Muslim Holiday a Chance To Ignore and Forget War

BAGHDAD, Dec. 21 The grass was patchy around the carousel, and there were not yet enough plastic balls to fill the playpen. A cold gray sky mirrored the cold gray lake, and too many of the plastic chairs under the big striped tent still sat empty.

But at high noon Friday, during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, Faiq Ahmed was the beaming proud maestro of Jadriyah Lake, a Baghdad park along the Tigris River that has been closed for the past violent year.

"The scene is very beautiful here," Ahmed, the park's director, said as he stood on the steps overlooking the lake, surrounded by dozens of Iraqi families.

Ahmed is a man with plans. He envisions boat rides, grilled fish restaurants, and an engraving of the Iraqi flag to cover up the ripped out space on a concrete monument where Saddam Hussein's face once presided, when this was still called Saddam Lake. Back then, as many as 1 million visitors descended for Eid al-Adha, he said, the holiday that marks the end of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Fewer than 250 people showed up Thursday. "We have a long way to reach what we are looking for," he said.

The outlines of his dream were on display Friday: fathers and daughters and cousins and friends who braved the cold and the persistent risks to demonstrate they too could live a normal life, if just for a day. By 12:30 p.m., Lemia Ismael, 19, was chatting with her two cousins at lake's edge, admiring the view.

"I'm a student and my exams are coming up, and I just want to have some fun," said Ismael, who had a shy smile and eyes rimmed with kohl. "We came for some entertainment because of all the stress we are living."

She came, as many others did, well dressed: a full-length black leather coat, high-heeled black boots and black sunglasses pushed back into her blond-streaked hair. Many women wore headscarves and carried handbags, while men wore wool hats and striped sweaters. They laughed and snapped pictures of each other, while children squealed and hamburgers sizzled on the griddle. It was not until 1:29 p.m. that the families heard that old familiar Baghdad sound: a resounding explosion in the distance.

It was maybe a roadside bomb, maybe artillery from a military base, but Bahaa Aziz, a Baghdad merchant who was hoisting his 4-year-old son, didn't care. "It's common. It's normal for us. It's not extraordinary or weird," he said.

"Last year a lot of people were killed every day. We were afraid of going to crowded places because of suicide bombers," he said. "People are happy that the security situation in Baghdad is changing for the good. You know we are stuck in our homes so often that when we find such opportunities like this, we'll take them."

He and his wife, Khansaa Kadim, ignored the sound of the explosion. Ignore and forget, she said: "We are forced to forget." If only that were easier. Eid al-Adha, or festival of sacrifice, which commemorates the prophet Abraham's willingness to kill his son for God, is a time to visit families, but Kadim's father has passed away and her mother was shot to death 19 months ago on Haifa Street in Baghdad. American soldiers came into her brother's house on March 30, and she has not seen him since. Her two younger sisters, Safaa, 21, and Zaineb, 14, moved in with her after their mother was killed, but they still can't go back to Haifa Street to visit their friends and relatives.

"Everything has to end, and hopefully this war will be over," Khansaa Kadim said.

At 1:48 p.m., a second explosion in the distance, just as the ticket taker at the carousel of swings (40 cents a ride) was talking about the weather. "During cold days the number of families are small, but in the summer and spring it will be better," said Raad Majid, 44, whose two young sons threw plastic balls at each other in the playpen across the park.

He considers this job a blessing, a place where he can hear children laugh all day, where he doesn't have to be so afraid. "I'm scared to go anywhere," he said.

He's scared since gunmen came into his father's house in the Sadiyah neighborhood of Baghdad at 2 p.m. on an otherwise normal day two months ago and took him away. "He was a simple man. An old man. He was 75," Majid said. "They took him and they executed him and they buried him and we don't know where the body is.

"I will be happy if I can find the body at least," he said, as the kids squealed and swung around in a circle.

Special correspondent Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.