c. 2006 Religion News Service

BAGHDAD, Iraq _ The wooden coffins are secured on the roof racks of new minivans, battered compact cars and in the beds of pickup trucks. The vehicles line a narrow, pock-marked dirt alley that leads to a body-washing parlor, where the deceased are cleansed before burial.

Inside, Mohammed Rozki carefully prepares the corpse of 40-year-old Saad al-Janobi. The cause of death of the body on the cold concrete slab is gruesomely obvious: seven gunshot wounds in the head.

Rozki’s profession is sad but necessary. Lately it is almost overwhelming, and there seems to be no end to the line of bodies that will find a place in the alley.

“Most of the bodies have bullet wounds in them or are damaged from explosions,” said Rozki, who has washed the dead in the Bab al-Maudham sector of Baghdad near the city’s morgue since 1983. “We used to receive two or three bodies a day, but now we sometimes get between 20 and 30.”

Fatalities among Iraqi civilians have surged in recent months because of bloody sectarian strife after the February bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. Nearly 900 people here died in violent attacks in March and almost 700 in February, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent research group that tracks violence in Iraq.

While statistics measure the ups and downs in the sectarian battle between Muslim Sunnis and Shiites, the reality of death is painfully obvious in the eyes of those working in the funerary industry and the families they serve.

“It gets very depressing with the large number of people coming in every day,” said Rozki, 35, whose grandfather founded the family’s business in 1949. “You must have a strong heart to do this job.”

Many of the dead brought to Rozki recently were victims of Shiite death squads that are settling old scores with Sunnis they saw as oppressors under Saddam Hussein. Others are the victims of terrorist bombings or attacks carried out by Sunni insurgents.

“It used to be that most of the bodies died from natural causes, but now that’s unusual,” said 60-year-old Hashem Mohammed, Rozki’s uncle, who has worked in the family’s business for three decades.

Rozki and his family do not charge for their services but rely on customers to donate what they can. So, despite the increased demand for their skill, the family’s earnings are meager. But Rozki accepts. “Washing the body is a gift to the deceased,” he said.

Employees of the city morgue in Baghdad, where salaries range from $50 a month for novices to up to $600 monthly for the director, hardly fare better.

The refrigerated storage units designed to accommodate six bodies now have to handle 20, according to deputy director Kail Hassan, a 42-year-old physician.

The streets of Baghdad also bear witness to the growing strife, with solemn funeral processions for Sunnis and Shiites.

Ali Brahim Mohammed, 23, was waiting outside of Rozki’s for the body of his 32-year-old neighbor, Hassan Mohamed, an industry ministry employee shot to death outside his home in the Bab Alsham district in northeast Baghdad.

“I’ve attended about 30 funerals so far this year,” said Mohamed, a Shiite. “I don’t like to focus on the tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, but it’s difficult to ignore.”

Saady al-Anbky, a 33-year-old Shiite architect and friend of the Sunni contractor Janobi, who was found dead on a Baghdad street last week, said he still refuses to differentiate between Shiites and Sunnis because both are Muslims.

“I wasn’t aware I was a Shiite until my first year of university,” Anbky said. “Today, all the primary schoolchildren know which group they belong to.”

In addition to the difficulties of their profession, Rozki and his family also must deal with their own losses.

Rozki’s uncle, Hashem Mohammed, 60, had the heart-wrenching task of washing and burying his 40-year-old son, Waleed, last month after he was killed in the crossfire of a gunbattle along the Army Highway in east Baghdad.

Today, Waleed’s 12-year-old daughter, Khafram, helps her mother and aunt wash the bodies of women brought to the family’s business.

“You must start at a young age in order to get accustomed to working with the dead,” said Khafram’s uncle, Raid Hashem, 35, who began washing bodies when he was 10 years old.

The majority of Sunnis in Baghdad bury their dead in the capital, but most Shiites prefer the cemetery in Najaf, 85 miles to the south, which is considered the most sacred burial ground among Shiites worldwide.

Cemeteries have become a flash point for violence in recent weeks, placing mourners and funerary workers at further risk.

On April 6, a car bomb exploded outside the gates of the Najaf cemetery, killing 12 people. Two weeks ago, Sabbah Allami, a 38-year-old Shiite, was burned alive at the Abu Ghraib cemetery along with his vehicle and the body of a Sunni man he was delivering for burial, according to Allami’s colleagues.

Ali Salman, 45, who has driven the deceased and their families to cemeteries throughout Iraq for the past two decades, said he refuses to enter Abu Ghraib cemetery, which is not associated with the notorious prison, following Allami’s death, but there are no shortage of drivers who will.

“I have more competition now,” Salman said, referring to other drivers. “I used to do about four deliveries a week, but now I only do two.”

A modest funeral costs about $200, and includes body washing, transportation to the cemetery, burial and a simple marker. The scores of unidentified bodies that pile up in Baghdad’s morgue are held up to 45 days and then charitably given a proper burial by funerary workers, who say these Sunnis and Shiites are inevitably buried among one another.

“I like to think of this as a positive link between the Sunnis and Shiites,” Salman said.

A passage from the Quran in white Arabic script rolls across a black sign above the doorway of Rozki’s body washing parlor, reminding all crossing the threshold that life ends for every person one day. Despite the long and bleak hours toiling at their work, the body washers here employ that reminder daily while tackling their duties with their own fate in mind.

“Caring for the dead is big responsibility,” said Raed Hashem, who has labored at the parlor for a quarter of a century. “I hope I’m rewarded for my work here with a good place in heaven.”

MO JL END PALMER

(James Palmer wrote this story for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

Editors: To obtain photos of Iraqi bodywashers, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

Editor’s note: Many of the interviews in this story were conducted through a translator