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In a Land Without Order, Punishment Is Power
(By Anthony Shadid -- The Washington Post)
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He shook his head. "No one asks any questions about the crimes."
Aidani is 52, father of 12 children born to two wives, and sheik for two years with a genealogy that traces back 33 generations. He still sometimes carries the bearing of his days as an employee at the South Oil Co. in Basra: an understated delivery and a bureaucrat's weary patience. Other times, his voice thunders. His writ stretches, with varying influence, through the village, which sits along the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates known as the Shatt al Arab, in a region famed for poets and dates.
On this morning, as on others, the sheik negotiated disputes he estimates have increased 200 percent over the past year, from the frivolous to the serious. There was the story of the mouse. It scurried into a neighbor's home, frightening a girl. Her family demanded arbitration and, to keep the peace, the other family agreed to pay compensation. Days later, her family saw the neighbor's mouse again. They killed it. "That mouse was ours," the sheik recalled the neighbors arguing. And, this time, they demanded compensation.
"I have one even funnier than that," the sheik said.
A driver killed a chicken on the road. Without making excuses, he said he was willing to pay the price of the chicken.
"It's not the chicken that's the problem," the sheik recalled its owner arguing. "The problem is with its orphans."
"And what about the rooster?" he recalled another person asking.
That dispute was settled with $20.
"People around Basra are not afraid of anything," said Sayyid Suleiman al-Musawi, another tribal leader who was visiting the sheik. Tall, with a black head scarf, he had a sense of irony. "If there's a problem, they go straight to their house and get the gun."
The week before, he recalled, there was an argument at a fruit stand near Yusufan. A customer insisted the vendor cut open the watermelon before he bought it. It was still white inside, and he declared that it was not yet ripe. No, it's red, the vendor insisted. They argued, the customer left and then returned with 30 men. Musawi said a gunfight erupted. Unbelievably, no one was killed.
"Thirty guns because a watermelon wasn't ripe," Musawi said ruefully.
"In Iraq, our blood is very hot," he added. "No one speaks slowly here."
