The tile walls of the holy shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf are riddled with bullets, the marble floors streaked with blood. Inside the gates of the besieged compound last week, members of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army slept and patched up their wounds and died. But their determination never faltered, even under the withering firepower of the vastly superior army outside. Haidar, 23, had come to join the fight from his family's house just on the other side of the U.S. cordon encircling the shrine. "I was a history student, but now I have this," he said, waving aloft his Kalashnikov. He said he didn't expect to see his family again. A fighter in the shrine claimed to have seen a vision of the Imam Ali during a power blackout, and soon men sang and chanted and pointed to the balcony. They called for al-Sadr to make an ap-pearance, but their leader never came.
展开▼
