The Eid al Fitr has come for all Muslims, Sunni and Shiite, in Iraq now. The first day of the holiday, when Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadan, a month of fasting when Muslims believe the holy book of the Quran was revealed to the prophet Mohammed, was once again marked with revelry and tragedy.

At least 20 people were killed at Baghdad mosques as people went to pray on this holy holiday.

I called a friend to wish her a happy holiday. She’d given birth the day before the day before the holiday in a place that she does not consider home. The Arab Sunni fled to the Kurdish north when things grew too dangerous in her Baghdad neighborhood. She still hasn’t decided that Baghdad is safe enough for her to return.

She named the baby Leila, after her mother. Her husband’s mother flew to the north to help her with the baby.

The next morning they got word that her husband’s uncle had died in custody. He and his nephews were all detained in an operation in Diyala province led by Iraqi troops titled the “Glad Tidings of Benevolance.”

My friend, Shatha, looked at her mother-in-law and told her to return to Baghdad to pick up her brother’s body.

The operation was to weed out the vestiges of Al Qaida in Iraq and Shiite militants in the area but residents complained that the Shiite-dominated security forces targeted Sunni Arab men. The governor’s secretary was killed, a Sunni provincial council members was arrested, leaders of the U.S. backed paramilitary of mostly former Sunni Arab insurgents fled the country in fear of persecution and men like my friend’s uncle and his nephews were detained.

He was a moderate and his farm, in a small Sunni village, was often the target of American raids in the first three years of the war. He was also a victim of the extremism that took over his province. Like all men who needed to survive, at his local mosque he was forced to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq, an Al Qaida front that declared a religious state in Sunni Arab parts of the country. He couldn’t smoke in public and militants threatened him if his wife didn’t cover her face.

Just a few villages away Shiite militants controlled the area and the drive to Baghdad became too dangerous as a Sunni man.

When Al Qaida in Iraq’s grip was loosened the man was relieved. But now he is dead. It is unclear what happened and the family is too afraid to ask. They were told he had a stroke. But the man’s nephews are still in detention and they don’t want to hurt them by asking too many questions, the family said.

So they didn’t ask whether he was in American or Iraqi custody, they didn’t ask if he’d received treatment following a stroke he had in custody. They picked the body up from the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and buried him silently.

As my friend revels in the birth of her baby, she mourns the death of her uncle and worries about the future of her cousins.