BLINKING into sunlight that they had not seen for three weeks, the Aboud family and others sheltering with them emerged yesterday from the basement where they had hidden from war in Najaf .
Shielding their eyes, they found a devastated city centre whose trinket shops and religious bookstores had been destroyed by exchanges of fire between al-Mahdi Army mortar teams and American tanks.
For three weeks they had lived off soup and rice — on alternate days — left over from their food ration.
During the crisis they had no electricity or running water; both were cut off three weeks ago by the city authorities to hinder the Mahdi Army’s activities. In one alcove lay a plate of half-gnawed unripe dates and in another lay an ancient well that the families kept in reserve in case their daily water supplies dried up.
So intense was the sniper, tank and mortar-fire that two neighbours were killed trying to smuggle food through the narrow alleyways.
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The Aboud family, like other ordinary people of the holy city, took refuge deep beneath the war, down flights of unlit stairs in subterranean chambers where no missile or stray mortar could penetrate.
“When Saddam put down the 1991 uprising we didn’t leave the city and we’re not going to leave now,” Intissar Aboud had said when The Times found her, her husband and children in hiding just before the fighting ended. “People come from hundreds of miles away to bury their dead in Najaf, why should we go away from the holy city?” The only light on the lowest floor was a tiny wick lamp, and above that a few rays of light trickling in through a barred floor grating.
Two floors above their heads the family’s pet canary sang within its barred cage in an empty hallway, enjoying more light and ventilation than her owners.
Many locals grumble that the fighters seized all the food aid into the city, and the sparse rations sit oddly with the bags of rice and flour doubling up as sandbags in gun emplacements and anti-sniper barricades on the streets.
The family would not leave during the bombing, but Mrs Aboud’s husband, Dalman, is determined to flee now that the turmoil is over.
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He has already moved his car out of Najaf, convinced that the Sistani agreement will collapse and fearing that the Mahdi Army will re-emerge stronger and more aggressive.
“We don’t trust the Mahdi. I don’t believe they will really pull out,” he said yesterday.
We expect it all to happen again,” he added, “and there will be no mercy from them then. They are now deployed and spread everywhere in the city, and they are all armed.”