June 19, 2007

| Jenny 8. Lee Blogs >>

Leila Fadel is McClatchy’s bureau chief in Baghdad; her blog is riveting. I’d tuned out a lot of the news out of Iraq ‘til I subscribed.

I almost want to put some tag on it, though, like NSFW, except somehow warning you how just utterly harrowing and beyond the pale it is:

Back at the office the reports started to come in. Five Sunni mosques attacked in Basra, three set on fire or bombed in Baghdad, three south of Baghdad. Muted compared to last years attacks. I sent everyone home before the three-day-curfew began, save two of our guys.

Sahar, one of our Iraqi reporters, called and told me about a woman in Adhamiya. Her husband, her protector, could not get home before the curfew started. As darkness fell upon Baghdad the cancer-ridden woman shook with fear, her three children around her, as mortars fell nearby. She would be alone tonight and two more nights.

I called downstairs for stress-relievers — chocolate and coffee. One of my favorite hotel staffers brought them up from the cafeteria.

“What do you think about this?” I asked.

“Just drop two nuclear bombs on us and finish this,” Dhia said wiping his hands together as if to wash his hands of Iraq.

“But we’d die,” I replied.

“So what. I just want to finish from this,” he said. With a sad laugh he walked away toting his metal tray.

Here’s Fadel’s intro to the blog.