Word: amer
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...school, she can't collect state-subsidized rations, or even rent an apartment. Traveling in the city is dangerous: she could be stopped at any one of hundreds of checkpoints and arrested for not having papers. To get new documents, she must first return to the neighborhood where Amer was killed, and get a note from the police station there. But that's impossible, because the neighborhood is controlled by the Shi'ite militias, who would likely shoot her on sight. "Without my husband, I am now a nobody," she says. "For the government, I don't exist...
...have been able to mourn Amer in the customary way, but like countless Iraqis who have lost loved ones to violence, Azhour's grieving has just begun...
...militias that forced Azhour Ali Mohammed from her home in Baghdad's al-Dolai district last month shot her husband Amer dead before her eyes and torched all her worldly possessions. And the fear that the killers may come back for her and her two little children prevented her from mourning her husband. "I could not hold a proper wake for him," says the young widow. "He deserved at least that...
...potentially deadly: Sunni suicide bombers have been known to target Shi'ite wakes, and Shi'ite militias have attacked Sunni funeral processions. So when Azhour went to collect her husband's body from Baghdad's central morgue, only her father and brother volunteered to go with her. They put Amer's body in a simple wooden coffin, strapped it onto the roof of the car and drove as quickly as possible to the nearest Sunni graveyard. "I was terrified that [Shi'ite militias] would see the coffin and stop us," she recalls. "And once they found out that we were...
...Fear of Shi'ite militias also prevented Azhour from posting a black banner to mark Amer's death. There was no question of holding his wake in a mosque; fearful of attacks, many of them refuse to allow wakes. Nor could Azhour hold the wake in their former neighborhood, where their old friends and neighbors could attend. So she invited a handful of family members to the home of an uncle who lives across town. Nobody came...