A Family in Baghdad

Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Peace be upon you….
These days I am in Cairo, visiting my son who is studying here…
I love Egypt very much, especially Cairo, for there are so many common things between people here and Iraq; the people's faces here beam optimistically, specially with visitors, they welcome and respect them, like the Iraqis used to do before the war. But now, woe unto any Arabic citizen from neighboring countries if they enter Iraq for a visit; for there is hatred and instigation against our Arab neighbors since after the American occupation…
Here, there is also the river Nile; how beautiful it is! It reminds me of beloved Tigris, crossing into the center of Baghdad, dividing the city into Al-Kharkh and Al-Russafa. But Tigris is sinking now into the sorrow and neglect which befell Iraq since the occupation…
Anyone who is used to living in a flat city with a river, or overlooking the sea or an ocean finds it hard to live in a mountainous city without water, like it is in Jordan. There I feel a big desolation and miss the sight of water and the river…..
I spend my vacation here in calm and a quietness I miss in Amman, for there I work as a volunteer to help the poor and needy Iraqi families. This job exhausted me very much; it burdened my soul and body, and increased my worries and sorrows. The reason was not my lack of patience or toleration, but the shortness of financing to help the people…
The organizations working under the supervision of the UN present a pipette-method assistance; meaning- drop by drop, and this is torturing to the people in need; a humiliation, and degradation…
But what more can we do but say: we look up to our God, for He is our aid… for we washed our hands clean from countries and governments, from the possibilities of their providing aid to the Iraqi refugees or displaced, but hope still remains in ordinary people, or the non-governmental organizations… and those aren't always "angels", or work always with what satisfies conciseness, but there is a small bunch of people who work sincerely, but the calamities that befell the Iraqi people are big, rather- very big, after the occupation, and this sincere small bunch cannot cover most needs…
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I sometimes feel I am living between two whirlpools… a small one; this world around me, filled with devastated people who need support, need listening to, consolation, and financial aid, like paying the rent, the doctor's fees, or to finance a small project that would keep the family alive. And the other whirlpool is news of the bigger world around us; all frustrating and silly, as if taking place in an old, dark grinder, with a noise of boring screech….
The news from Iraq is the same; silly clashes, conflicting declarations, and nothing positively true on the ground, until the dream of going back home became like an impossibly far-off goal…. And there is the news of the American elections; the same speeches, the same declarations, competition, and electoral publicity; and the people there- are they fools? Or do they really want to change these corrupt, lying leaderships they have?
I do not know. I pity the American people like I pity the Iraqi people; they are both the scapegoats for a greedy faction that is destroying this world, crushing it without mercy, and spreading lies through the media belonging to rich, greedy, corrupt men…
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Whenever I visited an Arab country, I became sure that we all suffer from the same things; autocratic leaderships that do not deal with their people with respect and cordiality, but with aggression and constant repression, and Saddam Hussein wasn't the only one who acted this way towards his people… there is the bad living conditions, the high prices, the increasing poverty and unemployment, and the feelings of anger and resentment among people… there is the feeling of bitterness, disappointment and defeat among Arab nations, because of their inability to help their brothers in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and other Arab countries living the ordeal and injustice…. There is a distraction of these nations with silly stories; like a football game, the Asia Cup or the Africa Cup, then there are marches onto the streets, flags waving, cars with blowing horns, all shouting and hailing the football team for an accomplished goal, as if they mean to say: Is this all we have now? Have we no more margins of joy with a victory but in a football match? Aren't we allowed to march against the government if they raised the prices, or decided anything we don't like? Are we allowed to march onto the streets only to greet the football team?
What misery and disappointment can be more than this?
The streets of the Arabic cities are filled with commercials; either for consumer products, cars, restaurants, and hotels, or advertisements for cinema movies, most of which show images of violence, guns and criminals, or photos of Arab female artists, half naked, or male artists, whose faces look like women, without masculinity…
Are those the models for our sons and daughters in this age?
Where are the nation's scientists, and the cultured?
Are they dead? Extinct? marginalized?
In Iraq I know the answer to that question; they were either killed, driven out of the country, or were marginalized so that no one cares about them or remembers them, until the Iraqis started losing faith in themselves and their future… The street in Iraq is ruled by armed gangs and sectarian militias, the dregs of society; drug addicts and jail graduates, as if the actual reality says: This is Iraq…
But I personally do not believe in this story, which is being circulated since the occupation, for I know for sure that thousands of clean-minded Iraqis were either assassinated or forced to leave the country, so the country would be emptied of them, and the occupier would remain with the upper word, followed and obeyed by the weak opportunists; those who have no dignity, who consented onto themselves to be followers of the occupation, for this is their opportunity to plunder and theft, and; they don't seem to be satisfied, for it seems that the ill-gotten money is like the salted sea water, the more they drink of it, the more thirsty they become. God be praised; this is his curse upon the wrongful people… their day of judgment shall come, and they will know…
And to me, they are poor people who deserve nothing but pity….
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And I look at the conditions of the Muslims in the Muslim countries….
A true Muslim finds himself lost here, in those streets, among those advertisements…
This is a sad time, a trying time, a time of ordeals, when a human wakes up a believer in the morning, and ends-up a disbeliever by nightfall, because of the amount of calamities he encounters everyday… and Muslims are weak, humiliated in their countries, and there are those who deform the image of Muslims and affront them in most world countries…
But I see, with my own eyes, that the majority of people, and especially the poor ones, hold on to Islam and cling to it, and more so, because they see Islam as their identity, and their salvation from the injustice they live in. God be praised… I mean; I remember in my childhood, and also in my teens and when I was in university at the seventies, there was no Islamic tide, and secularism was dominant in our societies; with Nationalist and Communist Parties… there was not a single young woman in university or school who was wearing the veil… believe me; by God… we used to wear mini-skirts, way above the knees… we used to listen, and sing by heart, all the western songs before the Arabic songs; Petula Clark, Angelbert Humpurding, Tom Johns…. We knew nothing more about Islam than what we used to read in the 'Religion' class at school, and in university we stopped reading that lesson… even our fathers and mothers didn't know the details of religion, I mean- there weren't many books available at the market…
Egypt had Abdul-Nasser and the Nationalist thinking… Syria also had Nationalists and Communists… and in Iraq, there were the Nationalists, the Ba'athiees, and the Communists …
These are the biggest three Arab countries, and the most civilized, then there are other small countries, like Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine; and they had conflicting secular Parties; the same story like in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt… the Arab Gulf countries were closed, with ruling families as heads of state, but no Parties…
Then time moved on, the eighties came along, and things began to change…
There were the many frustrations of the Arab nation and its accumulating defeats, especially at the 1948 war, then the 1967 war, then 1973… all in Palestine.
Then, there was the Lebanon war in 1975, which lasted for 15 years.
Then the Iraq-Iran war, for eight years, ending in 1988.
Then, there was the uprising in Palestine, 1987.
Then the Iraqi war with Kuwait, 1990.
Then the blockade, which went on till 2003, when Iraq was occupied, and what was left of it was destroyed….
Then there was the latest war between Lebanon and Israel.
Then there was the constant fierce fighting in Palestine, which didn't stop since 60 years…
These events influenced every Arabic individual, exactly like it influenced me… it is not a matter of this being Iraq and that is Palestine, or Lebanon or another… for it is very obvious that these artificial borders between the Arab countries, created after World War I and the "Sykes- Picot" Treaty, didn't exactly enter people's hearts and minds, and a lot of them still believe that this is the land of the Arabs and Muslims, a one-land, and the things that make it's people happy or sad are the same; they have the same popular temperament, they share the same dreams that Palestine will be liberated and its people shall go back home to it one day, they have the same feeling of guilt and humiliation that we are a slack, negligent, and idle nation, slow in defending its rights, a nation which gave up its dignity with its own hands… they share the same sadness and anger at what befell Iraq since 1991. They criticize Saddam Hussein, but they do not approve that America should come along to occupy Iraq. They think that if a Muslim ruler has erred he could be replaced by a more just Muslim ruler, and not by a foreign occupier who hates Islam.
These are people's words, not mine…
The war against Iraq, the occupation of Iraq, and the daily slaughter there, hurt the people in every Arab country, and increase the feelings of anger…
And what was the result of these frustrating accumulations, in reality? The result was an increasing recurrence to Islam; people abandoned the secular Parties, considering them petty and failures! God be praised…
And Palestine, for example, is the best evidence… how did people in the last elections shift from electing "Fateh" and the " Popular Front", (secular formations established since the sixties), to electing Islamic "Hamas"?
Why?
Because people say that "Hamas" is more patriotic, and less corrupt…
It seems that people's temperament wants the Parties that defend their robbed national rights; they seem to have lost their trust in the old Parties that became like fat, flabby cats. This is how people look at the representatives of the Palestinian authority, people think they stole the donations money that came from all over the world for their people, as a small faction enjoyed these monies, contrary to thousands of hungry families, deprived of everything, and the authority presented nothing to its people to improve their lives…
Bitter ordeals force people to choose alternative leaderships…
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And now; what is happening in the Arab and Islamic countries, especially after the nineties, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the American domination of the world and its war on terrorism (the Muslims call it- a war on Islam), the deformation of the image of Islam, and ascribing all the ugly charges onto Muslims; the terrorism, killings, and sabotage, since the September events till now…. What happened in our countries, as I see with my own eyes?
The number of libraries publishing Islamic books and reviving old ones again, grew… the spread of wearing the veil grew among women, I and my sisters among them; the four of us were secular in our youth, understanding nothing about religion, but now we are veiled, and so are our daughters! And we are engineers, doctors, and pharmacists, I mean- we are not ignorants lacking in education so it could be said that we were fooled…
Things in our countries have changed… outwardly; our governments seem to fight Islam, because they fear the wrath of Bush and America… while our people defy their governments and cling to Islam… this is the reality of things…
The lessons of memorizing the Quran, the exposition of Fiqh (= Jurisprudence) and Shareea'a (=Islamic Law), the sayings of the Prophet (May the prayers of God be upon him, and his blessings) became familiar in all Arabic societies, in the houses or mosques, as if there is an awakening tide spreading into the Islamic body, so Muslims could learn the truth of their religion, after it was attacked and deformed by the western countries…. And at the same time, I see there is a wave of western restaurants and movies sweeping the Arabic and Islamic countries, as if there is a clash going on…
Actually, there is a clash going on, but who shall win?
In Turkey, they forbade the veil years ago in universities and work offices, by the pretext that the state is secular… and here comes the veil back, after the Parliament voted positively with a majority for it… isn't that a questionable matter? Why would the veil recur?
We, as Muslims, say: "…and God will prevail his will, even if the infidels hate it so…" … meaning- this is the will of God, the God of all beings, He does what He will, not what the corrupt fools on earth would wish to… He is the creator of this earth and those humans, He knows them better, and knows what is best for them…
Praise be to God, the Mighty, above all people say…
Personally, I smile…because I believe in Him, I think what is happening on earth; the disasters, the wars, sins, killings and bloodshed; all is happening under the eyes and ears of God, and He is the Knowledgeable Wise…
When the angels asked Him, in the Surat albaqara (Sura= chapter in the Holy Quran): "…Why do You create onto this earth beings that would kill and shed blood…? While we, the angels, praise and glorify You? And He said: I know what you do not…".
And we, as humans, become confused sometimes, and say: what is this, oh God, that is happening on earth? Why would You allow the criminals and the corrupt to spread havoc in your earth, and kill your creatures?
We, as humans, may feel dismayed, defeated, and hopeless, because we cannot comprehend the answer….
As if I can see the Mighty God, ever smiling in his heaven, and answering with the same words with which He answered the angels, when He created Man out of clay: "…I know what you do not…"….
I have a personal conviction that all shall change into the better, that these wronged, oppressed Arabic Muslim nations will know how to change these regimes and these leaderships, so that someone more devoted to them shall come along…
But when will this promise be fulfilled?
It will take some tens of years, perhaps… but as for now, sorrow will keep on perching upon our hearts, as long as reality is full of disappointments, mistakes, and faults…..
These are my personal and public sorrows…. And I think they resemble those of so many people around me….
If we tried to run away from our small worries, we will be shocked to see the big worries into which the world is sinking….
We are like the small fish trying to run away from the hot oil in the frying pan, only to fall into the fire surrounding the pan!
And we have nothing but patience…..
So, sweet patience it is, and to God we turn, to be in our aid…..