Najaf, a desert city at the edge of a flood plain, with its great gold dome of the shrine rising over the necropolis, was filled with pilgrims and everyone else. The city was devoted to its sacred dead. During the hot hours of the afternoon, the city emptied, but at around 6, residents woke up from their siestas and opened their shops. The city was busy and the sheik seemed to know it well.

After leaving Muqtada's house, Andy and I followed the sheik to evening prayers at the shrine. We walked up Rasul Street, a busy street where I have many friends. At the mosque was the usual spectacle of families carrying their dead along a circuit through the shrine gates before burying them in sacred ground, shouting, "Allah, Allah, il Allah." Andy filmed the hundreds of praying Sadr supporters, holding his camera close to the face of the imam, Jabbar al Khafaji. The sheik kept us from being thrown out.

Later that evening in the mosque, I spoke to the sheik Ali Smeisem, a senior advisor to Muqtada, about the precarious nature of the cease-fire. I asked if the truce was going to collapse. "The violations were completely against the accepted peace plan," Ali Smeisem said. In his late 50s, he spoke with a serious and measured style common among diplomats. "We gave instructions to the al-Mahdi army not to target American forces, but they shot the guards of the house. We are peace seekers."

In retaliation for the attacks against Muqtada's house, the Mahdi army kidnapped Iraqi police officers. It seemed the militia was trying to preserve a balance, avoid all-out warfare, yet still respond to the attacks at al-Sadr's house.

When I asked Smeisem if the Mahdi army would participate in the Iraqi elections scheduled in January, he said yes, it would. I was surprised. They were getting ready to field candidates in national elections. The U.S. would certainly find an electoral victory for the Mahdi difficult to live with in post-Saddam Iraq. If one accepted that logic, the drive to crush Muqtada would have to begin before the U.S. elections in November and Iraqi elections in January.

I knew the war was going to start again, but I didn't stay in Najaf. The mobilization order, police kidnappings, bellicose statements of the new Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, all pointed to renewed fighting. At the time, though, I thought it was important to return to Baghdad. Besides, the sheik wanted to be dropped off in Sadr City, and he wanted to leave immediately.

That night, after leaving Smeisem at the shrine, we found a pilgrim hotel and slept fitfully.

Wednesday, Aug. 4

In the early morning, we left for Baghdad. Our car broke down south of Latayfiya, one of the ambush towns, so we caught a minibus into Baghdad. The fighting would start in less than 24 hours.

Thursday, Aug. 5

The manic acceleration started. From here on out, each day would be worse than the previous day, less predictable, all guarantees of safety steadily eroded.

Andy and I were coming back from the Associated Press office when we heard that U.S. and al-Mahdi forces were fighting in Najaf, that the battles were fierce, were not skirmishes, and the U.S. was claiming hundreds of fighters killed. We quickly called the sheik in Sadr City and asked permission to meet him in his own sector. Sadr City always follows Najaf in violence and we wanted to make sure we would be allowed through the checkpoints. The Sadr sheik agreed to let us come. We didn't stop at our hotel; we went straight to Sadr City. Without his permission, the door to the Shiite district would have been locked, but he wanted journalists to document the resistance, and he wanted the resistance to be on television.

We arrived in the afternoon to find Sadr City sealed by al-Mahdi checkpoints. Hundreds of fighters in black were guarding the major intersections with rocket launchers, rifles and mortars. At the intersection closest to the sheik's house, we stood in the sun watching the fighters wire artillery shells as roadside bombs, then cover the devices with bits of scrap metal.

The sheik directed traffic and posed for photographs. An Iraqi fighter with his face covered said, "We are going to fuck them. We are going to destroy them. The Americans violated the truce." When I asked him his name, he said it was "Muqtada."

Battles between U.S. and Sadr forces erupted later in the day, just as the Mahdi army was kicking us out of town. According to one story, another militia official had seen us and had become irritated with the media presence. Across the rooftops, we watched a cloud of smoke and dust rise from an air strike, but our guides would not allow us to stop. At least 26 people were killed in Sadr City on Thursday, bloodier than some of the worst days in Najaf.

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