The Case of the Agile Corpse

Through Baghdad's crowded streets and souks last week a strange funeral procession wended its way, picking up bystanders, small boys and stray dogs as an avalanche gathers sticks and stones. At the head of the column, Arab women wailed and rent their garments, their faces plastered with clay in sign of mourning. Behind came the pallbearers, carrying a coffin that contained the body of Kassem Shakhnoub. That morning, at a cement plant where Shakhnoub worked, police had broken up a strike called by the Communist-led union. In the midst of the confusion, Shakhnoub had keeled over. Co-workers gathered around his body, shouting that he had been shot by the cops.

Chosen Martyr. For weeks Iraq's Communists had been calling strikes and engaging in street brawls with National Democratic supporters of Premier Karim Kassem, in protest against their progressive exclusion from Iraq's revolutionary regime (TIME, April 11). Now at last they had a martyr. They shoved Shakhnoub's body into a conveniently waiting coffin and marched on the capital, demanding to see Premier Kassem himself. The police tried to stop them. Only keening louder, the mourners broke through and dashed for Kassem's headquarters. Near Baghdad's imposing Defense Ministry, the procession came up against a line of troops. The pallbearers unceremoniously dumped the coffin and fled. As it hit the ground, the corpse scrambled out, fully alive and poised for flight.

Next day Shakhnoub lamely explained that he was an epileptic, subject to periodic and unpredictable seizures. He had not been aware, he said, that he was being used as a martyr. But the progovernment, moderate leftist Al-Zaman published a different story. Shakhnoub had been hired by the Communists for five dinars (about $14) to play dead, said Al-Zaman. The women mourners got considerably less--about $1.50 apiece.

Greed Unwelcome. To the discomfiture of Iraqi Communists, Shakhnoub's aborted martyrdom stole the headlines from what had been expected to be a big Communist triumph in Baghdad, a visit by Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan. Although Russia a year ago offered the new revolutionary regime a $138 million line of credit to finance Russian imports and Russian aid projects, Iraqis say that the Russians are slow on delivery and their prices are too high. Receiving Mikoyan correctly but with pronounced coolness, Kassem reiterated that Iraq "refuses to bow to imperialism or any greedy quarter"--"greedy" being the favorite Kassem euphemism for Russian stooges in Iraq. Said Kassem to Mikoyan: "The command of our chariot is independent."

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