That morning, Abdel-Jabbar had been driving a truck piled with lumber for a construction company. A second truck followed, and Nsayyif and Abdel-Hassan were riding in a car providing an unarmed escort. In an episode that has become unexceptional along Iraq's treacherous roads, they were fired on by two assailants riding on a tractor as they headed from Abu Ghraib, a turbulent town west of Baghdad, to Musayyib, a seething city to the south in a region Iraqis have dubbed the Triangle of Death.
Inside the hospital, other friends of the victim speculated on what was behind the attack. All insisted on anonymity.
Medics carried Hazim Abdul Husain, 32, to Yarmouk after he was wounded in a roadside bombing on Wednesday.
(Mohammed Uraibi -- AP)
|
|
"We're a construction company trying to build a new Iraq," one said. "That makes us infidels."
To the side, another friend whispered a more likely scenario, saying the men had worked for a contractor at a U.S. military base. "They were working with Americans and they can't tell the truth," he said.
Minutes later, the conversation was interrupted by more shouts. Kadhim Ali, the second truck driver, was wheeled into the emergency room. His truck had overturned in the cascade of gunfire, shattering his left leg, and a bullet had grazed his right cheek.
"Is this jihad?" shouted a friend pushing his wheelchair into the emergency room. "Firas has already died!"
Ali's screams brought Rubaie and another doctor, along with four nurses, to his bed. One nurse cut off his blood-soaked jeans; another tried to put an IV in his arm. "My leg!" Ali shouted. "Oh, uncle, my leg's broken!"
A nurse pleaded for him to stop yelling, and friends held down his arms.
"Say, 'God,' " the nurse commanded.
"Oh, God," Ali answered, then started writhing again.
"I'm dying! I swear to God, I'm dying," he screamed. "Doctor, I'm dying!"
Doctors Who Know War
Rubaie and the other doctors in Yarmouk's emergency room worked methodically, nearly all of them drawing on long experience with war: the Iran-Iraq war that lasted from 1980 to 1988, the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. invasion and the far dirtier fight that has ensued. Rubaie boasted of their experience, proud of what they could do -- even as he expressed remorse that they had to do it.
"The war with Iran was on the borders," said the world-weary Rubaie, who graduated from medical school at Baghdad's Mustansariya University as that conflict ended. "Now it's inside Baghdad. The war has now come to the city."
About 20 physicians work in Yarmouk's emergency room, divided among three shifts. It is an egalitarian system: Doctors make about twice what nurses do, their salaries ranging from $230 a month to $470. There are no days off -- Rubaie, with a smile, said he works "eight days a week." They struggle with shortages of antibiotics, drugs and bandages. Only the paint is new, he complained.
