdelhadi al-Darragi, a middle-aged student of Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, gave the sermon. In it, he did not say anything new, but it was the venom and fury of his delivery that was so impressive. Muqtada's crowd suffered under the sun and chanted. Hundreds of young boys sang Muqtada's name, warming up the crowd. They were the most enthusiastic; they were the cheerleaders. A young man was handed the microphone and delivered the call to prayer in an anguished shriek, Allahu Akhbar! When the time came, the crowd prayed behind imam al-Darragi, imitating his movements. There were thousands of men arrayed toward Mecca, magnetized by belief, suddenly kneeling and pressing their heads to the ground. The street rippled and changed color as they prayed and the effect stretched for miles. Above the crowd, the public address system for the mosque broadcast the sermon at an incredible volume over the rooftops.

As the al-Mehdi faithful prayed in Sadr City, Muqtada was in Kufa threatening the coalition with suicide attacks, saying that many people had come to him and offered to become martyrs. The threat sounds like desperation. A senior cleric in Najaf had just called for the al-Mehdi Army to leave the holy city to save it from a bloody battle. But al-Sadr isn't going to leave because he needs conflict with the U.S. to start a widespread Shia revolution. He will stay as long as he can, but the open dissent of a religious leader speaking in the shrine of Ali is impossible to dismiss. There are important people who want the fighters out of the holy city, they just lack the means to force them out.

When I saw my al-Mehdi Army contact on Saturday afternoon, he said that if we had waited a little longer, we would have seen the Americans circle the al-Hekma mosque. The crowd had thinned down, the heat was a punishment, and I think this kept people from staying. I was sorry to have missed it. He said also they had come on Saturday morning, but strangely there was no fighting. I asked to return to the al-Mehdi-controlled sections of Sadr City and spend the night. It was impossible to understand the place without seeing how the rules changed at night. There had been arrests, and attacks on U.S. forces, but Western journalists were having a tough time working there. We agreed that I would spend Saturday night at his brother's house, but even this simple arrangement required the permission of an al-Mehdi Army sheik, and we went to obtain it.

By the time we arrived back at the headquarters of Muqtada al-Sadr, there was a fresh crisis. People had been shot in a crowded market in Sadr City, and the sheik was nowhere to be found. He had gone into hiding from American troops. A small group of Iraqi police looking for him were forced to wait outside the headquarters because the Muqtada men wouldn't let them in. The police finally settled on leaving the al-Sadr official a note.

At the attack site in Hamza square, there was a kid playing with the severed head of a donkey. That is what I saw first. A few feet away, an angry mob performed for a cameraman in front of a truck riddled with bullet holes, they shouted, "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada." On the ground in front of the market stalls was a shocking amount of blood. When the crowd saw me, I was quickly surrounded by furious men. Even children were whipped up into a frenzy; some carried long sticks. An Iraqi man who said he saw the attack insisted that American planes had flown over and killed people without provocation. "Was there any shooting or explosions before the attack?" "No," the man said, "nothing like that, it was completely unprovoked."

It turned out that no U.S. planes attacked the market. All the bullets came from the street level, and some of them had left what looked like bloody marks on the wall. It was important to ask more questions, look for a decent witness. Then someone in the crowd made an ugly threat, and we started to move away from the shattered truck. Mohammed argued with the man, who was hoarse from screaming, but we couldn't work any longer. Back at the car, the Sadr contact waited. When we all were inside and ready to go, the young boys attacked our car with sticks. We left the market, that horrible admixture of bloodshed, poverty and television. I gave up trying to figure out what happened there.

We drove across Sadr City to a family house where we were expected. As we waited for nightfall, our host, Rahim, had an extraordinary meal prepared for us. His young sons brought the dishes and set them down on the floor. In Iraq it is common for the host's sons to kiss the guests on the cheek. They were not like the children we had just seen at the market.

The water in the simple house was ice cold; the men turned on a generator for the computer. We took a break in the warmth of the house. In Rahim's guest room, I had the feeling that the war was breaking up into a series of disconnected events, incomplete stories. Witnesses who lie. I wanted to make one last trip to see Muhanned, who might talk about what was happening in Sadr City that night. My contact agreed to come with me, the only way another meeting could take place. Mohammed got the yellow cab down the narrow alleys of the neighborhood. Local men in kaffiyehs directed him so he wouldn't hit the walls when making a turn. When we arrived at Muhanned's house, the cell leader told us that the al- Mehdi Army expected U.S. soldiers to arrive at the mosque during the night and he was waiting for orders. Muhanned wouldn't tell me what the al-Mehdi Army was planning and we left a few minutes later.

Back at Rahim's house, I learned that an al-Sadr sheik had stopped by with an order for me. My permission to spend the night in Sadr City was not granted. I was apparently causing them some inconvenience. Sheik Amir al Husseini told a friend that if I wanted to stay, I couldn't leave the house during the night. Otherwise, it would be best to leave the city for central Baghdad, he explained. Leaving Sadr City was the only option. I was not allowed to return to the mosque and see what was going on. My hosts insisted that I stay put or leave for Baghdad. They were apologetic.

Mohammed drove the yellow cab down the dead streets minutes before the 11 p.m. curfew, trying to follow our friend's directions out of Sadr City. We turned onto a vacant side street and when we reached the middle of the block, a man fired his rifle into the air. The white tracks of the bullets went up in straight lines; the weapon and the man who fired it were invisible.

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