LAURENT VAN DER STOCKT FOR "THE WORLD"
ReportageIn the heart of the Iraqi capital, Tahrir Square and the building that dominates it have been for weeks the epicenter of a revolt revealing the state of the country.
An Iraqi flag on his shoulders, a standard-bearer shakes the coat of arms of the Shiite Imam Hussein, printed in gold letters on a black background. From the top of the "Turkish restaurant", a disused tower that once housed a shopping center and a panoramic restaurant, the young man dominates Tahrir Square, the beating heart of the Baghdad protest. On its back are the barricades of the Al-Joumhouria bridge, the access road to the green zone, the sector of power, confined behind concrete walls and rows of armed men.
There is no better place than this concrete carcass, abandoned after a bombing in 2003 and now covered with banners of claims, political cartoons and photos of "martyrs", to take the pulse of the mobilization .
"Get out! "
A few hundred, soon thousands of demonstrators are massed in the square until the night when illuminate, with the pediment of the building of eighteen floors, huge fluorescent letters composing the words "Clear! And "Uhud Mountain". Thus, in reference to one of the battles of the Prophet Muhammad, the occupants of this strategic building have renamed it since they took control, the evening of October 24, the day before a protest against power. They settled there before the riot police or possible snipers, who were responsible for so many deaths during the first week of mobilization in early October.
Since then, the "Uhud mountain" is the stronghold of the opponents. "They sometimes attack us with tear gas canisters and sound bombs to scare us. We hold good: if we lose the building, it's the end of the battle »says Hassan, a young psychology graduate, currently unemployed, from the city of Hilla, in the center of the country, for "To make the seat of the government".
Without the "mountain of Uhud", it would be the survival of the "Ideal city" that they have fashioned at his feet. In front of the monument of freedom, which celebrates the 1958 revolution of the "free officers" against the monarchy, on the central reservation and in the alleys next to the vast Tahrir place, cut off from the traffic, tents flourished. " Right here, continues Hassan, everything is much better than anything the government has ever done in sixteen years. "since the US invasion of 2003, fatal to the dictator Saddam Hussein. They even installed electricity in the "Turkish restaurant" and repainted its walls.
