By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 12, 2008
BAGHDAD
Muhammed Kurmash's phone rang.
On the line were Taha and Khudair, his former neighbors and best friends. They are Sunnis. He is a Shiite. They hadn't spoken since June 2007. But on this September morning, they urged him to return to his house in eastern Baghdad's Amil neighborhood, Kurmash recalled. He is 44, a seller of socks in one of the capital's biggest markets.
"It is safe now," Taha's voice crackled over the receiver. Kurmash fell silent.
He had met Khudair in 1980. They attended the same high school, the same air force college. They fought in the Persian Gulf War. In 1998, Kurmash built a house next to Khudair's family in a mostly Sunni section of Amil. Their families often shared meals. Kurmash soon grew to know Khudair's brother Taha.
"We were very close," Kurmash said.
After the February 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the ancient city of Samarra, sectarian strife raged across Baghdad. But, somehow, it hardly touched Kurmash's life or his relationship with the Sunnis in his neighborhood.
Until April 2007.
On one block, Sunni insurgents kidnapped a Shiite man. After the $50,000 ransom was paid, the kidnappers killed the man and told his family to fetch his body from the morgue, Kurmash recalled. On another block, a grocer was killed.
Then, one day, Taha told Kurmash matter-of-factly, "We want to make this neighborhood only for Sunnis." Kurmash felt uncomfortable but immune because of his close ties to the brothers.
But when a bomb exploded in front of another neighbor's house, he realized that he could easily become a target. "I felt I had to leave," Kurmash said.
The night before his escape, a Sunni neighbor demanded that Kurmash give him the keys to his house -- or else it would be bombed.
Instead, Kurmash handed the keys to Khudair.
"I trusted Khudair," said Kurmash, who fled to Abu Disheer, a mostly Shiite neighborhood.
Two months later, Khudair phoned. He said a Sunni extremist had ordered him at gunpoint to turn over the keys to Kurmash's house. Khudair advised Kurmash to speak with Taha, who had contacts with the insurgents, Kurmash recalled. Taha told him to come to the neighborhood. The brothers would protect him, Taha promised.
So Kurmash met Khudair in front of a shop near their houses. They greeted each other like long-lost cousins. They asked about each other's families.
Suddenly, gunmen pulled up in a white car. They ordered Kurmash into the back seat. Khudair told him to go with the gunmen and said he would call Taha for help.
The car passed through two Iraqi military checkpoints, but Kurmash was worried the gunmen would kill him if he tried to alert the soldiers. "I thought Taha and Khudair would help me," he recalled. The gunmen stopped at a house, where they blindfolded and handcuffed Kurmash, then took him to other houses.
Over the next six days, they beat him, causing his face to swell. They demanded his relatives' phone numbers. They wanted $20,000 in ransom.
Worried, Kurmash's relatives called Khudair. He told them that he hadn't seen Kurmash. But during the ransom negotiations, one of the kidnappers let something slip to Kurmash's brother: Khudair and Taha were part of the gang.
Kurmash's family now knew the identity of the kidnappers.
One of Kurmash's relatives called Taha and Khudair's relatives. He warned that if anything happened to Kurmash, his tribesmen would seek revenge. The ransom was paid, and the kidnappers released Kurmash the same day. "They were going to kill me," Kurmash said.
Kurmash learned later about his best friends' betrayal, although the brothers professed innocence.
"I think about Khudair every night," Kurmash said. Khudair and Taha could not be reached for comment.
Ehsan Abdul Latif Ahmed, a community leader in Amil who knows the three men, confirmed much of Kurmash's account but denied that Taha and Khudair were involved in the kidnapping. "They are good people," Ahmed said.
Their section of Amil has become safer, he said, and is protected by an Awakening council, the U.S.-backed alliance of residents and former insurgents that conduct neighborhood patrols. Displaced families are returning, he said.
"There is no danger for Muhammed Kurmash. He should return," Ahmed said.
Last month, as Kurmash clutched the phone, as he listened to his former best friend and neighbor, the memories and the suspicions rushed back.
"After what you did to me, I will never return," Kurmash recalled yelling.
And the line went dead.
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