IRAQ: A pilgrimage of hope
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By Saad Fakhrildeen in Samarra
It was the place where Iraq’s sectarian war began. This week, the city of Samarra and its ruined shrine once again became a place of peaceful pilgrimage for thousands of Shiite Muslims.
A bombing on Feb. 22, 2006, destroyed Al Askari shrine’s famous golden dome and unleashed a cycle of revenge killings between Shiites and Sunnis in which countless numbers perished. Another bombing on June 13, 2007, collapsed the two minarets.
But with security improving, I took my place Monday on one of more than 100 buses carrying worshipers from the southern holy city of Najaf north to Samarra to commemorate the death of the 9th century imam Ali Hadi, who is buried there with his son, Hassan Askari.
Each bus had room for 50 passengers, in addition to those who stood in the aisles for the five-hour journey, so eager were they to participate in the pilgrimage.
‘We haven’t witnessed such a procession for a long time,’ civil servant Abdul-Kareem Ali told me along the way. ‘The former regime banned them, and then they were banned by the terrorists.’
Since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime in 2003, pilgrimages have resumed in the overwhelmingly Shiite south. But Samarra is a mostly Sunni city, and the way is full of danger for Shiites.
Our route was secured by the Iraqi army, National Police and Sunni tribesmen hired by the U.S. military to help protect major roads. Traffic police on motorcycles led the procession through Baghdad, where roads were sealed off for our protection.
In Balad, 50 miles north of the capital, dozens of people joined the procession on foot, many of them women and children. Others set up tents by the side of the road to offer the pilgrims food and water.
Ten miles farther north, hundreds of cars and buses were crowded at the entrance to Samarra, waiting for permission to enter the city. That’s when we noticed the gaping hole in the skyline.
‘I cried when we arrived,’ said bus driver Mohammed Hadrawi. ‘I was looking for the dome and minarets, but I didn’t see them.... We used to see them from a long distance.... Now the city is in ruins.’
Our vehicle pulled up in front of the police directorate to be searched, and from there we continued on foot. Policeman Ibrahim Bazi kept an eye on the throngs from behind the wheel of his car.
‘We haven’t slept for four days because of the preparations for this pilgrimage,’ he said. The Sunni militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq ‘banned pilgrims from coming and prevented city residents from receiving them from 2004. Now we are happy, because life is returning to normal. Even we [policemen] ... were banned from entering under the reign of those bad people. We will return, and the golden shrine will shine in the skies of Samarra.’
The streets leading to the shrine were lined with concrete barricades. It felt like walking through a maze.
Signs of violence were everywhere, the result of clashes between the security forces and the Sunni gunmen who until recently controlled the city. It looked like a city from a vanished civilization. The streets were filled with bomb craters, shop doors and pavement slabs were broken, and everywhere appeared deserted. Along every wall, graffiti praising Hussein had been crossed out and replaced with slogans in support of the Iraqi army.
Inside Samarra, I met a man who had returned to the city for the first time since fleeing his home after Hussein was toppled in 2003.
‘I checked on my house and found that it was locked,’ said the man, who asked to be identified by a traditional nickname, Abu Mohammed. ‘The neighbors told me that a Sunni family displaced from Baghdad was living there. It’s all right.... It’s the end of terror and disunity. The occupant of my house will return home, and I’ll go back to my dear city of Samarra. It’s just a matter of time.’
As we approached the shrine, pilgrims were reciting poems commemorating the imam’s death and beating their chests in mourning.
‘The vows of allegiance won’t be broken,’ they chanted. ‘Hadi, we haven’t forgotten the day when your shrine was demolished.’
When we saw the shrine for the first time, we all started weeping and slapping our heads in shock.
‘The devastation is more than we had seen in the [TV] footage,’ said Muneer Ali Fadhl, a photographer from Najaf. ‘The sun’s rays beamed onto the floor through the broken dome.... It’s a disaster.’
Reconstruction began at the end of last year, but it will take years to complete. An engineer told us that stone blocs were being manufactured that will be exact replicas of those used to build the shrine. Experts are also studying the Koranic verses on the walls in order to complete the missing parts.
When we left the shrine, city residents opened their doors to receive us and offer us refreshments.
‘It’s a joyful scene to see the pilgrims coming back to our city,’ said Hafith Salman, a Samarra resident who makes a living driving a pickup truck. ‘We depend on religious tourism like the other holy cities. What the criminals did here has turned the city into a miserable one.’
The next day, we returned home without incident.
As difficult as it was to see the shrine in this state, those who went found hope and meaning in the experience.
‘It’s a renewal of the vows of obedience to the imam and also a message that Iraq has become strong and united,’ said Ali, the civil servant. ‘No place will shelter terror any more, and most importantly, we have turned our backs on fear. If we had given in to fear, then we would never be able to develop the country’
As for me, I am left with a tremendous sense of accomplishment and hope that things are getting better in my country. It’s a feeling I won’t easily forget: I now have a picture of myself in front of the shrine as the background on my computer.’