And we had a mission of installing a VoIP-based international calls shop in Baquba (about 60km north-east of Baghdad).

The Internet connections in Iraq after the 2003 occupation were mostly based on Internet via Satellite (VSAT) systems. This is because Iraq had no rigid telecom-backbone, and still.

We were a team of 3 persons, two people to install the internet VSAT system, and me to configure the VoIP devices. The shop we were installing the stuff in was in a one-floor kind of old building. And just by the building there was a Hussainiya (a mosque for Shiite Muslims) separated from the building by a narrow street that only one car can go through. The time we were there was Friday at noon. This time is the time for the “Friday Prayer” for Muslims, so the street was so crowded and so was the mosque. The mosque was so crowded such that people were praying outside it in the street.

One of the our crew wanted to leave the work now and go to pray, but we thought that we needed only few minutes to finish and the mosque was crowded already. So we decided to go to the mosque after the people finish and leave.

Just two minutes later, a bombed car exploded right at the door of the mosque. I was standing at the gate of the shop, and that is like 15 meters away from the explosion. I was thrown inside the shop and that is what protected me from the small pieces of the car that scattered everywhere. The two guys from our crew were on the roof of the building. One of them was standing behind a small piece of wall that held the door that leaded to the roof and the other guy was on the upper part of the roof and he was thrown away to the lower level.

People started running away from the mosque and part of the mosque collapsed over the people. So many people we torn into pieces because of the explosion.

During this time; I was carrying a “walky-talky” and yelling at my two guys who were in the roof and I did not know what happened to them. I ran out towards the explosion to get to the door that leads to the roof. And everybody else was running in the opposite direction. I ran up to the roof and found the two guys with no major wounds. And then we ran down to close down the shop and leave the area. This was due to two reasons; first, the American troops may come here and start blocking the area and arrest everyone, and second, there might be other explosions when the American troops or Iraqi police come to the scene.

As we ran out to the street people started looking at us in a weird way. I did not know what was wrong. I thought that we might be injured and bleeding and did not notice it. I stopped and asked my two fellows to stop and check one another. Just then, it popped into my head. I was carrying a “walky-talky”, a GPS device, a satellite phone, and few other electronic devices hanged to my belt and my colleagues were carrying such stuff too. I stopped for a moment there and thought that if the American troops or the Iraqi police catch me now with all these devices, they would definitely think that I was the one behind this explosion. We ran into the shop and left all these gadgets there wishing that no one would look at us within all the mess that is going on outside. We locked-down the shop and I took the satellite phone with me and hid it in my jacket as I walked out.

We walked for a few hundred meters and stopped to catch our breath.

The bodies of the people killed in the explosion were too many that the ambulances of the city stopped carrying the bodies to try to help the wounded people and the police started to carry the bodies in the back trunks of police cars. And one scene I can never forget is the speedy police car leaving the scene and when it turned to the right an arm of a dead boy fell off the trunk and blood drops were drawing a line behind the car.

This was one of the near-death experiences that I had while working in my home country Iraq as an IT person.

So, an IT job can get you killed, can’t it?

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