"Maybe they were underground," joked an Umma official.
“没准儿他们是从地底下冒出来的”，一位乌玛官员开玩笑道。
2
This precooking of the election eventually persuaded Ms Mahdi’s Umma party, three days before the vote, to say it would boycott the poll at every level.
这种选举预热，最终使得迈赫迪领导的乌玛党在投票三天前称将对投票进行层层抵制。
3
In fact, one has to go back 4,500 years to find the single historical example of a true "water war" - a dispute between the city-states of Lagash and Umma on the Tigris-Euphrates.