A Jar of Jam
A Jar of Jam - A Jar of Jam
We had started a new area for searching and we were so into our task that we didn’t realize we had entered twenty kilometers in Iraq. All that while Saddam was ruling Iraq. there was no time to hesitate. We decided to return, then we saw a little pile of soil which seemed odd. We dug there and the body of a martyr was found intact. It was easy to take him out of there, but the problem was that there was no ID card in his clothes. It was dusk; the sky was getting dark. We felt like Iraqis have hid behind the hills around and they might attack us in any moment. The work was not done, though. The commander of the group finally ordered to pack up the equipment and fall back. I got upset. I told the martyr, “You are intact, why don’t you show us your ID card”. Right in that moment, the tip of the shovel hit an Iraqi jar of jam. We took it out. It rolled and stopped in front of our foot. We picked it up. We were jaw dropped. There was a dog tag, ID card, ring, mirror, and a tiny pocket Quran. It was crystal clear the martyr hadn’t put them in there. It seemed like a Muslim Iraqi, probably Shiite, had put those stuff in the jar to prevent them from getting rotten. He had shed soil on the body to draw attention. He did his job so clean and carefully it made us forget the exhaustion. Never thought a day would come that seeing a .jar of jam makes me so happy
