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For Sunnis, an Uneasy Return Home
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Gizhar, who needs a cane to walk, said he owned three houses in Khan Dari, a town north of Baghdad, but couldn't return because Sunni insurgents controlled the area. "If I go back, they will behead me," Gizhar said, crumpling into tears.
He bent over. His hands cupped his face, his body shook. "I hope to die. I hate my life. Death is better than living like this."
Gizhar demanded to know Rahim's sect, but the soldier would say only that he was "Iraqi."
"The law should be fair to all the people," Gizhar said. "You pushed me out of this house but you didn't push out those who are in my houses."
Rahim finally told Gizhar to seek help from friends or relatives or share the rent of a new place with another family.
"But don't occupy another empty house," Rahim warned.
'Nobody Likes Sunnis'
The Sunni couple entered their house in Hurriyah last month with bags in their hands and fear in their hearts. Their furniture was gone. Electric sockets were torn out. An old rifle dangled from a ceiling hook. The couple saw it as a warning left behind by the Shiite family who had occupied their home until soldiers forced them out.
But Abid Mehdi, 65, and wife Hamdia Ali, 55, had come to stay. In Tarmiyah, they lived in a tiny mud and clay house riddled with bugs, surviving on handouts and Mehdi's small pension. Kinsmen ridiculed them for not standing up to Shiites.
"We are afraid, but we have no other solution," Ali said, seated on the cold cement floor of their bare living room.
A couple of neighbors welcomed them with food. One sent over a rickety fan, another an ancient television. But many of their Shiite neighbors have remained distant.
"Most don't like us," Ali said, tears welling in her eyes. "We are Sunnis. Nobody likes Sunnis."
Neighbors say the couple belonged to Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party, which Mehdi and Ali deny.
