On a piece of paper torn from a notebook and folded four times, writing in Arabic that was at once reserved and casual, Saadi Mohammed Abu Shaiba penned what would be his last testament.
To his childhood friend Abu Sufyan, he declared that he was returning to Fallujah, where he and his family had left their home at the height of the U.S. offensive to retake the guerrilla stronghold in November. He had given money to his wife, he said, and he wanted Abu Sufyan to administer the funds and ensure that his family was never in need.
"If I am killed please take care of my wife and children," he wrote. "I hope you will be with my family after I am absent."
'Ready for martyrdom'
The Washington Post profiled Abu Shaiba, 39, known to his friends as Abu Mohammed, in December, as the former blacksmith turned insurgent bided his time in a cramped house in Baghdad. He waited to return to a city deserted by residents and occupied by U.S. troops, swaths of it destroyed.
"I would kiss your hand if you could show me the way," Abu Shaiba said at the time.
Within weeks, someone did. Four days after that, on Dec. 17, his friends said, he was killed in a lopsided fight with U.S. forces.
The account of the death and life of Abu Shaiba is based in part on a lengthy interview with his brother, who had remained in Fallujah and was present when his brother was killed. Written answers to questions delivered by an intermediary were provided by his wife, who has since moved to the city of Ramadi, and two other insurgents who said they fought with Abu Shaiba in his last battle. The U.S. military said it had no record of an event that matched their description, although it added that "naturally, events occurred over those two days and that night."
The recollections of Abu Shaiba's last days paint a portrait far more complicated than the usual black-and-white renderings of the insurgency that has beset the U.S. occupation for nearly two years and cost the lives of more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines and thousands of Iraqis. His odyssey from Fallujah to the capital and back, across a landscape roiled by religion, tradition and militancy, illustrates the insurgent campaign's stubborn resilience and what may be its growing weakness.
After Abu Shaiba's death, his brother and friends spoke of divisions within their ranks, sown by pervasive suspicion of spies and the opportunism of newcomers. All of them said they had been betrayed by zealous Arab fighters from abroad. One described the foreigners as locusts leaving desolation in their wake. Abu Shaiba's younger brother spoke nostalgically of the insurgency's early days, before the rift between foreign fighters and home-grown insurgents over tactics, aims and ideology.
Abu Shaiba declared that he was fighting for principle. But in those last days, with the battle already lost, his colleagues saw him driven more by a desire to live down accusations that he had fled Fallujah in its time of need and by a wish to avenge his 13-year-old son, a fighter who was killed two months before.
"I knew he had the spirit of revenge," his brother said. "He was ready for martyrdom."
A visitor in the night
On the night of Dec. 13, a man came to visit Abu Shaiba and his family in Baghdad. The man knew him from Fallujah, where Abu Shaiba had lived with his nine children in the southern neighborhood of Shuhada, all of them sleeping in one room with an adjoining kitchen. He was carrying a message: He could smuggle Abu Shaiba back to Fallujah, through the U.S. perimeter.
The battle for Fallujah had begun on Nov. 8 and, at first, Abu Shaiba, a short, wiry man with graying hair, had taken part. He was known in the city for his martial skills, having climbed the ranks of the insurgency soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003. He began as a scout and gunrunner, then became a renowned sniper.
But by Nov. 11, Abu Shaiba had decided to leave Fallujah with his family. His son, Ahmed, a mascot of sorts among the hundreds of men in the city who called themselves mujaheddin, had been killed in a clash with U.S. troops on Oct. 11; another son now had pneumonia. U.S. forces had surrounded the city, blocking traffic in and out, leaving the Euphrates River, which meanders alongside the city's western edge, as the family's sole means of escape.
It took three hours to make what was normally a 15-minute walk to the riverbank. In small groups under the cover of night, they fled in boats or swam across the chilly waters, churned at times by artillery barrages that, in Abu Shaiba's words, made the river seem as if it were burning.
Seeking the 'eye of the needle'
Abu Shaiba insisted that his flight was temporary. It was for his family's sake. "I wanted to go back, but the sun had already risen," he said afterward in Baghdad. "I was trying to find the eye of a needle to get back to Fallujah, but I couldn't."
But he was dogged by rumors that he had abandoned his colleagues, suggestions brought by the man who arrived in December. As the two talked that night, his wife stood concealed behind the doorway, listening to their conversation.
"His colleagues were asking about him," she recalled. "They accused him of cowardice and deserting them in the battlefield." His brother, still in Fallujah, had heard the same: "Some people were saying that he left Fallujah because of his fear."
The conversation was brief, and by the end of it, he had decided to return.
"I wanted to discuss the matter, but he wouldn't listen," his wife said. "He told me, 'I've made up mind. It's settled.' "
That night, he played with his children and kissed them. He gave each of them 10,000 dinars, about $7, what he judged was enough for a month. He shaved his graying beard, which had grown unruly. Then he stayed up through the night.
"He didn't sleep," his wife said. "He could hardly wait for the dawn to break."
When it did, the man returned, waiting outside. Abu Shaiba kissed his wife on her forehead. He took nothing with him.
An emotional reunion
"We felt his absence," said his brother, Abu Gailan.
Eight years younger than Abu Shaiba, he had the same lean build, with hair receding but still dark. Before the U.S. invasion, he was an electrical engineer working at a state-owned fertilizer company. His hands were soft, but like Abu Shaiba, his face seemed hard and drawn, shadowed by weariness. He was shy, looking down when he made points that were usually spoken softly.
"He was eager to come," Abu Gailan said in the interview. "He carried the memory of his son."
With the emissary, Abu Shaiba drove to the village of Zuaba, south of Fallujah. There they donned the black track suits and tennis shoes often worn by insurgents ("work clothes," as his brother put it), then walked three miles through farms, orchards and groves of date palms. After evening prayers, at about dusk, they entered Fallujah from the south, near his neighborhood of Shuhada, whose ocher-hued landscape of concrete and cinder block had been wrecked in November's battle. On some walls in the city, graffiti still read, "Jihad! Jihad!" A Koranic verse was scrawled on one wall: "If you have decided, then proceed, relying on God."
"When we saw him, we felt like we had a new soul," his brother said. "Everybody was crying."
One friend kissed his hand, others his cheek. Some wept as they gathered in a half-finished building.
The fighters who gathered to greet Abu Shaiba had been moving from building to building as U.S. troops scoured the area for insurgents still holed up in the city. Of the men there, all between 25 and 35, three were Abu Shaiba's closest friends.
Tenuous allies
Salam and Walid had fought alongside him since the siege of Fallujah in April, when U.S. troops first attempted to take the city but brokered a truce that effectively left it in insurgents' hands. Abu Gailan, at his brother's order, had joined the U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces after the April battle "to gather information." He estimated that half the men in his unit were insurgents. His commander, a lieutenant colonel, was taking some of each soldier's monthly salary to finance the insurgency, he said.
On the night of his return, his brother said, Abu Shaiba again stayed up all night. The men shared a dinner of tomatoes, potatoes and canned beef and smoked Abu Shaiba's locally made Miami cigarettes. They still had rations -- the fighters would trade gasoline for food, ammunition and weapons provided by smugglers. There was no electricity, but water was stored in tanks outside.
Abu Gailan and Salam said the hours of talk that night were punctuated by what had passed and what was ahead: the rumors of Abu Shaiba's cowardice, the death of his son and the anger many had toward the foreign fighters, whose ranks in Fallujah at one time numbered in the hundreds. They said Abu Shaiba especially disliked them, believing they had hijacked the insurgency, transforming Fallujah into a bastion of beheadings, summary executions, kidnappings and draconian justice.
"He always reminded them that they were here under the orders of the Iraqi fighters -- no more, no less," Salam said.
Walid agreed: "He used to call them locusts, sweeping into an area and eating everything, green or dry."
'We should rely on God'
The big attack came after midnight, in the early morning of Dec. 17, with what they said was intense U.S. bombing.
"You can't imagine what it was like," Abu Gailan said.
At the sound of the bombing, Abu Shaiba told his men, about 11 of them, to perform ritual washing before prayers, which he led. Then they donned their red-checkered head scarves, as much a requisite for the insurgents as any weapon. They dressed wounds with them, used them as straps for their Kalashnikov assault rifles, employed them as handcuffs, soaked and wrapped them over their mouths to filter out smoke.
By then, though, many of the men were tired, even demoralized by a fight they knew was lost. Just four days before Abu Shaiba's return, his brother had lost his best friend when U.S. forces bombed a building where insurgents were hiding, killing -- by his count -- 15 fighters. Some of them were taken aback by Abu Shaiba's aggressiveness.
"To be honest, we were nervous," Abu Gailan said.
Abu Shaiba told the men the bombing was designed to provide cover for an American convoy.
"He told us we should move forward. We told him, 'It's too risky,' " his brother recalled. "He asked us, 'Are you scared?' We told him, 'We're not scared, but the place is dangerous.' " Abu Shaiba's reply, his brother said, was: "We should rely on God."
The men left the building and moved toward Sadd Street, a main road in Shuhada. Abu Shaiba carried a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The others were armed more lightly: most carried assault rifles but a few had Russian-made heavy machine guns. The cold night was lit by a crescent moon as they made their way toward the street, hugging the walls and keeping 10 yards between each man.
Within 20 minutes, they said, they reached the street, where they saw a convoy. Abu Gailan thought they were there to perform reconnaissance. As he understood it, there were seven other groups of fighters in the neighborhood and that he, his brother and the rest would fall back, alert the other bands and then return and attack with bigger numbers and better weapons.
Something to prove
"When he gave us the order [to fire], we didn't know what to do. It wasn't mutiny. We were just astonished," Abu Gailan said. "It was unbelievable that we would fight with just a few people. . . . Our duty was surveillance."
Salam was surprised, too. He said Abu Shaiba "was trying to prove something to those who accused him of cowardice and running away."
Abu Shaiba was on one side of the street, the rest on the other side, crouching. They fired their rifles as a diversion while Abu Shaiba lobbed grenades. During the fight, his brother peeled away to get reinforcements. But soon after he returned with 11 other men, they all realized they had been ambushed. They said more U.S. forces had moved to the opposite end of the street, encircling them. Trapped in the middle, most of the men were killed. Salam put the number at 16; Abu Gailan said he wasn't sure of the number.
Each of them -- Salam, Walid and Abu Gailan -- blamed foreign fighters, who were positioned behind them, for fleeing. Had the foreigners stayed, the three said, those men would have heard the firing and realized they were being flanked.
"They are cowards," Salam said. "They fled, and they left our back uncovered."
Soon after, with the noise deafening, Abu Shaiba ordered the rest to withdraw. They did, scurrying down two alleys. But when they looked back, Abu Shaiba had stayed behind. "We yelled at him, 'Retreat! Retreat!' " Salam recalled. "But he refused."
Moments later, an explosion erupted near where he was standing. Abu Gailan , Salam and Walid all said they ran toward him, about 20 yards down the alley. When they got there, he was on the ground. His brother said the wound in his chest was the size of a Kleenex box.
They dragged his corpse 100 yards back down the alley. As they crouched along walls, shrapnel struck Salam in the right shoulder. Unable to go farther, they left Abu Shaiba's body inside the shell of a building and searched for cover.
In the interview, his brother shook his head as he recalled the fight. He again diverted his eyes and looked to the side.
"I knew he wanted to die," he said softly.
Buried as a martyr
Two days later, the three men said, they returned to get Abu Shaiba's body. The blood from his wounds was still wet, soaked by rain. His face was covered with mud. They carried him to a parking lot, where they washed the dirt off his face.
"He seemed as if he was asleep," Salam recalled.
Together, they went to get help to bury him. On their way, they saw a dozen foreign fighters, some of whom they blamed for his death. Abu Gailan said he raised his gun at the fighters, mostly Syrians and Saudis, and locked a round in the chamber.
"It was revenge for me and my brother," he said. "I intended to kill them."
"Your sisters are prostitutes!" Salam recalled Abu Gailan shouting. "Saadi is dead! You betrayed him!" Salam and Walid restrained him.
With 15 others, they took Abu Shaiba's body to the cemetery and buried him alongside his son, near the Omar Faruq mosque. According to Islamic custom, a martyr is buried as he died in battle, although his wounds are closed. The men stuffed three-quarters of Abu Shaiba's head scarf inside his chest, then wrapped his bloodied, still-clothed corpse in a blanket before placing it in the grave.
Later that afternoon, Abu Shaiba's wife said, a man came to visit her in Baghdad, where he found her sweeping the courtyard.
"He told me be happy, my husband died a hero," she said.
He then told her that Abu Shaiba had been buried next to their son, Ahmed. Until that moment, she thought her son was still alive, fighting in Fallujah; Abu Shaiba had said in November that he was waiting for the right time to tell her. At the news, she collapsed and was taken to Noaman Hospital in Baghdad; three days later, she went with her family to her brother's house in Ramadi.
"I don't know who to cry for, Ahmed or Saadi," she said.
She still had the creased letter Abu Shaiba had given her, stuffed in a small black purse she kept under her pillow. It was never delivered. Abu Sufyan, the man Abu Shaiba named as a guardian, had been killed the following day in a fight in Ramadi, the men said.
A personal fight
A week later, Abu Shaiba's brother left Fallujah, too. Those still in the city are there to die, he said.
In the interview, he looked ahead with little ardor, his conviction conspicuously void of dogmatism. "The resistance will win," he said, "as long as there is one thing: as long as it is united."
To him, its peak was in April, when the insurgents stopped U.S. troops from taking Fallujah. At the time, he said, the insurgents stood together and the foreign fighters fought with them "like the prophet's companions." Now, he said, there are divisions. Most of the newcomers are there "for money, not for resistance." Spies, he said, infused their ranks.
He complained about foreign fighters, whom he blamed for Abu Shaiba's death. Well-financed, those men and Iraqi guerrillas who subscribe to their ideology have the upper hand, he said. He denounced the killing of Iraqi security forces, the car bombs that killed civilians and the kidnappings and beheadings for which Fallujah became known before it was retaken in November.
"Fallujah became a shelter for them," he said. "We realized this too late."
His fight, Abu Gailan said, was with the Americans -- "the occupation," as he put it. But at another point in the conversation, he said that if U.S. forces announced they would withdraw in a year or two, the insurgency would probably diminish. He acknowledged his was a minority view. If the United States did not declare its departure, the insurgency would "grow even stronger," he said.
As for his fight, he said, it would go on. For him, it was not ideology, not really political. In essence, it was personal.
"When Saadi told me he wanted to avenge his son, I understood," he said.
Intiqam -- Arabic for revenge -- was a word he used often. It was both justification and explanation, its meaning implicit. As he and the others stood at his brother's grave, Abu Gailan said, it was intiqam that ran through their minds.
"When my brother died, I had the same feeling that he did. Revenge," he said.
"I want to take revenge." His words were more matter-of-fact than angry. "We decided. This is our principle. Revenge."