Identifying corpses
I met a young man from Sadr City this week. Among the several tasks he performs out of loyalty to his religious leader, radical Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the most gruesome has to be collecting the unclaimed corpses from Baghdad's hospitals and morgues in order to bury them.
Often, he explained, the bodies are so badly mutilated the victims are impossible to identify. Despite the fact that neither of us spoke the other's language, there was no misinterpretation when he made the universal symbol of a head being decapitated.
Victims of ethnic violence
I read stories each day about bodies being discovered in Baghdad neighborhoods, in garbage dumps outside the city, or in remote Iraqi outposts. They're often found wrapped in plastic tarps, or disposed in mass graves.
Victims turn up showing signs of being tortured, such as having had their eyes gouged, or their bodies punctured by a drill. More victims of ethnic violence in a nation where it seems the scores will never be settled.
I take a clinical, matter-of-fact approach when I hear about Iraq's daily death tolls. With such an endless body count, one can almost be a little blasé when reading, or more likely for our purpose of news coverage, tabulating the latest figures.
More than numbers
But, meeting a person who collects the corpses, video tapes them in an effort to identify them, then washes and covers them in cloth to prepare them for the burial where people will pray for them, really gave me a reason to pause and reflect.
The statistics we report shouldn't be perceived as abstract or anonymous. As Iraqi President Jalal Talabani recently stated, behind every unidentified corpse is "an orphan, a starving father or a grieving wife."
Freedom for extremists only
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