Iraq's despair reflected in youth's suicide / Postwar chaos makes urban life unending struggle

2003-09-17 04:00:00 PDT Baghdad -- On Sunday morning, Maqdad al-Duhaimi woke up in a bad mood. He picked up his assault rifle and went up to the sun-bathed roof of his parents' large stucco house.

There, at about 9 a.m., al-Duhaimi, a soft-spoken 19-year-old who got married last month, raised the muzzle of the Kalashnikov and pulled the trigger, splashing the clay roof with clots of his blood and brain.

Minutes later, pushing the gurney on which al-Duhaimi's lifeless body lay, his relatives and neighbors ran through the narrow hallways of al-Yarmouk hospital's emergency wing as fast as they could, as if there were still hope.

The examination room fell quiet as Dr. Mounis Salih picked up al-Duhaimi's arm to feel for a pulse.

When he pronounced the young man dead, a horrible wail pierced the air. Al- Duhaimi's neighbor, a slight boy in his late teens, went limp and collapsed on the tiled floor. A woman relative shrieked again and again: "Why? Why, my brother? Why? Why?"

Their grief was compounded by their shame: Taking one's own life is an unspeakable sin in the Muslim faith. Salih said suicides were extremely rare in Iraq, which did not make its suicide statistics public before the war. Other Muslim countries in the region, such as Egypt and Iran, have suicide rates of 3 people in 1 million and lower, World Health Organization reports show.

STARTLING SYMBOL

After a nurse rolled away the gurneys to wash al-Duhaimi's body at the hospital morgue, Salih sat down on an empty cot and pondered the young man's death, an event he sees as a startling symbol of a war-ravaged society driven to the brink by months of violence and deprivation.

When the U.S.-led war deposed Saddam Hussein, Salih said, "the Iraqi people had dreams that they would get everything right away: big salary, freedom, democracy."

"But day after day, week after week, these dreams are being shot down," he said. "Honestly speaking, we don't have any major improvements."

Five months after major hostilities ended, Iraqis are still scrambling to restore some semblance of normal life. Public services are sporadic, and crime is spiraling out of control. Every day, Salih said, 10 to 15 gunshot or stabbing victims arrive at his hospital -- almost as many as during the first few weeks after the war. Kidnapping gangs roam Baghdad, terrorizing civilians, and reports of rape are widespread.

"Security is the foundation; on it you can build the rest of your life," Salih said. "Now, we don't have such a foundation."

Like millions of Iraqis, al-Duhaimi, who had been an enlisted man serving a compulsory term in the Iraqi army before the war, was unable to find a decent job after the collapse of the Hussein government, even though his father, Abid,

is a prominent Shiite sheikh.

FORCED TO SELL SOFT DRINKS

In this perilous new world, al-Duhaimi had to take up a job selling Pepsi in the street from a wooden wheelbarrow to support his young wife, Hanah. The job was probably the frustrating last straw that pushed him over the edge, said al-Duhaimi's best friend, Ahmed Mohammed.

The night before his death, al-Duhaimi went to visit Mohammed.

"He said he felt very bad inside," Mohammed said, sobbing. "He said that on some days he didn't make any money. He said there were days when he went home empty-handed."

"I can't believe he killed himself," Mohammed said. "Many times he was in worse trouble, but he always found strength to carry on. All of our neighbors liked him. He was so quiet, so respectful of everyone. He had a good heart. I don't think people like him kill themselves."

Just hours after the doctor pronounced al-Duhaimi dead, the women wept in his home and cooked the traditional mourning meal while his male neighbors and relatives gathered across the street. The men came up with versions of his death more appropriate for Iraqi society than suicide.

GRASPING FOR EXPLANATIONS

Salam Tahor Jabur, a neighbor, said a stray bullet from someone's celebratory gunfire must have hit al-Duhaimi in the head.

When a relative countered that the location of the wound -- a big gash at the right temple -- indicated al-Duhaimi had intentionally shot himself, the dead man's cousins waved their hands and told the relative to be quiet.

"He was cleaning his Kalashnikov, then he shot himself by accident," said one cousin, Karim Kalaf. "It was an accident."

The real problem, said another cousin, Hasim Kalaf, is the flood of easily available weapons that occupation forces and Iraq's poorly equipped police seem unable to confiscate. Kalashnikov rifles looted from Iraqi military bases after the war continue to sell in Baghdad's shady bazaars for as little as $50 apiece, and nearly every household has guns.

"It is natural to want to have weapons to protect your family," Karim Kalaf said, "but now they use guns not to protect but to kill."

Even at al-Duhaimi's funeral, he said, friends of the family fired shots in the air.

"Before the war, anyone who fired a gun would be thrown in jail for six months, and his gun would be confiscated," Hasim Kalaf said. "Now, we have chaos."

"We wanted to have the body yesterday so we could bury it," he said on Monday morning, as workers set up a huge funeral tent outside al-Duhaimi's house for the traditional three-day mourning ceremony. Islamic tradition instructs Muslims to bury their dead before sundown on the day they die. "But there were so many dead in the morgue that we had to wait for our turn until this morning," he said.

The men fell silent as they passed around a picture of al-Duhaimi.

"It is terrible," Hasim Kalaf said. "Shooting everywhere."