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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Sunday, Aug. 8
As we drove to Sadr City, Andy took deep breaths. He hated the ride in. "Once I'm there, I'm fine," he said. It's true, he was fine once he was in. I also hated the ride in, but I didn't have a ritual beyond waiting for the fighters at the checkpoints to order us out of the car and ask us for the safe-passage letter. But that didn't happen today. We arrived in Sadr City at around 9:30 in the morning. As we drove through the furnace air and the nearly empty streets, heading for the sheik's house, Iraqi fighters in Geyara shot down an American helicopter with an antiaircraft missile. It happened quite close to where we were driving, in front of the al-Quds mosque. On our way to the mosque, we could see Apaches flying cover. One fired down into the houses near the helicopter crash site. We saw the white flashes of the cannons as they were fired. We drove closer to the crash site and parked. As soon as the car stopped moving, Andy took his video camera and ran toward the mosque, disappearing inside the battle.
After a short lull, a convoy of Bradleys surrounded the mosque and al-Mahdi fighters started to converge on the scene, cutting Andy off from us. When I called Andy, a fighter answered his phone, but that wasn't the real problem. Fighters often take cellphones from journalists as a security measure and then give them back when the operation is finished. The real problem was the fighting was just getting started and there was no way to move.
On the opposite block, I watched Apaches come in fast and low, looking for targets, while Bradleys fired at militiamen converging on the crash site. The downing of the helicopter was the beginning, not the end, of battle. Fighters carrying rocket launchers sprinted down our alley in groups of four and five. During one of the helicopter passes, the pilot brought his Black Hawk so low that I could see the bootlaces of one of the gunners. When the machine turned to face the crowd of Iraqis on the corner near the mosque, I felt ill. There was the black shape of the machine and a shuddering sound from the rotors. It did not fire at us.
While I was trying to contact Andy, I was swarmed by kids who wanted to know where I lived. They told me their names in between approaches of the U.S. helicopters. They showed me how they made Molotov cocktails for their older brothers and fathers to throw at American vehicles. One young boy, more outgoing than the others, asked me to name the great Shiite imams in chronological order. After I gave him the first four, we were friends.
Soon, I was sitting in a nearby house with a family, drinking cold water. The women were terrified; but inside the walls of the house, the hospitality of the patriarch reigned. Inside, there were only old men and young boys, as all the fighting-age men were outside with weapons. The family that took me in had nothing, not even clean water or electricity. But everything they had, they offered their guest.
From the house, I made a series of calls to the sheik to tell him Andy's situation and asked him to come to the al-Quds mosque to help get him out. The sheik said he would come. I waited.
Andy, unable to move through the battle near the mosque and the crashed helicopter, was taken in by an Iraqi man and given shelter, while Bradleys sealed off the street and fired at the Mahdi fighters. After a few rough hours, Andy reappeared with the sheik, who had somehow managed to find him in the blocks near the mosque. We drove around the sector and stumbled upon U.S. recovery crews, dragging the shattered carcass of the helicopter down the road. The sheik was overjoyed when Andy filmed it. Clusters of Iraqis watched the recovery crews from the street corners, hiding from the Americans and laughing.
As I write this evening, news that U.S. Marines are fighting in the center of Najaf is just coming over the wires. Muqtada's block has been bombed, and a great torrent of smoke is boiling out of the old city. In Sadr City, where the Mahdi army has almost universal support among the 2 million people who live there, the fighting is not coming to an end. It is just beginning.
