I was sitting in my room when I hear my aunt talking to my mother and telling her that one of our neighbors had died. My mother showed her sorrow by saying "poor man he was very young. May Allah gives his family patience" and then she asked my aunt the usual question that Iraqis nowadays ask about dead people, she said "who killed him" my aunt said "no one, he just died naturally, act of God". Then my mother said "oh! Act of God, thanks Allah for that". My mother words shocked me because the way she changed after she knew that the guy had died naturally expressed a kind of satisfying with the death case. She used to cry when she watches the news about the explosions and when she sees all these women and men crying and shouting because they lost members of their families. This time she was very calm although the result is the same.

What must it be like to live in a country where a natural death is a rare and unique occurrence and worthy of remark? I think it’s impossible for Americans to comprehend the horror of daily life in a charnel house. The nation has not seen war on its soil since 1812; the benefit of isolation by two vast oceans has protected us from all this.

Is American exceptionalism an accident of geography?

Civilian employees of McClatchy newspapers maintain their own blog and write about daily life in Baghdad. The rest of this entry is available here.