Two days before my walk, someone had thrown grenades into the crowd, killing three people, pilgrims like me.
It took me three hours to reach Baghdad's gate in the south, where the road leads into what's called the Sunni "Triangle of Death". Around me, women clutched their babies, little boys walked close to their parents and the elderly marched on. At prayer time, I stopped at one of the roadside tents to pray. A young man sat with his two-year-old daughter in a stroller. Her legs were limp. She couldn't walk, and he was penniless. "I can't go abroad to treat her, I don't have the money for such a trip," he told me. "I hope that walking to Karbala with my little baby will give her the Imam's blessing to help her walk.".
Here, in the Triangle of Death, I saw the greatest kindness.
People who earn six dollars a day opened their homes to passing pilgrims and offered them food. Women sat outside with their children and boiled hot, sweet tea for us. No one is as generous as the poor. In Mahmoudiyah, a mixed-sect slum, banners in support of militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr's movement covered the walls. I tried to find a plug to charge my camera, but most people had no fuel to power their generators. I limped to a mosque searching for electricity, but even there it was dark. So I walked on to Latifiyah, passing a building that was hit by mortars last year, reducing it to rubble.
In Latifiyah, I met a mother and boy of four who was exhausted by the walk. They'd been walking for a full day until a cold rain had halted their journey and they found lodging with a local family. In Haswa, volunteers had set up dozens of tents so that pilgrims could eat, obtain medication and sleep before night fell. It was close to 5 p.m., but I wanted to reach Iskandiriyah, the midway point between Baghdad and Karbala, before dark. I arrived in Iskandiriyah just after sunset and heard the Sunni and Shiite calls to prayer.