The Islamic warrior limps across the mosque courtyard, recovering from a gunshot wound he suffered as he fought U.S. tanks with rocket-propelled grenades in the holy city of Najaf last week.
An American bullet is still lodged in his hip, hobbling his movements. But when asked about his combat injury, the 35-year-old bearded fighter is much more keen to talk about his leader, the militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "Our health depends only on the health of our leader," he declares.
His eyes shining, he ascribes near-magical powers to the firebrand preacher who leads the rebel force known as the Mahdi Army. In the fighting in Najaf, the man says, he saw U.S. soldiers run away when they saw portraits of Mr. al-Sadr making an aggressive gesture.
"They are scared of the pictures, and they are even more frightened of our weapons," he said. "The Mahdi Army is the people. We have no base, no battalions, no officers — only fighters. All of the believers belong to our army."
The warrior, a tribal sheik who calls himself Abu al-Mahdi al-Kaaby, is an Islamic scholar at a religious college in Najaf. He is also a teacher at a madrasah in a Baghdad suburb. With his robes and sandals, and fingering his prayer beads, he looks like an Arab theologian.
His injury is the only evidence of his moonlighting job as a Mahdi Army soldier, although he has been fighting the Americans for most of the past two months.
Hundreds of Iraqis have died in the Mahdi Army rebellion, which first erupted in southern Iraq in early April. Since the ceasefire in Fallujah in late April, the Mahdi uprising has been the biggest source of armed clashes.
Battles continued yesterday in Najaf and nearby Kufa despite truce agreements.
In many ways the Mahdi Army is like a cult, with a charismatic leader and devoted followers who are eager to die for him. At one of its offices in northern Baghdad, the walls are covered with portraits of the radical 31-year-old cleric and his revered father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999.
"Muqtada al-Sadr is the first man of Iraq," says Sheik Rayid al-Khadimy, the head of the office. "He is the first to sacrifice himself for the needs of the people."
Mr. al-Khadimy sips tea in a corner of the office beneath a large portrait of his leader, shown sternly wagging his finger during a sermon. Nearby is a photograph of a young man brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a portrait of Mr. al-Sadr in the other. Around his waist is a belt filled with explosives and hand grenades. His name is Alaa al-Sadry al-Harbawy. He is from this same northern Baghdad suburb, and, according to the Mahdi Army, he was killed in Najaf last week after destroying seven U.S. tanks in 12 days of fighting.
"He is an eagle of the Mahdi Army," Mr. al-Khadimy said. "I am very proud of him. He was a weapons expert and he took part in all of our operations and patrols. He was a very strong fighter against the Americans."
The U.S.-led coalition refuses to estimate how many rebels have died in Najaf, but the number is believed to be in the hundreds. "It serves no purpose to talk about the numbers of young Iraqis that we've had to kill after they were entranced into the lure of Muqtada al-Sadr and his group," U.S. Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt told a briefing last week. He said the rebels are often 17-year-olds who are "convinced, corrupted, connived" into joining the Mahdi Army.
But while the uprising has cost hundreds of lives, and severely depleted the Mahdi Army, it has succeeded in bolstering Mr. al-Sadr's stature as a respected national figure. A few months ago, only about 1 per cent of Iraqis supported him. The latest opinion poll, conducted in late April by the Iraqi Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, found that 32 per cent of Iraqis strongly support him and 35 per cent somewhat support him.
The same poll found that 82 per cent of Iraqis now have a better opinion of the cleric than they did three months ago. And only 5 per cent agreed with the U.S. viewpoint that Mr. al-Sadr should be arrested and tried on murder charges.
"His popularity is rising because he is a free Iraqi and a righteous leader," said Mr. al-Kaaby, the injured fighter. "If there was no Muqtada al-Sadr, nobody else would stand up against the Americans to protect our holy places."
He denied that the death toll was a factor in the Najaf truce. "If one person in the Mahdi Army is killed, a thousand take his place. We are not lovers of life. I have no personal ambitions, only to serve Allah."
The coalition had hoped to defuse the Najaf fighting by recruiting the Mahdi Army into the local security forces. The tactic worked in Fallujah, where the rebels were allowed to form a special brigade to patrol the town. But most of the Fallujah rebels were former Baathists from the old regime and perhaps easier to co-opt with security jobs. It is unclear whether the same tactic will succeed with the religiously motivated Mahdi fighters.