BLACK

"“BLACK”! Is it a mere color? In the world, people ride black cars, use black laptops, write in black ink, put on black shoes, etc… But in Baghdad, this word means something else. “Black” hovers over the city. Whatever we see becomes black even if it is red.

Starting from the black funeral banners that decorate almost every street, to the black smoke of explosions that rock the city’s morning like fireworks everyday, and the black shrapnel that pave the roads, “black” became an everyday scene.

The latest violence that rocked the capital left many houses damaged, and mostly with family members wounded or dead. But what is worse is the daily discovery of the dead bodies dumped in the garbage or in the Tigris. This horrible phenomenon left a grave ordeal over the houses of the Iraqi people. The scene of women wearing “black” mourning the loss of a son, a relative, or a friend becomes as black as how life looks like in Iraq. Just today, Iraqi police retrieved the bodies of 11 people, nine of them beheaded, including a 10-year-old boy, in Suwayra, south of Baghdad."
Treasure of Baghdad