Word: karam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...begun routinely. Salahdin (Captain Salah) Mahmoud, 47, an interpreter for TIME, and bureau assistant Talal Abu Karam, 50, were driving to an assignment when they found themselves sandwiched between two U.S. military patrols at a busy intersection in the western district of al-Qadisiyah. Both men knew immediately that their risky commute had suddenly become a lot riskier. Military patrols are frequently attacked by insurgent groups, and passing civilian vehicles often end up as collateral damage. As Abu Karam stopped to let the second patrol pass, Salah said, "This is not good...
...were showered by a hail of shrapnel. Salah's left arm and hand were torn to shreds below the elbow, and blood spurted from two gaping wounds in his left thigh. Both men were lacerated by shrapnel and burned. A shard of glass cut a deep gash in Abu Karam's neck. The blast also damaged a second car, with shrapnel hitting its driver, university student Leith Waleed, in the back of his head...
Some 200 yards behind them, taxi driver Emad Hasan watched as Salah and Abu Karam dragged themselves out of the burning wreckage and collapsed on the road, their clothes in tatters and both bleeding profusely from multiple wounds. As they lay moaning, a crowd of commuters gathered--but kept their distance. "Nobody dared to go near them for 10 minutes," says Hasan, "because we were all afraid there might be a second blast...
...explosion site, the arrival of a police patrol finally signaled that it was safe to approach the three wounded men. Even then some people in the crowd were motivated not by sympathy but by greed: they tried to steal money from Abu Karam's pockets. "I was shocked when I saw some policemen taking money and new clothes from the damaged cars," says Hasan. But the crowd also included some selfless Iraqis who decided to take the injured men to Yarmouk rather than wait for ambulances to wind their way through the gridlocked traffic...
...three were still bleeding copiously on arrival at about 8:15 a.m. Salah was unconscious, Abu Karam barely awake. But although they could not have known it, they were very, very lucky. Theirs was the first (and, it turned out, only) bombing of the day in Baghdad, and they were the only seriously injured victims. This meant they would get the undivided attention of the ER team. "On other days we have had 20, 30, even 50 people here," says Emad, "and in the confusion, patients can die from simple things, like blood loss...