Left Behind

My morning started like every week day. No power all over the night and the morning, heat took over me and made it difficult to get ready. Life goes on! The bus came and I got in to go to work.

A sad surprise was waiting for us in the road, as we were still collecting other co-workers from there houses, we had to take a branch road because the main road between the houses are blocked for fixations. The bus stopped; there was plenty of people and cars coming in the opposite side, which completely blocked the road. One of the co-workers who lived near by said that a police officer lived here was killed last night, so this is his funeral.

The bus is still, we could not go forward because all of the cars coming in the opposite side, we could go back, there a lot of cars behind. Minutes later, the casket approached, borne on a pick up car, also had no way to pass, so Iraqi soldiers spread on the street and started controlling the traffic to open the road. They were running holding their rifles, I closed my ears with my palms in order not to hear the annoying voice of shooting, and luckily they didn’t shoot.

Women co-workers began sobbing, one of them her son got killed last year. Then we heard the women of the family of the killed hysterically screaming in shock of his death, which is a common thing in Iraqi funerals, a thing which I never got used to and always gave me a horrible feeling. The sobbing inside the bus increased, then we had to go back and cross through the broken street…

I couple of tears fell from my eyes; I had a feeling mixed of anger and frustration. It was unbearable! WHY??? A young man! The most annoying feeling was my sympathy with his family, those who have to carry the burden of his death, his mother! What does she feel? His relatives, loved ones?
Those who left behind?

I always wondered! The attention is mostly on the dead! And what about those who left behind? What if he was the provider of the family?? What would those behind him do? What about the feelings of grief, anger and other feelings those he left behind suffer? No voice, no one cares, they are left in the corners dragging their anguish with them the rest of their lives. What about them? Unanswered question…..


June 4, 2008