Word: sheiking
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...Derek C. Bok ranked Stone “among the three or four most influential people of the last 25 years in helping to shape Harvard’s constructive influence on the world.” A prodigious fundraiser, Stone “would hear about an Arabian sheik who had some remote connection to Harvard, and he would hop on the next plane there,” longtime Corporation member Hugh D. Calkins ’45 told The Crimson in 1985. “I don’t want you to give...
...given Friday, Sheik Jamal inters Iraqis killed by roadside bombs ("I can tell how close they were to the blast from the extent of burning and depth of the shrapnel wounds"), execution ("Their hands are usually tied behind their back, and they've been shot in the head"), garroting and beheading. He buries victims of U.S. air strikes, some of whose bodies have been fused together by the heat of the explosion "so you can't tell which limb belongs to which head." Every now and again, he will get a body bag with charred-black body parts, dismembered...
...Sheik Jamal's views on the Americans are not hard to divine--in his spare time he's a volunteer in al-Sadr's office in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. But his take on the Haditha killings is purely practical: the local morgue dealt with those bodies, and they were all claimed by family members, so they aren't his problem. He has more pressing concerns. The escalation of killings in Baghdad puts him under tremendous financial strain: he makes his living as a professional mortician but receives no payment for burying unclaimed bodies, which he sees...
Money is only one of his problems. The Friday trips to Najaf are fraught with danger. The road from Baghdad runs through some of the most lawless parts of Iraq, where criminals routinely kill commuters to take their cars and terrorists have been known to attack funeral corteges. Sheik Jamal says his weekly convoy--one truck and several carloads of volunteers--has never been attacked, a fact he attributes to divine intervention. "It's God's work, and he finds a way for us to do it," he says...
...late in the morning at the Wadi al-Salaam cemetery by the time Sheik Jamal and his volunteers have completed their grim mission. The 72 bodies have been sprayed with disinfectant, wrapped in shrouds and buried. Sheik Jamal thanks the gravediggers, shaking their hands. "I will be in touch," he says. "I'll call and let you know how many [graves] we need next week." Stretching out into the desert, the graveyard is unlikely to run out of space. And since the killings of Iraqis show no sign of slowing, Sheik Jamal will not run out of bodies either...