Tattoo Identity

A father plants an olive tree when his son is born. 

Years later, that son, now a father himself, has the following words tattooed onto his arm:  "My age is the same as the olive tree."

"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 recognize 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. It is more than just another grim footnote in a nation brimming with sad stories. It points to how deeply war and sectarian bloodshed have transformed the way Iraqis live today and confront the constant possibility of death.

This is the world that we create.