Friday, October 05, 2007

shock and awe

my alarm clock is the news. this morning i woke up precisely to hear this statement:
"Luckily, I could recognize the bodies of my family members; because otherwise I could not have recognized my house."

What????
From the few remaining seconds of the story i gathered three pieces of information: the Yazidi people, Tel Azer, Iraq. This sentence haunted me until i left the house, and the busi-ness of the day pushed it to the back of my mind. When I finally came home, I immediately recalled it. Later, I looked for the full story. The Yazidi are a minority religious group in the Middle East, the target for the August 14 insurgent attack that occurred in Iraq, the deadliest since the U.S. invasion, killing 310 and wounding more than 700.
The religion denies the existence of the devil and evil.

The statement above comes from a 20 year old boy who was playing soccer when the bombs went off. Khudayda Khalid lost his parents and 18 other relatives in the attack. "Luckily, I could recognize the bodies of my family members; because otherwise I could not have recognized my house."