Every man in this village is a liar CHAPTER 6: The living Martyr

Background DAY OF ASHURA: The Islamic holy day is a voluntary day of fasting that marks the day Noah left the Ark, the time when the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt, and the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of Prophet Muhammad. The Ashura Bombings of March 2, 2004 in Iraq was a series of planned terrorist explosions that killed at least 178 and injured at least 500 Iraqi Shi'a Muslims commemorating the Day of Ashura. The bombings brought one of the deadliest days in the Iraq occupation after the Iraq War to topple Saddam Hussein. Al-Qaeda, which considers Shi’a Islam to be heretical, was immediately held responsible for the attack, and it was believed their intent was to cause much more destruction than actually occurred.

Background SADDAM HUSSEIN The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq on 20 March. By the beginning of April, U.S.-led forces occupied much of Iraq. The resistance of the much-weakened Iraqi Army either crumbled or shifted to guerrilla tactics, and it appeared that Saddam had lost control of Iraq. He was last seen in a video which purported to show him in the Baghdad suburbs surrounded by supporters. When Baghdad fell to U.S-led forces on 9 April, marked symbolically by the toppling of his statue by iconoclasts, Saddam was nowhere to be found.

Key Quotes “His name was Hussein Safar, and around Najaf they called him the “living martyr.” –Pg 74 “This country is so shitty. Everything is shitty. And everything is broken. And the people are just sitting around, doing nothing. Don’t they want to work? It just seems like they’re lazy. I think in the U.S., if we were in this situation, people would be working, trying to make things better. All they do here is sit around and complain.” –Pg 67

ANALYSIS OF CONFLICT POLITICAL: This chapter deals with the events following the fall of Saddam Hussein and the changes in power occurring in Iraq as a result “The Shi’ites gloried in newfound power, the Sunnis realized they had lost their grip on government and would languish in regions empty of oil. The Kurds set about rebuilding their private corner of the country. The notion of Iraq was yesterday’s invention, a place carved out by European meddlers in the twentieth century.” While Hussein was no longer in power, his people still remained in Iraq “[The] Americans have left those who tortured and those who wrote accusations. The power of Saddam was the public security officers and intelligence people. They are still here. We’re afraid they are going to join the new government. We don’t even—we don’t prefer people to be killed, but we think the government should kill them.”

Analysis of conflict INTERNAL: Main type of conflict in the chapter, as it deals with mainly reactions to the political/power conflict and its aftermath Survivor’s guilt, pity, shame, hatred, etc. “ ‘We have been killed not by Saddam,’ a Shiite man in Najaf told me, ‘but by America.’ He did not say it with venom. It was, for him, a matter of fact.’” “We are Americans, after all, living on our island, and it has always been easy for us to detach from history, even fast like that, in the same generation.” –Pg 71

Discussion Questions Do feelings of vengeance, hatred, and shame ever disappear after conflict or do they reignite conflict? Iraq has been torn by conflict, is it ever actually able to recover? Even though the Shi’ites have been persecuted for many years they still keep their faith. Is this a good thing or not?