He sobs as he burns the photos. “They were my friends, my brothers. We ate together. We played music together. I fixed their instruments for them.” The faces of the American soldiers melt and bubble before turning black in an impromptu crematorium from his kitchen, destroying any memorial evidence of camaraderie with the invaders.
He was able to find work at the nearby Saddam General Hospital of Mosul making $2 a day. He saved his salary for two years so that he could buy a second-hand piano from a friend. But the music would stop. “If I practiced, I would put blankets inside to dampen the sound so that the terrorists wouldn’t hear.”
“How would you feel if you saw a body in the garbage? This is why I destroyed them. I needed to keep myself alive.” He marks the day he burned the photos as his darkest since the start of the war.
Even though the hospital was less than 100 feet away, he would not be able to return to work. The bodies were piling up, the resistance fierce. He and his aunt elected to sit at home most days surviving on her retirement income.
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