For Hassan Abu Mohammed, the trip from Baghdad to the sacred Shiite Muslim city of Karbala was ritual, started by his grandfather and adopted by his father. Each week during the holy month of Ramadan, he loaded a car with enough chicken, rice, lentil soup and kibbe, a dish of ground lamb and bulgur wheat, to feed at least 150 people. The tradition brought blessings, he said. Ramadan has ended, and these days, he said, he would need more than faith to set out on a road that is probably the most perilous in a perilous country, traversing a lawless, seething region he and others have nicknamed “the Triangle of Death.” At the thought of another journey, Abu Mohammed, a cheerful man with a beefy face, shook his head and threw out his arms. His eyes grew wide. “Fear,” he said, was the reason to stay put. “If a car passes through there, it will burn. I’m not ready to give my soul to them.” Full Story
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