The patients register was filling, entries handwritten in blue ink, in Arabic and English: RTA, road traffic accident; bullet; shelling; FFH, fall from height; burns; trauma.
Rubaie stood with colleague Haider Mulla Khadir, 33. A former military doctor, Khadir had served in a barracks on the Iranian border, without a toilet, and then in a tent in Nasiriyah during the U.S. invasion. He possesses a resilience that, along with toughness, may be the country's most enduring trait.
Medics carried Hazim Abdul Husain, 32, to Yarmouk after he was wounded in a roadside bombing on Wednesday.
(Mohammed Uraibi -- AP)
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"At least I live under a roof now," Khadir said, smiling. Then, turning somber, he added: "The situation has to change. It can't stay the way it is. How much worse can it get?"
There is a sentiment often voiced in Iraq: the idea of a people left without a choice. Some Iraqis remark that, before the war, they were trapped between an America they mistrusted and a leader they despised. During the war, their fate was out of their hands. Now, they often say they feel powerless as U.S. forces and the insurgents battle for an uncertain future.
"We're scared for our lives. I'm not even sure each day I'll make it back to my house," Khadir said. "The people are caught in the middle. The Americans, the terrorists and the Iraqi forces all shoot in every direction, 360 degrees."
Rubaie interrupted. "In any country that's occupied, there must be resistance," he said. "Resistance is legitimate."
Khadir shook his head. "If they were an honorable resistance, I would join them," he said. "All they're doing is giving the Americans a justification to stay here. If they weren't here, the country would settle down and the Americans would leave."
He smiled. "Even if Israel came and provided stability in the country, I would accept it," he said.
"I wouldn't," Rubaie shot back.
They talked on -- about being afraid to send their children to school, about crime in their neighborhood, about how old the patients' blankets were. The most grievously wounded shouted at times, "Oh mother!" Rubaie urged a patient with bandaged arms and legs to stop pacing around the room. "Quit moving, my friend," he called out. Nurses washed the drying blood off the arms and legs of a now-subdued Ali, the truck driver whose X-rays rested on his blanket, displaying his broken tibia.
"It's always the same," Rubaie said. "It was the same thing yesterday, it will be the same tomorrow and the day after."
At 2 p.m., Osama Abdel-Wahhab, the senior doctor of the next shift, arrived.
"Can we go?" Rubaie asked him.
"We're ready," Abdel-Wahhab said, smiling. "Go with God's blessings."
