Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Saturday, February 18th, 2006
Good evening….
Today, I remembered a sentence I wrote in my diaries at the beginning of the war on Iraq, in 2003, I said that my happiest moments as a mother, were when I used to close the main outside door of the house, and all the family members were inside, gathered for dinner, or to watch TV….
But today I smile bitterly….
Thank GOD we lost none of our family members during this war, but we had to leave our home, and homeland, seeking personal security for the family…
We left our house and all its memories; the beautiful and the sad, we left the neighbors, the relatives, the friends, and everything we love, there….
In times of wars and catastrophes, people might have to give up everything, only to remain alive….
******************
Today, Majid asked me, after he came back from Canada, about a cuckoo clock he bought from Geneva, when we were still in Baghdad, and he went to attend a conference about Internet and Globalization. It was a traditional Swiss clock, made of wood, with dancing figures, and a cuckoo bird that comes out with every ring…
I lowered my head, smiled, and said: it is there in the house, hanging on the wall, probably with dust all over it now. The house has been closed and neglected for months, when we left Baghdad…
I said to him: we do not want to remember things from our house, so we won't feel sad… we can always buy other material objects…
I know that memories are priceless, but the cruelty of the war and circumstances made my heart strong, like that of a lion; at the beginning of the war, I used to cry, I was weak, like any mother or woman is, but today I am not so. This war taught me how to be more mature, and much stronger in my heart and mind…
I said "goodbye" to the days of romantic thoughts, emotions, and tears… I came to view these as follies, and a naivety that cannot change reality…
Things do not change only by shedding tears… there must be continuous thinking, continuous work, and continuous communications, to find ways to help the oppressed people in Iraq; families whose members were killed, whose houses were destroyed, or its head lost his job, so that hunger and poverty entered into their lives…
Whenever a man is killed in Iraq, my heart clenches, and I say: here is anew widow and orphans added to the list… who will look after them?
The new government is lost in an endless political chaos, and the former governments, since the war and occupation in 2003, have a common feature of administrational corruption, publicly, shamelessly. Billions of dollars slipped out of public funds to banks outside Iraq, in neighboring Arab countries, without a watchman, or an accounting…
And poverty, hunger, and unemployment increase in Iraq everyday…
And the bad medical services, or the shortages of water, electricity, and fuels, are still the main topics of people's talk…
****************************************
I met a Kurdish friend of mine, who came from Baghdad two days ago. She said: can you imagine, a child in Karkook was the victim of an explosion, and we took him to Karkook hospital, but we didn't find any serums or antibiotic medicines for the child?
By GOD, where has the money of Iraq gone?
A public hospital without the simplest treatments for the patients?
We went to Al-Yarmook hospital in Baghdad; its conditions were miserable, and can't be described, people were thrown on the floors- either wounded or sick… there were no medications, no humanitarian medical care…
Where is the money of Iraq?
Where is the oil money?
I kept staring in her face, for I had no answers…
I only had questions, like hers……
A few days earlier, I received an e-mail from my friend, the Gynecologist, in Baghdad, telling me that the conditions of hospitals were very painful; there are shortages in medicines and equipments, and usually, when the members of the National Guards or the new Iraqi Army are attacked, and some of them are wounded, they usually burst into civilian hospitals, act with the army brutality with the doctors and hospital staff, and create chaos and panic in front of the patients…
And in combat areas, like Fallujah, Al-Qai'm, and Anbar, hospitals are subjected to attacks by the occupation army, looking for armed men from among the wounded, turning the hospital upside down, assaulting doctors, staff, and patients if need be, without restraint….
What can I say?
Everything in Iraq is ruined, and chaos speaks there…
And it certainly lands into the occupier's interest, for it provides him with a reason to stay…
**********************************
I received word that our neighbor, a young man who volunteered to work with the Iraqi police force, was killed last Wednesday morning, as he went out of his house to work…
My heart clenched…
I remembered that morning is usually the time of smiles, peacefulness, and listening to the songs of birds, for the ordinary people…
In Iraq, morning became the appropriate time for assassinations…
Who killed him?
He hated the occupation, he volunteered to work in the police force to serve Iraq and the Iraqis, and he refused to go out or immigrate to work in a petty job in neighboring countries. The number of the police and army personnel who were disbanded by the decision of the American Civil Governor of Iraq, Bremer, were about 600,000 men. What will their future be?
What other jobs do they know, in the present conditions?
Those who had the ability, work as drivers of private or public cars, and those are the lucky ones, for the rest are unemployed…
Isn't this a destruction of a whole section of the Iraqi society? Didn't this push them to desperate alternatives; like despair, or joining work with organizations, some of which might be for national resistance, and some might be terrorist organizations…
And who is targeting the police of the new Iraqi?
We have lots of police categories in Iraq now, after the war; there are the National Guards, the police Force, and the Army…
Some factions of these move with the occupation forces to besiege and storm into the Iraqi houses, or join the occupation forces in the interrogations and torture in prisons.
Those who agree for themselves to play this dirty role are a bunch of dumb mercenaries, who do not possess the least minimum amount of national feelings, and these behaviors are bringing forth the resentment of people, so that some groups appeared who specialized in killing members of the Police force, the National Guards, and the Iraqi Army, and I do not know whether they label themselves as Iraqi Nationals or terrorists, but we entered into a complicated conflict that has many explanations, and many justifications, on which some people agree, and the others reject. These are some of the dangerous side effects for the existence of a foreign occupation force in Iraq, as doubts are planted in the hearts of some people that these Iraqi forces has collaborated with the occupation army, and thus became a target, and its members get killed day and night. The killer thinks he is doing Iraq a favor, and perhaps the victim loved Iraq more than his killer, but the existence of the occupation mixed all the cards, planting the seeds of doubts, commotion, and mistrust among the Iraqis…
Do not tell me that this occupier came for the good of the Iraqis, to unite their word, or to save their blood….
Strife didn't take place, debate didn't grow, or discord, or divisions, if it wasn't for the existence of a foreign force in the country, which started by drawing close, and rewarding, whoever worked or collaborated with them, and hurt, insulted, and threatened those who refused its existence. That is- if this occupation force didn't actually have a hand in the ongoing series of assassinations of Nationalistic Iraqi men, who oppose the occupation…
The exit of the occupation forces will no doubt lessen these incidents, and will lessen the targeting of honest men in the Police force, who dedicated their lives to serve Iraq and the Iraqis. However, the conditions are not healthy at all, the bad is confused with the clean, and expensive materials are being sold cheaply…..
My heart bleeds for what is happening in Iraq, the commotions, the bloodshed…
Our young neighbor died, leaving behind a young wife to turn into a widow, and two beautiful kids who became orphans… relatives and friends hurried up to bury him hastily, in a process that took but an hour of time, but enough to fold a leaf of a lifetime, that used to be full of events, dreams, and wishes, big and small…
Perhaps he dreamed of his young children's future, perhaps he dreamed of a beautiful, free Iraq… but he didn't know someone was to shoot him twice in the chest, in a cold, winter morning…
And thus end it all…
Omeed (that was his name) became just a memory; everyone who knew him started calling him: the late…
This is how the daily life stories in Iraq became….
Tens of people die, or perhaps hundreds a day, the victims of explosions and violence. There is no space to put down the details of each event, the names of all the victims, or the stories of all their families, who are left behind, suffering the loss of the loved ones. People are astonished, gathering the victims and burying them, without a time for remembrance or pain, for the series continues, the blows continue, and the people are tired, and dazed…
And, there is still someone who defends the idea of the war on Iraq, its legitimacy, and its positive facets…
What should I say?
Nothing but- my heart is sad for each Iraqi who dies, or loses a loved one in this silly war, in which the Iraqis are paying an expensive price, and which started for unknown reasons, or at least; the known of these reasons was a torrent of silly, illogical stories, full of lies, and forgeries…
**********************
The international media published two reports in the last week:
One about new pictures of violations and oversteppings in the Abu Ghareeb prison…
And another about a video film showing British soldiers in Basra beating Iraqi young men in a savage way…
As always, the American army apologizes that these are individual violations…
And Tony Blair also said about his soldiers that these were individual violations…
And I say that these behaviors enrage people in Iraq and outside Iraq, more than the Bin Laden speeches against the American and British governments… they increase the Arabic people's dislike against the American-British interference in our lives…
And one day they shall reap the results of these follies…
They shall reap the results of these shameful behaviors, which express their disrespect of our feelings, and dignity…
Sooner or latter…..
The harvest day will come forth….
And as the saying goes: You shall reap the fruits of what you have planted…
*********************
Translated by May/Baghdad.
Good evening….
Today, I remembered a sentence I wrote in my diaries at the beginning of the war on Iraq, in 2003, I said that my happiest moments as a mother, were when I used to close the main outside door of the house, and all the family members were inside, gathered for dinner, or to watch TV….
But today I smile bitterly….
Thank GOD we lost none of our family members during this war, but we had to leave our home, and homeland, seeking personal security for the family…
We left our house and all its memories; the beautiful and the sad, we left the neighbors, the relatives, the friends, and everything we love, there….
In times of wars and catastrophes, people might have to give up everything, only to remain alive….
******************
Today, Majid asked me, after he came back from Canada, about a cuckoo clock he bought from Geneva, when we were still in Baghdad, and he went to attend a conference about Internet and Globalization. It was a traditional Swiss clock, made of wood, with dancing figures, and a cuckoo bird that comes out with every ring…
I lowered my head, smiled, and said: it is there in the house, hanging on the wall, probably with dust all over it now. The house has been closed and neglected for months, when we left Baghdad…
I said to him: we do not want to remember things from our house, so we won't feel sad… we can always buy other material objects…
I know that memories are priceless, but the cruelty of the war and circumstances made my heart strong, like that of a lion; at the beginning of the war, I used to cry, I was weak, like any mother or woman is, but today I am not so. This war taught me how to be more mature, and much stronger in my heart and mind…
I said "goodbye" to the days of romantic thoughts, emotions, and tears… I came to view these as follies, and a naivety that cannot change reality…
Things do not change only by shedding tears… there must be continuous thinking, continuous work, and continuous communications, to find ways to help the oppressed people in Iraq; families whose members were killed, whose houses were destroyed, or its head lost his job, so that hunger and poverty entered into their lives…
Whenever a man is killed in Iraq, my heart clenches, and I say: here is anew widow and orphans added to the list… who will look after them?
The new government is lost in an endless political chaos, and the former governments, since the war and occupation in 2003, have a common feature of administrational corruption, publicly, shamelessly. Billions of dollars slipped out of public funds to banks outside Iraq, in neighboring Arab countries, without a watchman, or an accounting…
And poverty, hunger, and unemployment increase in Iraq everyday…
And the bad medical services, or the shortages of water, electricity, and fuels, are still the main topics of people's talk…
****************************************
I met a Kurdish friend of mine, who came from Baghdad two days ago. She said: can you imagine, a child in Karkook was the victim of an explosion, and we took him to Karkook hospital, but we didn't find any serums or antibiotic medicines for the child?
By GOD, where has the money of Iraq gone?
A public hospital without the simplest treatments for the patients?
We went to Al-Yarmook hospital in Baghdad; its conditions were miserable, and can't be described, people were thrown on the floors- either wounded or sick… there were no medications, no humanitarian medical care…
Where is the money of Iraq?
Where is the oil money?
I kept staring in her face, for I had no answers…
I only had questions, like hers……
A few days earlier, I received an e-mail from my friend, the Gynecologist, in Baghdad, telling me that the conditions of hospitals were very painful; there are shortages in medicines and equipments, and usually, when the members of the National Guards or the new Iraqi Army are attacked, and some of them are wounded, they usually burst into civilian hospitals, act with the army brutality with the doctors and hospital staff, and create chaos and panic in front of the patients…
And in combat areas, like Fallujah, Al-Qai'm, and Anbar, hospitals are subjected to attacks by the occupation army, looking for armed men from among the wounded, turning the hospital upside down, assaulting doctors, staff, and patients if need be, without restraint….
What can I say?
Everything in Iraq is ruined, and chaos speaks there…
And it certainly lands into the occupier's interest, for it provides him with a reason to stay…
**********************************
I received word that our neighbor, a young man who volunteered to work with the Iraqi police force, was killed last Wednesday morning, as he went out of his house to work…
My heart clenched…
I remembered that morning is usually the time of smiles, peacefulness, and listening to the songs of birds, for the ordinary people…
In Iraq, morning became the appropriate time for assassinations…
Who killed him?
He hated the occupation, he volunteered to work in the police force to serve Iraq and the Iraqis, and he refused to go out or immigrate to work in a petty job in neighboring countries. The number of the police and army personnel who were disbanded by the decision of the American Civil Governor of Iraq, Bremer, were about 600,000 men. What will their future be?
What other jobs do they know, in the present conditions?
Those who had the ability, work as drivers of private or public cars, and those are the lucky ones, for the rest are unemployed…
Isn't this a destruction of a whole section of the Iraqi society? Didn't this push them to desperate alternatives; like despair, or joining work with organizations, some of which might be for national resistance, and some might be terrorist organizations…
And who is targeting the police of the new Iraqi?
We have lots of police categories in Iraq now, after the war; there are the National Guards, the police Force, and the Army…
Some factions of these move with the occupation forces to besiege and storm into the Iraqi houses, or join the occupation forces in the interrogations and torture in prisons.
Those who agree for themselves to play this dirty role are a bunch of dumb mercenaries, who do not possess the least minimum amount of national feelings, and these behaviors are bringing forth the resentment of people, so that some groups appeared who specialized in killing members of the Police force, the National Guards, and the Iraqi Army, and I do not know whether they label themselves as Iraqi Nationals or terrorists, but we entered into a complicated conflict that has many explanations, and many justifications, on which some people agree, and the others reject. These are some of the dangerous side effects for the existence of a foreign occupation force in Iraq, as doubts are planted in the hearts of some people that these Iraqi forces has collaborated with the occupation army, and thus became a target, and its members get killed day and night. The killer thinks he is doing Iraq a favor, and perhaps the victim loved Iraq more than his killer, but the existence of the occupation mixed all the cards, planting the seeds of doubts, commotion, and mistrust among the Iraqis…
Do not tell me that this occupier came for the good of the Iraqis, to unite their word, or to save their blood….
Strife didn't take place, debate didn't grow, or discord, or divisions, if it wasn't for the existence of a foreign force in the country, which started by drawing close, and rewarding, whoever worked or collaborated with them, and hurt, insulted, and threatened those who refused its existence. That is- if this occupation force didn't actually have a hand in the ongoing series of assassinations of Nationalistic Iraqi men, who oppose the occupation…
The exit of the occupation forces will no doubt lessen these incidents, and will lessen the targeting of honest men in the Police force, who dedicated their lives to serve Iraq and the Iraqis. However, the conditions are not healthy at all, the bad is confused with the clean, and expensive materials are being sold cheaply…..
My heart bleeds for what is happening in Iraq, the commotions, the bloodshed…
Our young neighbor died, leaving behind a young wife to turn into a widow, and two beautiful kids who became orphans… relatives and friends hurried up to bury him hastily, in a process that took but an hour of time, but enough to fold a leaf of a lifetime, that used to be full of events, dreams, and wishes, big and small…
Perhaps he dreamed of his young children's future, perhaps he dreamed of a beautiful, free Iraq… but he didn't know someone was to shoot him twice in the chest, in a cold, winter morning…
And thus end it all…
Omeed (that was his name) became just a memory; everyone who knew him started calling him: the late…
This is how the daily life stories in Iraq became….
Tens of people die, or perhaps hundreds a day, the victims of explosions and violence. There is no space to put down the details of each event, the names of all the victims, or the stories of all their families, who are left behind, suffering the loss of the loved ones. People are astonished, gathering the victims and burying them, without a time for remembrance or pain, for the series continues, the blows continue, and the people are tired, and dazed…
And, there is still someone who defends the idea of the war on Iraq, its legitimacy, and its positive facets…
What should I say?
Nothing but- my heart is sad for each Iraqi who dies, or loses a loved one in this silly war, in which the Iraqis are paying an expensive price, and which started for unknown reasons, or at least; the known of these reasons was a torrent of silly, illogical stories, full of lies, and forgeries…
**********************
The international media published two reports in the last week:
One about new pictures of violations and oversteppings in the Abu Ghareeb prison…
And another about a video film showing British soldiers in Basra beating Iraqi young men in a savage way…
As always, the American army apologizes that these are individual violations…
And Tony Blair also said about his soldiers that these were individual violations…
And I say that these behaviors enrage people in Iraq and outside Iraq, more than the Bin Laden speeches against the American and British governments… they increase the Arabic people's dislike against the American-British interference in our lives…
And one day they shall reap the results of these follies…
They shall reap the results of these shameful behaviors, which express their disrespect of our feelings, and dignity…
Sooner or latter…..
The harvest day will come forth….
And as the saying goes: You shall reap the fruits of what you have planted…
*********************
Translated by May/Baghdad.
# posted by Faiza Al-Araji @ 10:14 am 
