The Rough Guide to Baghdad (Page 5)

It's late afternoon, another trip to Sadr City. One of my colleagues from the dive hotel and our translator roll out determined to find the Mahdi in action. They're out here somewhere; we've already seen a US patrol of two tanks and three armored Humvees.

On one of the slum's main thoroughfares, al-Radhewi Street, are several walls marked with a message in English. Big block letters read Vietnam Street. Farther on, a wall bears a crudely painted mural depicting a modified version of an infamous Abu Ghraib torture photo. It is the prisoner in the hood and cloak standing on a box, arms outstretched, electrical wires dangling from his limbs. Next to him in the mural is the Statue of Liberty, but in place of her torch she holds the lever of an electrical switch connected to the wires. Below is scrawled: The Freedom Form George Bosh. We snap photos and move on.

Then, before we find them, the Jeshi Mahdi find us. Two men in a sedan are suddenly next to us. "Pull over!" Now they are at our doors, hands on the pistols in their waistbands. "Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you photographing things?"

"Sahafee canadee, sahafee canadee!" I show them my counterfeit Canadian press pass. Our translator is talking fast, explaining that we are anti-occupation, that we are trying to show the truth. He's naming his family, naming sheiks, naming Sadr men who are old friends. The undercover Mahdi fire back questions and suggest that we get out of the car. We show them the digital photos of the graffiti and offer to erase all the shots, but we ignore their request to get out. More fast Arabic goes on. Finally the Mahdi begin to relax.

"This is called Vietnam Street because this is where we kill Americans," says one of them. "We are in a war with them. That is why we stopped you. You understand? We have to protect our people." The man in charge adjusts his pistol one more time, looks around, then says, "You can go." We thank them profusely and then hit the gas. The hard spike of adrenaline in my chest releases in a warm wash of endorphins.

The next day I head back looking for Sheik Edhary, but he's still underground. On our way a pickup truck just ahead of us abruptly reverses into our taxicab with a slam, then does a fast three-point turn over the median. Suddenly everyone is backing up and turning around fast.

"Fighting ahead. We have to go!" says Hussein, a translator, journalist and computer hacker who hangs out with our ragtag crew. The next day Al Jazeera reports "around twenty Iraqi resistance fighters" killed or wounded in clashes all over Sadr City.

At the offices of the District Advisory Council, a body "elected" in a hasty, poorly publicized, US-managed referendum, there's more evidence of war. "Sorry, man. Nobody around. We're just here to secure the building," says Staff Sgt. Josh York. The twenty-five-member DAC dispersed several weeks ago after their leader was blown away in a political hit. Now the council's compound is a small US firebase.

"They've been hitting us with RPGs every night," says Ser-geant York. "No casualties yet, but last night we took eleven RPGs, one at a time all through the night." The young soldier doesn't look nervous or afraid, just beat-down tired.

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