Posted on Mon, Nov. 20, 2006
Survivor's story ties together Iraq's past, future
By Hannah Allam
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
AMMAN, Jordan - The gunmen came for the brothers just before dinnertime on a sticky May night in eastern Baghdad. As usual, the electricity didn't work, so the family had gathered in the courtyard to keep cool.
Imad Marjan had just headed to the bathroom - "as if God wanted to spare a life," he recalled recently - leaving his brother, Essam, their two sisters and several young nieces and nephews sitting down to platters of lamb.
Then Imad heard a ruckus downstairs and his sisters' frantic shouts of "Leave him alone!" Imad instinctively ran to the rooftop, where he'd stashed a gun. A generator whirred nearby, and there was just enough light for Imad to make out several carloads of black-clad gunmen swarming the family home. In loud voices, they asked for Imad and Essam by name.
Realizing he was outgunned, Imad jumped to the roof of his uncle's home next door and watched the assailants, some armed with rocket-propelled grenades, bundle his brother into a black Daewoo sedan and speed off ...
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/world/16061658.htm