Iraqis Marking Selves for Death
‘”My age is the same as the olive tree,” reads the blue tattoo on Qaisar Tariq al-Essawi’s left shoulder.
Al-Eassawi, 36, got the tattoo so his family and close friends could recognise his remains if he ended up in a morgue.
“I selected this wording because only my family and close friends know about our olive tree which was planted by my father when I was born,” al-Essawi, a father of two boys, told IRIN in Baghdad.
One response to sudden and violent death which has become commonplace in Iraq’s turmoil, is the emergence of a new subculture – the etching of tattoo identities on people who fear becoming an unclaimed body in a packed morgue.’
