Ali and his father were inseparable. Ali’s older brothers called him “Daddy’s favorite,” and the family affectionately called him by his kid nickname, Allawi. “He was the closest of my sons to me. He was my youngest and was always indulged,” recalls Mohammed. “He would sleep on my arm. He’s 9 and half years old but still sleeps on my arm. He has his own room, but he never slept alone.” When the boy turned 9, Ali’s father thought, “This can’t go on–him sleeping on my arm as his pillow. So I said, ‘Son, you’re older now; go sleep like your brothers, in your bed in your room. It doesn’t work anymore; you’re getting older. You’re gonna be a man soon.’”

Ali died in a hail of gunfire in Nisour Square in September 2007 after Blackwater guards, following years of legal and operational impunity in Iraq, misidentified a lurching car at a traffic stop as a security threat and responded with such an overwhelming amount of gunfire that 17 civilians were killed as they tried to escape. Jeremy Scahill talks to Ali’s father, a survivor. This amount of understanding is practically superhuman:

After Ali’s death, some of Mohammed’s friends came to him and asked him if the death had changed his attitude toward the Americans. It hadn’t, he told them. “I honestly separate distinctly between Blackwater and the American people and the American government,” he says. “I honestly love America and the American people. What happened to my family is totally isolated from the American people and government.”