Getty pho­tog­ra­pher Chris Hon­dros, Marla Ruz­icka
and me in Bagh­dad last summer.

BAGHDAD–Even now, I have a hard time believ­ing that she’s gone.
Marla Ruz­icka died Sat­ur­day, April 16 when a sui­cide car bomber blew up his car next to hers in an appar­ent attack on a nearby civil­ian con­voy on Air­port Road in Bagh­dad. She was 28.
“Marla”:http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Marla+Ruzicka&btnG=Search+News was a friend of mine here in Bagh­dad. She was a match­maker, a social hub and the heart of our journo-tribe, both here and in Afghanistan, although she wasn’t a jour­nal­ist. She was known and loved–sometimes through grit­ted teeth, admittedly–by the major­ity of Bagh­dad, it seems. Every­one knew Marla.
That’s because Marla made it her busi­ness to be known. She was tire­less and ubiq­ui­tous in her work, which was to get com­pen­sa­tion for Iraqi vic­tims of war from the U.S. mil­i­tary. She con­fronted, cajoled, flirted with and–more often than not–convinced gen­er­als, diplo­mats and politi­cians that Iraqi civil­ians were wor­thy of remem­brance and that the U.S. had a respon­si­bil­ity to the fam­i­lies of those killed or injured by Amer­i­can muni­tions.
It was hard work. Every day, she was out, with her driver/translator and coun­try coor­di­na­tor Faiz Ali Salim, meet­ing fam­i­lies and diplo­mats, gen­er­als and jour­nal­ists, work­ing every­one to help these fam­i­lies. She had a hur­ri­cane energy to her and a radi­ant _goodness_ that could knock you down and leave your head spin­ning. I often imag­ined the first con­tact she had with Iraqi fam­i­lies who needed help, and how bewil­dered they must have been by this pretty, loud and enor­mously kind Amer­i­can woman who swooped into their lives in a black _abaya_ and face-splitting grin. Bewil­dered at first, yes, but quickly grate­ful, and as much in love and in awe of her as any of us who knew her for more than a short time. While she leaves behind a group of friends among the west­ern­ers here in Bagh­dad, she leaves behind a huge extended fam­ily of Iraqis who took her in. I saw it myself last sum­mer when I was think­ing of pitch­ing a fea­ture on her to _New York_ mag­a­zine. I went with her to the home of a fam­ily who had lost a daugh­ter in a U.S. bomb­ing. The men hov­ered around for her pro­tec­tion and gazed at her ador­ingly. The women of the fam­ily swept her up in warm embraces, almost caus­ing her to dis­ap­pear in the flurry of _abayas._ The chil­dren sat at her feet or played with her blonde hair. Then, the old matri­arch told her about how the paper­work was going and asked her about a lawyer in Jor­dan who was try­ing to con­vince the fam­ily to take him on as their attor­ney.
I don’t know what hap­pened with their case because the story never panned out. She was leav­ing Bagh­dad and I got busy and with other things. Now I wish I’d pushed harder so that more peo­ple might have known about her when she was doing her work instead of the cur­rent rush of news­pa­per epi­taphs.
Because what Marla was doing was impor­tant and nec­es­sary. The night before she died, at one of her thrown-together par­ties, she said she was stay­ing in Bagh­dad longer than she had orig­i­nally planned because she was close to estab­lish­ing that the mil­i­tary kept records on civil­ian deaths in Iraq, despite mil­i­tary state­ments that such records don’t exist. She had per­son­ally ver­i­fied about 2,000 casu­al­ties through painstak­ing case­work, although she knew these were just the tip of the ice­berg. Through the strength of her per­son­al­ity, she per­suaded U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy to push $17.5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion funds through Con­gress.
For jour­nal­ists here, she was our lit­tle sis­ter, our masseuse at par­ties and some­times our project. For all her energy and good work, she was trou­bled, telling me over din­ner one night about her anx­i­eties and bat­tles with depres­sion. Her mood roller­coasted between mania and tears, and we often felt pro­tec­tive, but also some­times impa­tient. _Marla, go home; it’s so hard on you–and us_, I remem­ber think­ing self­ishly. I felt this was not the place for DIY ther­apy, for sav­ing one­self by help­ing oth­ers.
But I think now I was wrong. She helped so many and she was so loved. She died doing exactly what she was born to do, and thou­sands are grate­ful to her. Thou­sands were saved by her. And what have we, the jour­nal­ists who took her in, done? Com­pared to the beau­ti­ful, sad pixie, most of us are dwarves.
She was so many things to so many peo­ple, but for the jour­nal­ists who knew and loved her she was, ulti­mately, our heart and our con­science.
We real­ized some­thing was wrong Sat­ur­day when she missed her own party that was to mark the social “com­ing out” of the Hamra Hotel pool. Some pho­tog­ra­phers, includ­ing Scott Nel­son, who is donat­ing any sales of his pho­tos of her to a fund for her fam­i­lies, and me sat around crack­ing jokes and talk­ing about our friend.
“Every war needs a Marla,” Scott said, refer­ring to her zest for life, com­pas­sion, sense of fun and pas­sion for help­ing peo­ple.
“Every war _has_ a Marla,” I said. “It’s Marla.“
Two hours later, we found out she was dead.
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