Those who died in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York have been remembered. Their photographs and the stories of their lives are known in great detail. However, those who are falling today in Iraq as a result of American and British airstrikes are being transformed into mere statistics reported by international news agencies. It does not matter whether they are young or old; they remain unknown and there are few outside their families and friends to weep for them or lament their passing.

Ahmad Al-Bazz, a 33-year-old driver, was the first victim of a rocket attack on Iraq. He was killed on an international highway 160 km west of Baghdad. His family is typical of dozens of Iraqi, Jordanian, Syrian and Palestinian families who have suffered tragedies in a war in which their collective blood has been mixed. It is a war which still continues. Less than a year after the marriage of Ahmad and his Iraqi wife, Sind, aged 27, they were blessed with their first child, Abdullah. Theirs had been a love match for Sind was a neighbor of Ahmad’s in Baghdad, in a part of the city which has been destroyed in the last two days of bombarding.

Ahmad’s family has owned a transportation company since 1996. The company operates on the Amman-Baghdad highway and the family consists of Ahmad, Rasheed, Amjad and their parents. They left Iraq for Amman in order to escape the bombing in Baghdad which they experienced in 1991. They left also because of Sind’s pregnancy; she did not want to remain in the stressful atmosphere of Baghdad. I visited Ahmad’s family in their house in one of the suburbs of Amman where I met his brothers, their mother, his wife and some of his cousins. It was a house in which neighbors and relatives had come to condole with the family. Relatives had come from the occupied territories where they lived. They also live under a different kind of oppression but they had come from Nablus and other occupied Palestinian cities. They refused to be photographed so that they would not be recognized by the “other police” — the occupation soldiers — who would be awaiting their return.

The oldest of those present, Mahmoud, a relative who had come from the West Bank, said: “As soon as we heard of Ahmad’s death, we hurried to Amman to be with the family.”

The signs of exhaustion and sorrow lined the faces of Ahmad’s brothers. They had been unable to bring his body from Iraq in order to pray over it before burial and had been obliged to depend on relatives to bury him in Baghdad. The oldest brother, Rasheed, showed me a photo of Ahmad with his child taken ten days before his death. He said: “Ahmad stopped at the rest house on his way to Baghdad to make a phone call to us. Traveling with him on the trip was another Jordanian and an Iraqi.”

I asked him why his brother had left on such a trip knowing the bombing might start at any moment. He told me that such trips were the family’s bread and butter. He went on: “I myself returned from Baghdad on Wednesday and in the afternoon, Ahmad left for Baghdad since we take turns driving the same car.”

He explained: “The bombs started falling at midnight, four hours before the American president, George Bush, delivered his warning. According to his warning, the bombing should not have begun until 4 a.m. local time. By that time Ahmad should have been in Baghdad.”

He said because the family was so worried, they phoned their family in Baghdad every hour to learn whether Ahmad had arrived safely.

At this point, Amjad, the youngest brother, broke into the conversation: “There was not even an hour and a half to go before he should have reached the quarter in Baghdad where his friends and cousin were waiting for him.” In great emotion he went on: “They informed us when his car arrived with the two passengers who were with him. The two passengers then took the car and fled toward Baghdad because of the intensity of the bombing. They arrived at a checkpoint about 1:30 a.m. and only then did we learn what had happened. They found him under the rubble and they were told ‘a rocket fell on him in the rest house’. Young people went to the rest house and from here I made some calls to telephone booths at the 160-km milestone. They confirmed that the rocket had fallen and that a person was found in the ruins but we still hoped it was not our brother. We remained here until 7 a.m. when we received a telephone call which confirmed that it was indeed Ahmad.”

Of course, I asked why people had not immediately helped him. His family told me that nobody was able to do anything. Ahmad was trapped under a part of the building and they were unable to remove his body until the next day. They explained: “Don’t forget that all the people disappeared when the bombing began. We experienced the American bombing in 1991 in Baghdad and we know that America doesn’t distinguish between civilian and military districts and or any other kind of district. Any center of Saddam’s communication system, even a rest house 160 km from Baghdad, is enough to warrant an American bomb. I saw as did everybody that it was a civilian post, a private rest house, on the highway between Baghdad and Turaybeel in which ordinary people could relax.”

I wondered why Ahmad’s body had not been brought to Amman as had been done with the four students’ bodies. The family was not sure but thought it had something to do with the bureaucratic red-tape involved in moving a body from one country to another. Both the Jordanians and the Iraqis claimed that the highway was unsafe. Ahmad’s body was thus in the hospital morgue for more than three days.

The family concluded, “We finally agreed to let our cousins bury him in the Al-Ghazali Cemetery in Baghdad, a cemetery where our uncle was buried some time ago.”

I asked if the family hoped to visit Ahmad’s grave and they told me that their relatives thought it safer if they did not. The Americans, it seems, are increasing air raids in civilian areas and the relative’s house had in fact been damaged in a recent one.

I wondered if the family would take any legal action against the American and British armies. They answered that they would file a case in Amman and would contact lawyers with experience in international law and war crimes and ask them to study ways in which to present this case.

If the case never came to court, what would they would do? “God willing, we will never stop trying.”

Arab News Features 31 March 2003