A tale of two brothers

Once there were two brothers who worked for our agency in Baghdad. One was quiet and one really talkative who loved to greet every person on the compound. They always sat at the first table as you entered the restaurant, ready with a smile and an opportunity to practice their English with their American colleagues who come in for lunch.

While the brothers worked in the IZ, facing the daily challenges our local staff face every day coming and going into and back out of the "heavily fortified Green Zone", the family in Baghdad suffered several setbacks. Displaced more than once from their family home, their mother had suffered a health setback and needed surgery, and then one day, the one brother, the quiet one was shot.

It happened one night when our two colleagues and their two other brothers were huddled in a house together. Gunmen burst through the door and started firing at them. One of the four sustained minor injuries, while our brother, the quiet one, took two shots to the abdomen.

A week later he shows up at work and looks a little pale, our executive officer (EXO - the one that runs the whole compound and all HR issues) looks at him and inquires about his health. After a trip to the CASH (short for combat support hospital), he is cleaned up and the EXO told that had he not risked his life to come into work that day, he would have died (*sic*). They kept him over night and fortunately he recovered remarkably.

Then came Ramadan, the holy month of Islam. While our muslim colleagues fasted, leaving the restaurant empty during lunch hour, life here in the compound continued. Until Thursday...

That night, the other brother got shot. Unfortunately, he was not as lucky as the quiet one.

Walking home from the market with his brother-in-law where he was buying clothes for his son for the Eid celebration, gunmen shot and killed both men, including our colleague, a brother, and as it turns out, a young one - a mere 20 years at that, married not three months earlier.

The reality of what is going on in Baghdad hit us hard on Friday as the news spread through the compound, the mindless acts of violence, the senseless killings, the realities faced by our colleagues. How they do it, I do not know, but we pray for them and I hope you will too.