BAGHDAD — I hated to send Lucky away.
Lucky is my dog. He's black and reddish-brown, with white on his paws and black spots on his face -- probably a German shepherd mix. He looks a lot like the dogs that search our cars when we go into the Green Zone.
We got him six years ago when he was a puppy. But my house is on a highway where there is a lot of shooting, and I told my brother the gunfire was so intense that even the dog was terrified. He said Lucky should live with him in his district, Mansour, which is quieter.
When my brother came over to get Lucky last month, he opened his car door and Lucky jumped into the back seat. He looked very excited.
I felt bad, because he didn't seem that upset about leaving me.
"Lucky!" I said. "What are you doing? I'm your father!"
He just sat there in the car.
This is the second time I've had to send Lucky away because of the situation in my neighborhood, Sadiya, in south Baghdad. The first time was about a year ago, when I noticed things starting to change in the neighborhood. The number of corpses on the street increased. We started hearing shooting on a daily basis.
Sadiya was originally a mix of Sunni and Shiite Muslims. But then Sunnis living in a section of the neighborhood called Ilam began being displaced and started moving across the highway to another part of Sadiya. The Shiites who had been living in this part of Sadiya got displaced and moved across the highway to Ilam.
I am a Shiite and so is my wife, so about a year ago I moved my family from our home in Sadiya to Ilam. I can actually see my old house from where we live now.
Security didn't improve, and in October I sent my wife and three kids to Syria to get them away from the violence. They stayed there seven months. During that time, I put Lucky with my brother. My brother gave him lots of treats, and with all the pampering, he became fond of my brother.
Syria is expensive, so my wife and kids came back, and Lucky moved back home, too. Whenever my brother came to visit, he would bring treats for Lucky. It was obvious Lucky really liked my brother.
Things have become much worse lately. Usually the most intense gunfire starts in the evening and goes on until midnight.
One day last week, my next-door neighbor's house was shot at. His sons were standing outside the front gate, and one of them was killed. He was 10. The other was wounded. So was a man who was working outside their house.
