Article Tools
Most Popular
- Viewed
- Emailed
- The Ultimate Spy Plane
- Photo Contest Grand Prize Winner - In the early morning, fishermen clean their nets by Erhai Lake
- Catching a Wave, Powering an Electrical Grid?
- Photo Contest Finalist - A mountain dwarfs a passenger boat in the Three Gorges area of the Yangzi River
- Photo Contest Finalist - Ganga Arati
- Photo Contest Finalist - After a hard night's work at sea, a fisherman collects the rope that ties the nets
- Photo Contest Travel Winner - Dining in Gion
- Photo Contest Finalist - Erik in the World’s Greatest Store
- Frank Baum, the Man Behind the Curtain
- Tattoos
- There Oughta Be a Law
- Terra Cotta Soldiers on the March
- Frank Baum, the Man Behind the Curtain
- Photo Contest Grand Prize Winner - In the early morning, fishermen clean their nets by Erhai Lake
- High Hopes for a New Kind of Gene
- Catching a Wave, Powering an Electrical Grid?
- Up in Arms Over a Co-Ed Plebe Summer
- The Ultimate Spy Plane
- Buenos Aires: a City's Power and Promise
- Photo Contest Finalist - Walk on Water
In October, Andrew Cockburn spent two hectic weeks in Iraq reporting our story on the Shiites (" Iraq's Oppressed Majority"), members of the diverse Muslim sect that may well hold the key to the nation's future. He was interviewing a senior Shiite leader in Baghdad when the man suddenly stood up and announced he had to attend a majlis aza'a—a ceremony of mourning—for a high-ranking officer in the Badr Brigade, the Shiites' unofficial army. (He had been killed in a car crash.) Cockburn invited himself along and soon was hurtling toward SadrCity, the huge Shiite slum that has lately seen deadly clashes between Shiite fundamentalists and American soldiers. At the ceremony, Cockburn and his senior Shiite companion were ushered to a line of chairs reserved for dignitaries. "So for the next hour I accepted the condolences of sobbing Shiite guerrillas," he says.
A few days later, Cockburn was in Karbala, one of the Shiites' holiest cities, to observe a 15th Shaban celebration, which drew more than a million people to a plaza adjoining two of Shiite Islam's most sacred shrines. After several hours, Cockburn and some companions decided the time had come to leave. But the way was largely blocked by jostling celebrants, and the bus merely inched along for 90 minutes—"the scariest of my life. Hurting someone could have had very nasty consequences." Less consequential, but more surprising, was meeting a Baghdad book merchant who had spent two years in prison for selling a bootlegged translation of a book about Saddam Hussein that Cockburn and his brother Patrick wrote in 1998. It turned out the man was actually nostalgic for the excitement of the bad old days. Selling books without fear, he told Cockburn, just "wasn't the same."
In October, Andrew Cockburn spent two hectic weeks in Iraq reporting our story on the Shiites (" Iraq's Oppressed Majority"), members of the diverse Muslim sect that may well hold the key to the nation's future. He was interviewing a senior Shiite leader in Baghdad when the man suddenly stood up and announced he had to attend a majlis aza'a—a ceremony of mourning—for a high-ranking officer in the Badr Brigade, the Shiites' unofficial army. (He had been killed in a car crash.) Cockburn invited himself along and soon was hurtling toward SadrCity, the huge Shiite slum that has lately seen deadly clashes between Shiite fundamentalists and American soldiers. At the ceremony, Cockburn and his senior Shiite companion were ushered to a line of chairs reserved for dignitaries. "So for the next hour I accepted the condolences of sobbing Shiite guerrillas," he says.
A few days later, Cockburn was in Karbala, one of the Shiites' holiest cities, to observe a 15th Shaban celebration, which drew more than a million people to a plaza adjoining two of Shiite Islam's most sacred shrines. After several hours, Cockburn and some companions decided the time had come to leave. But the way was largely blocked by jostling celebrants, and the bus merely inched along for 90 minutes—"the scariest of my life. Hurting someone could have had very nasty consequences." Less consequential, but more surprising, was meeting a Baghdad book merchant who had spent two years in prison for selling a bootlegged translation of a book about Saddam Hussein that Cockburn and his brother Patrick wrote in 1998. It turned out the man was actually nostalgic for the excitement of the bad old days. Selling books without fear, he told Cockburn, just "wasn't the same."
