May 2, 2003

Golden Gunfire

AN NAJAF, Iraq – The shooting started when the day was peaking at magic hour. Golden sunlight kissed the Earth just as gunfire poured from police Kalashnikovs at the station across the street from the hotel.

I’d just finished sending pictures from Friday prayers this afternoon. Everything seemed fine, so I thought I’d be a good son and call my mother on her birthday. Little did I know we’d both be surprised.

“Happy birthday!”

We’d been on the phone for about two or three minutes, and I had just finished telling her that it was pretty safe in An Najaf as compared to Baghdad when I dove for the deck and soiled my grey University of Florida t-shirt. We stayed on the phone for about another 10 seconds when I decided that I needed both hands to slither around on the roof of the hotel for cover.

“I’ll call you back,” I said.

Click.

Flat on the deck is where I stayed until the shooting stopped.

No, the cameras were in my room three floors down. When yelling took the place of bullets I peered over the ledge of the roof to see several green-uniformed police officers with AK-47s standing in the street, and one was on the roof of the station with an RPG shouldered and ready to shoot. They controlled the street and were looking around for any threat.

By the time I was downstairs the scene was finished. There were no pictures.

My initial instinct was that someone sought retribution for the raid all 54 volunteer officers staged to arrest several of 16 to 20 suspected killers. These are the men believed to have murdered two well-known clerics in An Najaf three weeks ago. They caught two suspects, one of them shot twice in the thigh and abdomen. No, they’re not telling us at which hospital he’s being held.

The raid went down last night at 1:30 a.m., and not 90 minutes later there was a gunfight through the darkness at the same police station attempting an unsuccessful jailbreak. It woke me up. Three spurts of gunshots from Soviet-era assault rifles kept my eyes open, but we found out later that no one was injured.

Yes, I called mom back to tell her that I didn’t have any extra holes.

“I’m fine,” I told her rather quickly. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a regular occurrence” as we’ve never heard gunfire during the day.

I’ve calmed down quite a bit since I got here. This place still gives me the creeps, and this incident didn’t help matters much.

- Rich