August 9, 2014.

Baghdad's Last Line of Defense

Suddenly he started up with a shock of horror. The sweat broke out on his backbone. He had heard himself cry aloud:

Sattar Jabbar stood at a Baghdad army recruiting station in June wearing nothing but a pair of blue boxer-briefs and a crooked grin. He was waiting for the medical exam required to join Iraq's army, he said, answering a call to arms issued by his spiritual leader, Iraq's senior Shiite cleric.

"Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!"

"I've been trying to volunteer for years, so now I'm seizing the opportunity," he said. "I'm doing this for the Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani and for the prime minister."

For a moment he had had an overwhelming hallucination of her presence. She had seemed to be not merely with him, but inside him. It was as though she had got into the texture of his skin. In that moment he had loved her far more than he had ever done when they were together and free. Also he knew that somewhere or other she was still alive and needed his help.

At 39 years old, the gray-haired, potbellied father of five doesn't look like the kind of vigorous young man usually sought by armies. But as Sunni militants led by the Islamic State push through Iraq, seizing towns and territory, Baghdad is desperately trying to rebuild its broken army with untrained, mostly Shiite recruits.