Word: shulla
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Dates: during 2006-2006
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...family fled, roads in and out of the neighborhood were manned by armed Sunnis who were roughing up and robbing the departing Shi'ites. The family abandoned most of its belongings and finally made it to a cousin's house in the Shi'ite neighborhood of al-Shulla. "We were lucky to find an unguarded exit," she says, her breath still catching with fear as she narrates their escape...
Fear of the militias is palpable, even in neighborhoods where there have been heartening signs of Sunni-Shi'ite comity. In Shi'ite-majority al-Shulla, militias damaged the tiny al-Haq Sunni mosque with rocket-propelled grenades. Afterward, members of the local unit of the Shi'ite Mahdi Army surrounded the mosque, guarding it from further attack. "That afternoon and night the Shi'ites prayed in my mosque," says the grateful local imam, Jawhar Omar al-Zibari. "They told me they would die before allowing another attack." But the imam's Sunni flock is streaming out of the area...
...days ahead, the family will have to confront difficult choices--where to look for jobs, where to send the kids to school, what to do about the home they abandoned. They may ultimately try to swap homes with one of the Sunni families being forced out of al-Shulla by the influx of Shi'ites. "I don't care if the house we get here is smaller than the one we left," Nema says. The only certainty: she will never return to her old home. To be twice a victim of Iraq's sectarian hatreds is quite enough...
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