'We Have to Participate'
The sheik is what goes for temporal authority in Yusufan, a warren of mud-brick and concrete huts bisected by a canal and laced together by dirt roads. Home to about 25,000 people, it lacks the bustle of Basra, a half-hour drive away. Sleek wood boats still ply canals, and children play marbles on the dirt banks of the Shatt al Arab, which joins the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The town's dense palm groves, withered by war and environmental degradation, produce one of the world's most famous varieties of dates, Al-Barhi.
Sheltered as it is, Yusufan is still suffused with the talk of Sunday's election, and the worry of what it might bring.
Kifah Mahmoud in his grocery with pictures of Shiite figures Ali Sistani, Ruhollah Khomeini and Mohammed Sadr.
(Anthony Shadid -- The Washington Post)
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"People say we're going to cast our votes but we're going to die," said Raed Amir, who owns a small grocery store, its door adorned with portraits of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the godfather of Iran's Islamic revolution, and Moqtada Sadr, the young Iraqi cleric and nemesis of the U.S. occupation. "I'm 90 percent sure there will be a bomb, with everyone there together."
In big cities like Basra and some neighborhoods in Baghdad, the degree to which people acknowledge the threat of violence is matched only by their determination to vote. It is no different in Yusufan. Nearly all of the men gathered around the store, built of mud, palm trunks and tin, nodded their heads yes when asked if they would walk the two miles or so to the school to cast their votes.
"We have to participate," said Amir, standing before a shelf lined with small packets of cardamom, pepper, sesame, shredded coconut and baking soda. "We don't want to feel regret in the future that we didn't participate."
A customer, Munir Ahmed, jumped in: "We wish the election was today, not tomorrow."
Along a wall across the street were the slogans that color the talk in the village's streets. One declared, "Yes, yes to Islam." Another voiced support for Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army. Next to it was a plea for God's mercy on the men killed in March 1991, when the Shiite rebellion began in Basra after the Gulf War and spread through southern Iraq.
In place of the election posters that clutter Baghdad and Basra were more religious slogans down the street. "No honor for Baathists and no honor for communists." Or, more bluntly: "All of Iraq proclaims that Islam is the glory of our country."
The slogans give voice to the sentiment at Amir's store and in the streets around it. The sheik may be a village leader, and he enjoys their respect, but to Amir and his customers, authority goes to those who speak in the name of religion.
"Three-quarters will vote for Sistani's list," Amir predicted. "As for the other quarter, I don't know what's in their hearts."
Obeying the Marja
Basra, with its centuries of urban culture, often looks down on its rural counterparts. The countryside is seen as steeped in the traditions of Shiite faith -- the stories of Ali, seen by Shiites as the successor of the prophet Muhammad, and his sons Hussein and Abbas, who were killed in a 7th-century battle in Karbala. While secular and nationalist candidates wax optimistic about their chances Sunday in Basra, they lament that they will fare far worse in villages such as Yusufan, which taken together are more populous.
"They consider Imam Hussein and Abbas the first and the last," said Ahmed Khudheir, a Communist Party spokesman in Basra, sitting next to a painting of Lenin. "It's not a political process there, it's religious passion."
Conversations in Yusufan, though, tend to defy the stereotypes. Allawi, running as an incumbent, often generates praise, and at the very least, respect. To some, he's seen as formidable, drawing on Iraqi admiration for toughness. Many view him as capable, relaxed, unburdened by the rhetoric of the past and unhindered by ties to Iran fostered by some Islamic groups. A few note that he sprinkles his language with Arabic from the south, in contrast to the heavy dialect of Tikrit spoken by ousted president Saddam Hussein.
Shahim, one villager said in describing him -- decent and noble.
