TSD

David Enders, for the Pulitzer Center
Iraq

I filmed this kid after a car bombing on Sunday. He died at the hospital later of internal injuries.

There is increasing awareness of the post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that soldiers commonly suffer from, but such discussions usually leave out Iraqis, who also suffer from what I'd rather call TSD. (The war's still going on, so why call it "post"?)

For Iraqis, TSD is a sort of a general state of being. I was sitting at a R's house this evening when a car bomb that was closer than I would have preferred rattled windows (which were open because of the lack of electricity, approximately an hour and a half in the last two days, and therefore didn't shatter).

My friend asked, half joking, if I wanted to go see where the bomb had gone off. I said I had seen enough of them already. R's wife, S,replied that she had been shopping in a nearby market on Tuesday a few minutes before the market was bombed. I noticed that I was the only one shaking. That's the closest I've been to one since I came back to Baghdad.

"Why did you come back?" is the first question most Iraqis ask me (unless they're part of one of the parties fighting for control).

R and his wife, S, are making plans to leave. They are just waiting to sell their house. Their nephew, F, on the couch next to me, is hiding out here, planning to leave for Syria in a few weeks. He explains how he was kidnapped by the Jeish al-Mehdi on the suspicion he was working for the US and only let go after proving that he hadn't been — just his friends had. S's sister-in-law, living in a different neighborhood, left a few days ago (they're Shiites) to Syria after a Sunni militia raided the house. One brother is already in Syria to avoid conscription by the Jeish al-Mehdi as they fight for control of Sadiya, the neighborhood in south Baghdad where he used to live with S's parents. They're still there and the militia has conscripted her father instead, who is elderly and sick. Her youngest sister is staying with them, another brother still in Iraq often hides at S's house to avoid conscription as well.

According to R and S's neighbors who do go to see where the bombing hit (the same market S was in Tuesday, it turns out), both the US military and the Jeish al-Mehdi showed up to secure the area, sparking an exchange of gunfire.

This is Karrada, the "safest" neighborhood in Baghdad.