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What I like the least bout this is that the American people commenting on this article attribute the "Mahdi Army" with Islam due to their ignorance.
"So Muqtada al-Sadr goes to Japan" the barber tells his customer who was already smiling, bracing himself in the chair for a laugh. The barber tells the best jokes in Baghdad.
"So Muqtada is in Tokyo and meeting with officials and all of the top Japanese people and its a very big deal," the barber continues, as the customers hair falls on the floor in tufts.
"So Muqtada asks for a meeting, you know with who? No, you dont know," he says. "It wasnt with Japanese arms merchants or the army, but with the Toyota company. Do you know why?
"No," says the customer, ready for the big punch line.
"Because he wanted them to make the trunks of their cars bigger."
Like a good comedian, the barber laughs, enticing the customer to laugh even harder.
Toyotas are very common in Baghdad, and especially popular with
Muqtada al-Sadrs Mahdi Army. They often stuff bodies in the trunks.
No laughing matter
But another customer in the barbershop didnt laugh. He was quietly having a haircut in another chair. He was one of those Mahdi Army men who kills people and stuffs them in the trunks of Toyotas.
The next day he went to visit the barbers and his customers to discuss their "inappropriate humor."
The conversations went like this:
The Mahdi army fighter tied the barber up, took a knife and plucked out both of his eyes. He was only left alive because he was Shiite, like the Mahdi Army.
The customer who laughed at the joke, a Sunni, was killed and stuffed in the trunk of a car, although the friend of the barber who told me the story this morning didnt know if the car was a Toyota.
[In response to the first comment below, Richard added this:
"Yesyou are right, it does very much sound like an 'urban legend.' The source, however, is a long trusted friend of mine who is a personal friend of the barber. My friend didnt just hear about the incident, but has visited the barber in his home after he was attacked and seen his condition. The barber, who lives with his parents, hardly ever goes outside anymore.
"And 'were things better under Saddam?' When asked this question this week, two Iraqis told me, 'Before there were massacres but they were secret, now they take place openly.'"]
Edited by nit, 14 October 2006 - 09:47 AM.
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