Edited for brevity.
A tiny cry rose from among corpses as Iraqis soldiers dug through the wreckage of a minibus caught in the rampage of suicide bombings that shook Baghdad on Friday. The soldiers followed the wail to two slumped passengers, one headless and the other burned beyond recognition. They gently lifted up the bodies to find 8-month-old Sajjad Hassan, bloodied but alive, spared from the blast by the bodies of his dead mother and grandmother. This scrap of life among so much death inspired hope in the soldiers at the scene, in the doctors who treated the shocked infant, in the stranger who cared for him overnight and in the father finally reunited with his son on Saturday. Sajjad's family and rescuers attributed his implausible survival to the will of God, a miracle on a day of destruction. |