Iraqi Drama Queen

Punch

2011-09-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

I’m seriously a F**ed up individual. I broke my leg some time ago and am bored to death and left to my dark thoughts. Now I can’t keep busy like I use to and I will have to deal with this for a while, I’ll be seriously slowed down for another couple of months. I can’t run with my dog, ride horses or kick box.

Every morning as I lay in bed I think how lonely I am, I’d consider just for less than 60 seconds some recent attempt of my parents to stick me into a pre-arranged marriage. I’d think of some creepy men who’d recently approached me, I’d remember my ex. Then I’d remember my dead friends, something we did together, how I heard the bad news. Then I’d tell myself to bloody get over it because it’s been years. I’d remember some people with much more miserable lives, tell myself how lucky I have it and what a drama queen I can be. So I shut up, get out of bed, grab a book or watch TV and pretend to be cool and self sufficient.

The other day I applied for a new job, I browsed the web about the job and the boss. I’ve never met the boss and I developed a crush based on his search results! Just today I snapped at a friend and I remembered when I was a kid in England’s cruel public schools. I would see red most of the time. One time a teacher asked me what’s wrong, I said they’re laughing at me. She replied, word by word “so laugh WITH them!”

I wish ...

Until the murderer of one of my friends confessed on television a long time ago, I use to scare myself, scared that one day I’d go postal. But he looked pathetic and I felt sorry for the dirt bag. I didn’t want him to be executed. That is always comforting and a great relief.

So I can’t run, ride or punch. Here’s another blog post.

Angry, The Way of the World

2011-02-04T08:24:00.000-08:00

I haven’t written in a while, I’ve been angry and I’m trying to keep it clean on the blog.I am terribly bummed for not being in Cairo right now, I was supposed to travel right when the protests started. I would have been in the protests filming. Jordan is being the quiet pressure cooker that I always thought it to be. A few days a week I go to a riding club, I’m struggling to afford it but I love being close to horses. I’m obsessed with them. There in the quiet open spaces outside Amman - not the slum outskirts, the other side - I see rich people. Polite, classy and detached. They remind me of the scene of the white room at the opening chapter of Great Gatsby or the Polo part scene in Passage to India. There I see giant horses who never leave the stables and foam at the mouth every time they are ridden and there I see “common” horses (Arabian half breeds) working 10 or 12 hours a day. It’s the way of the world some would say. I don’t believe that’s true, ways change. I stand inside the box of one common horse, a mare, holding a brush with one hand and sugar cubes in the other so she stops snapping at me trying to bite and kick, not that I blame her, and I think of protestors in Tahrir square in Cairo and wish that the masses overpower their corrupt leader.

I pray my little Jordanian country side bubble will not be burst. Where the hell will me and my family go if Jordan becomes the same as Egypt, we cannot go back to Iraq. Jordan needs reform and I believe it’s heading there. The rural parts of Jordan are neglected, the middle class is burdened with debt with little means to support them to get out of the rat-race and move up a notch. The economy in Jordan is a market open only to the big bucks, not small investments. Iraqis and Palestinians have the bare minimal of legal protection, health insurance, ability to travel and other basic rights. Honor killings still exist. Protests are not permitted without the government's permission, like I said, not permitted. It’s migrant labour force is treated like trash. Sure Jordan has problems.

But the economy is still growing at a healthy paste despite the global crisis in the economy, the infrastructure and basic services are good and cities are gorwing, Amman it’s one of the safest cities for single women and Jordan all-in-all still has chivalry, elections are held and the government is shuffled. The only one fixed here is the king and his most significant role is symbolic in the sense that Jordan’s competing tribes all agree on him and argue in parliament. I don’t see any other system working for a country of Jordan’s demographics. For a country with so little natural resources I think Jordan is functioning by some miracle or loads of international aid for it being one of the rare peaceful spots in this hellhole, if even on a surface level.

A friend of mine called Jordan a fake democracy. “So what if the King and Queen speak English and go on Oprah! They don’t represent us!” I asked him if he’d rather have the Islamic brotherhood instead. “why not!” “but you drink alcohol and your wife is in strapless gowns!” “This is democracy isn’t it! The Muslim Brotherhood represents the streets and the majority of the masses.” “Street credibility” Michael snapped his fingers at the realization, he’s an American who’s moved recently to Iraq and is disillusioned with the US foreign policies in Iraq. “Moderate people like you and me are a minority in the world today” he said and sunk in his chair. “We’re the minority” his words rang in my ears. It truly is a time for extremes and extremists. Do I really support democracy then? Will I still support the protesters if the Muslim brotherhood took over and dragged the entire region into wars?

The instructor asked a rider off his horse because the horse refused to jump a fence. He jerked the reigns and started hitting the Arab half breed horse in a frenzy, that horse belonged to the club, a working horse. K with her blond curls flew by on her giant European white mare. She hugged her mare around the neck when she jumped the fence smoothly. For a second I could see her look behind at the horse being hit. She quickly adjusted her eye sight to the next fence. It’s the way of the world.

Iraqi PM al-Maliki visits Iran - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

2010-10-18T03:46:00.000-07:00

Iraqi PM al-Maliki visits Iran - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

In it's attempts to "liberate" Iraq the US created another Iran and brought to life one of Saddam's most feared prophesies, and I didn't even like him!

I was optimistic when I went to vote and I could tell that I was not the only one when I arrived to the vote ballot at a public school building in Amman, where Iraqi in Jordan went to vote. We smiled at each other gliding through the school corridors and felt proud dipping our fingers into that blue ink. Looking back I realize how stupid and gullible I was.

My interview for immigration is in two weeks.

Modern Day Slavery in Jordan

2010-10-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

In this modern world of today - when we preach peachy speeches about compassion and tolerance; a time of human rights, women’s rights, child rights, civil rights, social and cultural rights, gay and lesbian rights, indigenous people’s rights, animal rights, democracy, orientalism, liberalism, freedom of speech, individuality, free trade, the Euro and Obama - at this modern marvelous world of today’s improved human race, somewhere in the city of Amman in a country called Jordan, which’s King and Queen are advocating for all of the above, lives a Philipino domestic worker named Trakhma. Trakhma gets beaten up by her employer at least once a week, is not allowed to use the phone, nor leave the house, is dispossessed of her passport, does not speak Arabic, has no idea where in Amman she is or how to go anywhere, is never given a day off and had her signature forged by her employer on her contract renewal when she clearly did not want to stay. Trakhma is one of thousands of abused female domestic workers from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and some other cheep-labour countries. Trakhma is a Filipino slave in Amman in the year 2010. She is still captive despite my relentless efforts for her to escape so far.

I got to know about her from Jenny our domestic worker. I feel guilty and wrong about hiring her. We always had help around the house in Iraq. We’re a big family with an even bigger social life. In Iraq domestic maids were not from a particular race, they were just the same as us, just less fortunate financially. Sometimes she was Shia Arab, Sunni Arab, Kurdish, Assyrian and they would come in for a few hours to work then go to other houses, they would clean 3 houses a day on average, it was a job in which they negotiated their fee and came and went as they pleased. But with Jenny it feels different.

When all the help is from a certain race which is not local, because the locals think they are above some jobs which they find demeaning, the labeling and the enslaving begins. I had a UN co-worker who was from the Philippines. He had a diplomatic passport and lived in an upscale part of Amman. The harassment him and his wife got were un-freaking-believable. They were ignored or shoved around at supermarkets or had to carry extra papers at airports to prove they were not runaway workers. The same labeling applies to Egyptian men for example, they are all born as janitors. I have another friend, a very high up regional manger in the UN who is married to a Dutch lady. The common assumption in Arab airports is that his wife is the diplomat and he is the butler.

Jenny was different when she first came to us from her former employer who treated her like most domestic workers are. She was always afraid and very quiet. My mother expected Jenny to help her self to anything in the fridge for example and realized that she was only having stale bread from the breakfast table. Now when I ask her for something and she’s too busy she tells me to buzz off and I like it!

Back to Trakhma, Jenny tells me she showed her bruises on her arms. Her employer, on the way to our house, threatened Trakhma not to show her bruises or say anything to my family. My family and Trakhma’s employer know each other, as much as I hate to admit this. She confided in Jenny and Jenny told me. Trakhma’s employer is woman married to a filthy rich Iraqi man which three self centered and arrogant children. Her oldest is a boy who hits Trakhma every day, throws furniture and glass and sharp object at her, pulls her hair and twists her wrists. Why does he get away with this, I can tell you this one, Trakhma does not need to explain, it’s because he lives in this culture that idealizes anything with a dick. He is the only son to a rich Iraqi family and he gets away with everything. Trakhma is nothing but a maid from an inferior country that produces nothing but maids in a land far far away and where not sure where it is on the map, Philip-something-land.

I called up the Philippine Embassy here in Amman and their first assumption was that my maid escaped. “No! No! No! I am trying to help one escape” “who is this!” I gave my name and job address. “You are from India right?” “no I’m Iraqi” “and your maid did not escape?” “no” “and you are calling to help another woman escape” “correct.” The advice I got was she should escape, the embassy may help her with her flight and legal travel documents. They also told me that she did not have the option of staying in Jordan and working for another employer, which I know is what she wants because she needs the money. The Philippines has stopped its agreement with Jordan which allow its labour force to come to Jordan. If she ends her contract and leave she cannot come back to Jordan.

So I looked for other options and found the Oversea Welfare and Workers Association. They gave me the same options as the embassy but said there is a loophole. I love loopholes! If Trakhma escapes and manages while in hiding to find another employer, the Association can try to talk to her former employer (i.e. snobby woman and her sadistic son) to persuade them to hand in her passport and work contract. That way she can have a work contract “before” she leaves Jordan which means she can come back.

I got exited, told Jenny who in turn told Trakhma. On her attempt to escape her employer found her phone and took it. It had our numbers on it. I want to go to her house and pull her out of there but Trakhma is too scared. I feel I must let her initiate. To me I strongly believe she should leave but she is thinking of the complications of going home with no money and she’s rather take a beating to save a penny to send to her family. She will only escape for another employer and I am deeply frustrated. I can only wait for her to make a move. I hope she does soon and I will be there.

Off to steal some of dad’s liquor,

Your’s Drama Queen

The City of Ghosts and Sand Storms: Trip to Baghdad

2010-04-16T04:46:00.000-07:00

Baghdad April 9, Baghdad International Airport:
Our morning flight from Amman to Baghdad was postponed to the afternoon. Then while on the jet we were told the flight might get canceled, I prayed it would. I kept telling myself I’m crazy for traveling at such a bad time. It’s been a crazy week after some relevant calm in Baghdad for months. This past week over 200 were killed more than twice as many injured, Al Qaida declared responsibility for the bombing against the Iranian, Egyptian and German embassies, no one came forward on the 5 apartment buildings. The flight wasn’t canceled and the pilot told us we were about to take off. when he said his name on the speakers I couldn’t hold back a small chuckle; I turned to the man next to me “hehe our pilot’s name is Jihad.”

Frank was an older gentleman, an American contractor and retired military man from Florida and a pure Republican. With us being mostly at odds when it came to war and how things were managed in Iraq and the US’s intentions towards Iraq, we had quite an interesting chat. He could tell I was anxious at takeoff and landing and thankfully got my mind off them with his chat. When we were close to Baghdad my heart began to race, we got totally submerged into red-brown clouds; we were encountering a ‘mild’ sand storm by Baghdad standards. We landed, wished each other luck when went on our very separate ways.

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When I stepped out of the airport my heart began racing again with fear, sadness, nostalgia and extreme love and hate for Baghdad. There was a small roundabout with grass and roses. It had been watered and the pavements hosed down to wash the sand off. The smell of sand, wet grass, roses and a faint diesel smell from the generators and something else I couldn’t quite detect that smelled like home. It made the air feel like it had a flavor and texture that made Amman, with its landscape of clean new apartment buildings, feel like a chemically enhanced tasteless apple, smooth shape at but tastes like cardboard when you take a bite.

My fear grew as we drove off, me and two other co-workers both Iraqi. I noticed we were all clutching to our cell phones like they were our lifelines. “How long will it take us” one of them asked. “Oh it depends on the explosions” our driver said casually. I felt a kick in the stomach. Everyone and everything looked suspicious, every car moving or parking felt like it could explode. Streets were dirty and full of holes. It seemed the government was slow in fixing the roads after explosions, this was not the case until I left in 2005. Houses were covered with a uniform of beige that looked like it came from not just one sandstorm but years of them. Houses inhibited and deserted all looked the same, neglected and in need of maintenance. I was on full alert, not because I thought I could spot a bomber nor because I could do anything about if I did spot one, but because I wanted to maximize my vision taking all of Baghdad in, my eyes were like wide scope lenses capturing everything. We got to Al Rasheed hotel. The taxi could only drop us across the street, we had to carry our suitcases and walk across and into the maze of concrete walls and checkpoints before reaching the hotel. My suitcase had wheels, it tipped to its side twice while I was rushing across to plunge into the maze where it was safe. After all, Al Rasheed hotel hosts diplomats and expatriates and Iraqi officials, all of whom fit the profile of jackpot targets. I need to be behind a concrete wall if a bomb explodes.

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To enter Al Rasheed Hotel, we went past the 8 check points. The first was Africans, they were terribly flirty. Then we got to a Kurdish check point, they carried my suitcase after I played the damsel in distress card. At the next check point were the Nepalese. that is where dogs got to sniff our bags for explosives. I love dogs and I’m not a traditional Muslim. My co-workers were disgusted at dogs sniffing their clothes. Muslims consider dogs to be unclean. At the last check point – Iraqi – I saw a sign that read ‘please remove any copies of the Quran (Muslim holly book) before putting the bags in the cage. Here dogs sniffed our suitcases from outside the cage without physically touching them. You could see how the Islamic culture was represented at this check point but not at the earlier Nepalese one.

Rasheed Hotel was empty and washed out. There was a romantic paining by Widad Al Orfali where Baghdad depicted with peacock feathers, mosque minarets and other romantic details. I find her too fancy and prefer the real reflection of Iraq with its innate aggressiveness that I know Iraq to have. Give me a sculpture from someone like Faik Hassan, give me a work of art that will slap one in the face with violence and noise! Damn it that’s what Iraq is made of, you romantic decorative softies! Then again, we don’t want to scare off the “tourists”i guess the feathers have to stay.

I called my mother and my sister to tell them I made it to the hotel and was safe. So how is it? My sister asked. I said its fine, I’m on the 13th floor and have quite the view. ‘Step away from the window you idiot’ my sister yelled. ‘why?’ ‘Because of bombs stupid! Last time aunt what’s her name stayed there a bomb shattered the windows of that entire front’ ‘nah I think the 13th floor is too high up for bombs’ I dismissed her fears. I wanted to wash off a whole day of airports and check points. I stood under the shower, note to self, next time wait to see what comes down first, before it pours down on you. A reddish brown mud came down. It cleared after a few seconds and I continued to shower. There was the odd looking tap coming out of the wall with a steel plate drilled in the wall above it that said 'press here for chilled water'. We never drank bottled water in Iraq before 2003. I wondered where the pipes led to, where would the chilled water have came from? Does it go downwards towards one massive source for the entire hotel? Or from room to room where there's some refrigerator on each floor? Needless to say, it was now covered with rust. Room service guy was offering his “services” at 2 AM. I shoved furniture behind the door because the only lock on the door could be unlocked with a master card. I got over that and ignored the funky smell of the bed sheets. I slept like a baby, I was that tired.

First thing I did when I woke up was walk to the window. The windows looked like they’ve not been cleaned in years. I tried to open them but they were sealed. I looked out at the city. The Green Zone was to my right, traffic to the front and left. The Salhea apartment buildings were ahead. I remembered the last time I was there. Duraid lived there with his wife. He had insisted on putting up his rock band posters on the living room walls, much to the protest of his wife. Last time we met he was telling me what a bad idea it was to join the English broadcasting radio station because Uday Saddam managed it. He was shot dead years ago for working with CNN. His widow is now living in some far eastern county, as far as she could possibly be from Baghdad. There were lots of new compounds and junk yards with lots of damaged cars and trucks. The scene reminded me a lot of the Valley of Ashes from Fitzgerald’s American classic ‘The Great Gatsby’. Except I don’t think Fitzgerald would have visualized billboards with faces of men with haggard looks and scruffy beards named as terrorist and calling for their arrest. I don’t think he would have visualized all the Islamic propaganda as green flags flapped on ministry buildings, green is for Shia Muslim. I was especially depressed about how far Islamic propaganda had taken over the city when, on our way out of the airport, I saw a large sculpture with a man dressed in a traditional Islamic garb standing and a women sitting by his knees covered in a abbaya or chadour. This does not represent Iraq! This doesn’t represent me! I hated it. On top there was scrip that read ‘no to injustices and dictatorship.’ What the hell do you call that then!

I got dressed carefully. I remembered in the old days Rasheed hotel had cameras in every room. The brother of a friend of mine was a small time officer in the Iraqi intelligence. He told us once he knew guys who use to turn on the cameras on newly weds. I wondered if those cameras still existed.

I walked to the breakfast area ‘Rayhana Café.’ It was empty and the food was cold. There were cold hotdogs like they were just defrosted. The omelets were oily and cold. The tea was great though, I had two cups and bread and jam. I sat with a lady from the Prime Minister’s office, ex or current I did not ask. She lives at the hotel. Her daughter is studying journalism in the UK and was doing an internship with the BBC. She was very proud of her and all she talked about. My father thinks the new government is all a bunch of ignorant riffraff. I thought of him at that moment. The last time I was at ‘Rayhana Café was in the late 1990s when a couple of my father’s European friends stayed there. The food was good, the place was totally packed with Europeans and there was A LOT of Iraqi Intelligence officers around. She left and I sat alone looking at the tall palm trees, the sun coming in, the African and Nepalese security guards are laughing at something, the large beautiful fountain with a theme from A Thousand and One Nights gleaming with the water trickling down. This could be a very pleasant place. Baghdad is so beautiful.

I sat and waited for our security escorts in the lobby. The furniture was the same from 18 years ago just washed out. The windows were fractured from explosions but intact, some had been shattered and replaced with wooden planks. There was a pub that looked like no one stepped into to it for the past few years. it was so quiet and covered with dust. It made me feel lonely. I thought it made a great setting for a horror movie with ghosts or zombies.

Our security escorts arrived to take us into the Green or International Zone. We hopped into the car and cruised through the maze of concrete walls, ruined palaces and barricaded buildings with sand bags and bricks, nothing but sand and silence. We got to the conference center where there were lots of armored cars and hunky security guys with big tattoos. A girl’s got to love conferences in the Green Zone!

With Baghdad being ever the absurd city, the US owned conference facility has Saddam’s initials in the carving on the ceiling all across the room. I sat down with a smirk on my face, because it felt absurd. I didn't like Saddam but to have his initials on a facility owned by occupation was just too funny. Years ago reaching the moon would have been easier for me than to set foot into a place as exclusive as one of Saddam’s villas. ‘Did you see Saddam’s bed room?’ a co-worker asks all exited. It was an average room with a high ceiling and a bad ostentatious taste. It was all the folks at work could talk about and they talked about it until the repeated reference to Saddam's bed room became kinky then redundant.

The night before our travel back to Amman, I sat in the lobby because staying in my room felt too depressive and I was trying to keep my mind off tomorrow’s ride to the airport. I was scared again. The lobby was full of men and only one other woman. There was a Sheikh sitting to my left talking loud on the phone about money trying to catch my attention. As much as I was enjoying the attention I don’t think I want to have dinner alone in this environment. I hated to eat alone so I just went to bed. I couldn’t get a wink of sleep, I was anxious about tomorrow’s trip. The road to the airport is known to be one of the most dangerous.

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Our driver showed up in his beaten up Hyundai. We take this crap while my boss gets into an armored vehicle. Maybe we Iraqis are a dozen a dime, maybe we are. The driver was on the phone the entire time checking with other drivers where there were shootings, bombings, check points and so on to avoid traffic jams. It almost sounded like he was going to abduct us, I wasn’t that paranoid, he just sounded that way.

We crossed the first few check points and made it close to the airport building. There were Iraqi and African women where we were inspected. I could not tell from the accent where in Africa they come from, I admit to be ignorant to the tens of cultures of Africa. I do find it surreal to find them in Baghdad. They feel so out of place. We went back to the taxi and waited for the bomb sniffing dogs. On the other lane were the cars leaving Baghdad International Airport, or BIAP for short, former Saddam International Airport. I realized as I was leaving Baghdad, and because they more visible at BIAP, that it was totally taken over by privet security companies. I saw very few Iraqi police and army at the airport and I had not encountered a single US military personnel. Is this the plan for US withdrawal from Iraq, remove the marines and replace them with privet security companies. What is their accountability? Where would their chain of command lead? Which government if at all would be held accountable if they go postal on a group of civilians?

On the other lane was a convey of an Iraqi security company or so the name implied. The security guys were Iraqi, American and African. They were armed to their teeth. I could tell because I saw them put their weapons back on. How many weapons can you wear on your hips, thighs and ankles! Standing in between these big armed hulks with short trimmed hair and tattoos, was a skinny smiley civilian. He was American and looked like he worked for State Department or maybe a privet business company. His haircut, neatly pressed trousers, white shirt and watch all gave that impression. Minutes after they drove off we heard machine guns. “they must be aiming at that American convey” our driver said. Thank god we made it this far I thought.

When we finally reached the main building by the arrival gate we said good bye to our driver. I felt a mix of relief and guilt. I was very glad I arrived safely at the airport but I felt sorry for the driver. He picked up his cell phone again and started asking other drives about that shooting. I would have been most depressed if I had to turn back. I can only imagine how he must feel ferrying people to safety, to this portal out of this hellhole called Iraq then heading back into hell.

On the plain I pulled out a silver pendent I bought from a gift shop at Al Rasheed. It was at least 50 years old and had a scene from the marshlands in the south of Iraq. I felt nostalgic the minute the flight took off, how psychotic of me. How I love and hate Iraq.

Valentines and the Amiriyah Bombing

2010-02-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

I always remember Valentines as the day right after the Amiriyah shelter bombing in 1991. More than 400 people, mostly women, children and elderly were cooked to death when the shelter was hit by US ‘smart bombs.’ Husbands and older sons stayed behind to protect their houses from being looted risking the air raids and sending their elder, younger and souses for protection – tragically. This was almost 20 years ago but I remember the stories vividly like I had heard them yesterday.

One of my relatives worked in the army. He was among the team pulling dead people out of the shelter. He didn’t recall seeing any survivors. Because the shelter was ‘bomb-proof’ ironically all its doors were sealed solid when the first missile hit. The second missile penetrated the shelter and the flames burned people alive.

I was with my family in Mousil where we had escaped Baghdad during the 1991 war. My relative came to visit every leave he got from the army. On one of his visits he sat to my aunt’s kitchen table and began to tell us about what he had seen 2 days ago. The things he said were so horrific that they forgot there were children, me and my siblings and cousins, around with mouths gaping and finger tips gone cold with horror. It was not until he had said enough that someone noticed and yelled at us to go play outside. Snaps of what I remember include;

‘We had to be so careful when taking out the bodies. We were moving one charcoaled man/woman we couldn’t tell, very slowly but then the leg came off entirely and I was left with the soft foot and a long bone that came out in my hand clean with no flesh on it.’

‘Most bodied were still burning that we burnt our hands trying to carry them. They were charcoaled on the outside and ruby red under .’

There was one heap we could identify as a mother and a baby. She was curled around the small infant.’

‘There was a man sitting outside the shelter holding a revolver. He was shooting his gun at the ground, crying and yelling I am going to kill them all.’

‘There were many bodies we had to scrape off the walls. It looked like they ran to the ends of the shelter to go further away from the flame then just hugged the walls and burned standing that way.’

‘They were all burned completely until all was charcoal. We couldn’t tell a person from an object from the walls sometimes. It was all one black heap, like they all became infused into one thing, they just melted.’

Those are the images that immediately come to mind.

I strongly believe that life should move on. That the families of those killed in the Amiriyah shelter should be allowed to grief in privet and move on to the best of their capacity. This blog post is not for them. This is a cry for the rest of the world to bring justice to these families. Those responsible should be charged for war crimes and massacre. Iraq and humanity owes it to them to bring a sense of justice in this chaotic world.

here are some links on the Amiriyah Bombing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_massacre

http://www.nodo50.org/csca/english/al-amiriya/al-amiriya_eng.html

Your haunted drama queen,

Happy Valentines.

Abuse

2010-01-27T13:30:00.000-08:00

My relationship with men is strange, or I seem to deliberately come across bad apples because they fit a pre-fabricated image of what a relationship looks like to me, because I tend to victimize myself, because this is what I grew up with. Good men confuse me and I become undeceive as to what I should feel towards them.

My mother got home late tonight. My father is with his second wife tonight and my mother exploits every minute of freedom when he is not home. She threw her self at the couch, kicked off her high heels, slipped of her leather red jacket exposing a top with bear shoulders. My mother started telling me, my sisters and her mother about this Iraqi woman who lives in Jordan with her husband and three children. The husband has put her under house arrest and he hits her. My mother's advice was to tolerate him for the sake of her children. In the past I would attack my mother for such statements. Now I keep quiet but my resentment shows on my face. “what do you want me to tell her!” mother gives me a defensive look. “She has no degree, no skills and no residency in Jordan. She should keep her children in school, under a roof, in warm clothes what am I suppose to advise her!” she was trying to convince me that she was right. Again I said nothing. I felt helpless.

I can't begin to tell how often I heard women justify their husbands' and fathers' abusiveness. From the horrors of Noor's father who called a man a stud for molesting his daughter while calling his daughter – 15 at the time – a whore, to Wassan being raped on her wedding night while the husband's brothers and cousins waited outside the bedroom cheering and demanding to see the blood-stained wedding sheet to prove her virginity to many other stories of the sort that I grew up repulsed at the thought of intimacy. I must give my ex husband the credit for being a very patient man.

Now that I find myself sexually and intellectually more open I hit uninhibited territories and I'm confused. Non Arab men are exceptionally confusing to me. I want all the liberties their societies have. I suppose I find them just as exotic as they find me. “you need to stop doing this to yourself, it's very destructive behavior.” he told me on the phone the other night. I thought of him and remembered some of the positive things he told me about myself such as the potential I have, all the men who will want to keep me company and all the successes I will have once I am out of this strict environment. He sees in me the woman I want to become but I still feel clumsy around him because I can't shake the victim in me that I am accustomed to. “and why are you telling her this, its not like she could hold on to HER husband.” my grandmother said to my mother thus closing the argument. I rest my case. I'm off to bed.

Webdeh & Gibran

2010-01-03T06:59:00.000-08:00

Webdeh is an old and artsy neighborhood in Amman. I use to go there a lot as a student in 2001,2,3. It and Jabal Amman – a more youthful and hip neighborhood, also old but renovated – are my two hang out places. Jabal Amman is where I lived with my ex and going there makes me feel intensely sad, breathing feels like scarring. Webdeh is a place I reserve for myself. He was never into that part of town. I rarely went there when I was married but now I’m back to my old ways.

Webdeh always had something magical about it; I’d often bump into artists or musicians and start chatting. Or I’d see a stunning piece of art that would haunt me for long. But most times it would just be the feel of the old hood, the smell of a homemade meal, a view from a park with children, elderly people watching passers-by and shy couples, the friendly stray cats. Then there is the view down the valley, Webdeh is on a hill top. Down there would be the hustle and bustle of the busy downtown area. Webdeh, like a refined elegant old lady looks down quietly with its old villas, schools, churches, mosques, art galleries and parks.

As a student I use to go to Darat al Funon in Webdeh to study or read for leasure. Darat al Funon always got me creative, sometimes I would write. When I went today it had a different experience. I was lonely. I didn't feel the place the same way I use to. And I remembered, the last time I went I wasn't scarred. I didn't breathe pins and needles. Today I was lonely and craving for company. And there was not a single charming stranger to talk to and all the art work was boring.

I sat with my book at a café. Two waiters asked me the same question “are you alone.” I was defensive in my answers. Yes! And yes! I pulled the cushion from behind my back and put it in my lap, as I often do when I feel insecure, opened my book and begun to read. “you are far greater than you know, and all is well” I read Khalil Gibran’s line and sighed.

After two cups of coffee and some 50 pages – the waiters got on my nerves - I left and went off wandering. I reached Dar Al Anda art gallery. It has a large terrace that stretches off the cliff like it was hanging in air. I leaned towards the railing resting my entire weight on it, waiting to fly or fall, watching the sun set on the valley with all its little doll houses. “you are far greater than you know, and all is well.” All is well. I breathed. It still hurt. Life is full of pleasant surprises, any minute now a charming stranger will walk over, doing exactly what I’m doing. We will exchange a glance and a smile. Hi my name is … and I’ll reach across to shake his hand. All the pins and needles I breathe will instantly turn to rubber and bounce off me. I looked around, the gallery was closed and I was the only one standing. The mosques echoed each others call for Maghreb - sunset – prayer.

“You are far greater than you know, and all is well.” I brushed a red fig leaf off my shoulder, rolled my hair up and held it with a pen. I stood straight now, missy miss independent. I took a cab home. All is well. All is well.

Happiness in a Jar

2010-01-01T06:37:00.000-08:00

I sit to my kitchen table and gaze at the jar with a purple label. It’s suppose to me a mild anti-depressant that I should take only if I’ve been sad for over 4 days. That sounds silly. On days 4 I place the purple jar on the table, gaze at it and see which of us two wins.

To fight the jar I list snippets of happy times;

Al Qush – Ninewa Iraq October 2008.
I climbed into a cave on top of Rabban Hermizd monastery built in the 6th century. People there believe that a saint worshiped there and that the cave is inhibited my angels. I went looking for the angels. It was steep and my foot slipped. My friend, a Kurdish photographer who spent a lot of his time tracking the PKK in the mountains leaped after me and caught me, just in time. He actually had his heels placed solid in the dirt and was hugging me with both arms. ‘Are you crazy!’ he let go, ‘follow me’ he said. The cave was carved into a chamber that led to another chamber. There were two arched doorways into the cave. When I stood at the foot of one it felt like I was in a room of a house that defied gravity and way flying. The wind was strong and smelled like dry grass and the earth. Clouds felt so close like I could touch them. I could have sat there alone for an hour without blinking. I inhaled as much as my lungs could take of mountains, clouds, god, saints and angels.

Jazz pub – Paris November 2008
I was out to party with a fantastic group of hip multi-ethnic strangers. Something my strict upbringing didn't allow. We took the subway to Saint-Michel. We wandered around the Quartier latin and had dinner at a small diner that smelled like strong cheese. I tried oysters cooked in white wine, I've never tried either before. We had lots to eat and drink. We got lost in the maze of streets and crowds and cuisine from all over the world. Then we wandered into a hidden jazz pub in the basement of a building. I had never experienced jazz either. We sat on barrels and benches. The place was crowded and everyone there was in a jazz trance. There was a very sexy vibe in the air. Before we left I took a photo of the carving on the wall, it said jazz 1921. we kept walking by the Seine river then wandered into an Irish pub. We walked for three hours to our hotel at 5AM. We'd been out since 9PM the day before. I had experienced Paris and it was like nothing I've tasted.

A morning with my dog – last week:
My dog gets impatient with me because I won't get out of bed to take him out to play. After his whimpering and bed sheet tugging fails he gets his tennis ball, jumps on the bed, lays on top of me and hit my forehead with the tennis ball. I give up and open my eyes. We wrestle and I laugh to tears. He wins and I slip into a coat, a pair of jeans and sneakers and we run to the street at 6.30AM. I leave behind some sappy love loves plying on the radio every morning. I hate the silence. My mother jokes that I like to entertain ghosts. I walk my dog up to a hilltop where I live in Amman. On that hill steep valley. From there I can see the sun hanging low in the sky as it does early mornings. I hear every sound up there. My skin is all open for perceptions and sensations. My dog rests his head in my lap, I lean over, bury my face between his large pointy ears and I rub behind his ears and stroke his back. He surrenders to my hands and stands still – just for a minute – before he's back to his hyper active self. We slowly walk back home to sappy love songs and ghosts. I turn the radio off. I sit and stare hard at the purple jar. I think of all that I've experienced in life, of all that has made me who I am. I think of my weaknesses, my dreams, desires, fears. I hug myself and fall cheek down on the table. I surrender and cry a little. I put the purple jar of anti-depressant back in the fridge and post a blog. My blog, the one place I don't I fake courage and indifference.

Torture(r)

2009-12-19T11:21:00.000-08:00

I replied to a phone call from a woman who heard I could save her life. I couldn't. But I listened as she told her story with sobs and statements of protests. We sat in her kitchen the next day sipping Turkish coffee, her with a cigarette. She took a deep breathe, sighed – her face now in a mist of smoke – pressed her fingers on her eyelids so she won't cry and she began to tell her story.

In 1995 the Iraqi Intelligence tried squeezing information out of her young sister who worked at a tourist company. They were interested in the tourists, a certain profile of tourists. The sister declined time after time. Months later they ask her to escort them in a privet car, they used their official badges and told her she'd been called in for questioning. They gang rape her and drive her back to her work, telling her she will be killed and her family if she doesn't comply.

Out of fear for her sister's safety she smuggles her – at great risks – to Jordan. The rape incident was kept between the two sisters. She never went to a doctor, a therapist, never told her mother – nothing. After all, rape by itself is a death sentence. In 1996 the Intelligence notice the sister is gone and come to her – let's call her Hanan. Hanan is told she must participate in torture. She is a dentist and they needed someone to pull out teeth during interrogation and – pulling them out right so prisoners don't die too soon. Hanan, out of sheer horror of facing her sister's fate and for fear for her elderly parents , complies. She partook in three torture sessions and fainted the third time. She woke up to find herself back in her clinic. She quickly brushes her skirt and feels her legs. She had not been raped. Not raped yet, Hanan thought. She tells her parents about her situation and her sister's – dropping the rape part out. They decided to smuggle their second daughter into Jordan. The plan was for them to follow. Hanan makes it to Jordan in 1996. Three months later the Intelligence realize both sisters are gone. They burn their house down . The father dies of sever burns, the mother lives. She is taken in by relatives until 2003 when the government is overthrown. That year the two sisters travel to Baghdad for the first time in years and bring their mother with then to Jordan. All three seek asylum to the United States. It takes years. Finally Hanan's mother and sister are accepted. Her case is pending. They wait for months so they can travel together as a family. But then Hanan learns that the US State Department has rejected her case because she has participated in 'crimes against humanity' referring to torture. Hanan is shattered. She urges her mother and sister to travel to the US promising them she will find a way to follow. Her brief yet intense involvement with the Intelligence scared her. She felt that some one must want her dead after what she had done and did not want to go back to Iraq. The mother and sister are now living in a gang infested hood in California, with no work or language skills. Hanan learns as soon as they leave that she has cancer.

She looks out her kitchen window gazing at nothing. She takes another breath of her cigarette. The smoke floats upwards and scatters. I have one hand in a fist on my lap the second supporting my chin. “I just want to be with my family, I don't want to die alone. Don't they understand I was forced! What could I have done! This is not fair!”

I think she knew from the start that there was nothing in my power I could do to help. She thanked me for visiting and I left. I never went back there again. I don't know what happened with her, if she's still alive. It's been months now and I'm still haunted by her.

Identity Crisis

2009-12-11T23:51:00.000-08:00

this post was triggered by, and dedicated to Michael

I was looking at some websites talking about Iraqi women writers. I came across a popular website (River Bend). I read the reviews, most were favorable but there's always the other point of view. The critical crowd said she was Americanized, that she was probably not really Iraqi, or that she was some Iraqi-American expat working in the green zone for big bucks, detached by the rest of Iraq. Sheesh! If SHE isn't Iraqi then I'm toast.

And I raise my-ever-pressing question; what defines Iraqi? Should Riverbend, me and other Iraqi bloggers fluent in English write in bad English to come across as Iraqi? Would I be more Iraqi if I dropped the swear words and the slang off the blog? Should I wave the 'we hate America' banners, tattoo the Iraqi flag on my forehead and play Iraqi music so loud that I piss off every Jordanian to my left and right.

Edward Said, a prestigious Palestinian American political and social scholar, was pivotal in defending the Palestinian cause giving an image other than hooded men with rifles or strapped with explosives. But he was called 'Americanized' and not true to his cause. Its either hard core or nothing.

When the Iraq/Jordanian border first re-opened after the toppling of the former Iraqi government in 2003 I took the first buss home. I lost all contact with my family and didn’t know if they were dead or alive. I had my headphones on the entire time during the 16 hour drive. I needed a distraction. I had Counting Crows, Guns’n’Roses, Noah Jones and some other bands. Coincidence had it that I had no Arabic music on me. I grew up speaking English and Arabic, it didn’t bother me. Not until I got to the border and saw American soldiers examining our passports. They were polite but all I could think of is I have a total stranger, a total outsider, AN OCCUPIER running my country for me. It was a moment to take sides. I pulled back, pretended not to speak English, and I turned my music off.

When I got home I looked around my old room. I had my grandfather’s gramophone records, either classical like Vivaldi and Mozart or oriental like Arabic and Turkish. What the hell was I afraid of? I’ve always been a little bit of everything. I use to spend hours on the roof drinking tea, the really strong cardamom flavored tea. I read poetry to my grandfather, written in Iraqi slang, the kind of Arabic only Iraqis could understand. I asked my grand mother if I looked like AJANIB "foreign" a term we use for westerners. ‘Nonsense’, she said, ‘why do you ask?’ god bless grand parents.

Yesterday I was chatting online with a Michael. A man from a multicultural background who's traveled a good deal and been exposed to so many cultures. His nationality comfortably floats between two continents, if he chooses to claim any of the two. He doesn't care about terms like 'patriotic' 'dogma' and such. I'm trying to find my middle ground – trying to find flexible interpretations to these terms, trying to belong. A wise man from India once made me a compliment when I took him in a tour around Baghdad in the early 1990s. He said that I belonged to no one and that I had a universal character. It was a compliment but I felt like I was walking on quicksand.

In the meantime I've decided to watch Michael lean back in his chair like it was a solid extension to him,look around like he owns the place and fill the room with his cosmopolitan character. Maybe I'll learn a thing or two.

The Twig

2009-11-26T05:35:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the Eid celebration. My grandmother has been watching the Haj ceremonies on TV. There are pilgrims in white pushing and shoving by the millions soaked under the rain. 50 died today because of the cold and exhaustion. I wondered why they kept going to the point of exhaustion and death instead of getting out of the rain. And I tried keeping a straight face when my mother talked about miracles, miracles I don't believe in. Family members around me are fasting, praying, humming with prayer beads today and the Islamic TV shows are in my face all day. My ears are humming and I'm all religious'ed-out.

I feel their comfort in belonging to something. I respect that. But it all feels too naive for me. My argumentative nature doesn't help because I feel lost. Thinking gives one a headache, doubt depresses, not belonging brings loneliness. We're social creatures and my interpretation is we feel safe by following a pack and a norm, a symbol, a god, a prophet, saint, pope, imam, a cross, a Budah, a Meqqa anything, something. Religions and beliefs are not a bad thing. Societies need rules and regulations with their reward and retribution. The world would have been chaotic otherwise. But they are also a dangerous tool to direct masses into hatred, lack of common sense, to dictatorships.

Having said that I must get off my high and mighty pedestal and confess – I wish I had the comfort and security of having an idol to look up to. I remember over the years how I clung to things of religious and sentimental value growing up. When I was around 10 or so my grandmother brought me a green ribbon she tugged off a cloth on the shrine of a Muslim saint in Baghdad. She fastened it on top of my bed to protect me from evil spirits. I'd lay in my bed on exam nights, lift my arm up and rub it, hoping for good grades. When I was in my early 20s I too made a wish and tied a ribbon on the ancient fig tree on the side of the mountain by Mar Meti monastery. A year ago I found a new object to idolize, a twig – yep you got that right, a tiny dry branch, a twig.

When my ex first broke the news of his desire to split, I was pretending to have that fuck-it attitude. So I went with some girl friends to get pampered. One of the things I did was go to a spa. I was feeling particularly vulnerable laying face down on the massage table near naked allowing a total stranger to touch me. She was a large Russian woman with a motherly touch. Something in me clicked and I cried my heart out. In between sobs I told her my husband left me. I bit my tongue after that and sobbed quietly for the rest of the massage. A week later I go to the pool there, the large Russian woman calls me to the massage room and then with great care, like she's about to show me a gem or the secret of life, she unfolds a plastic wrapping and with a smile carefully places her hand onto mine and reveals THE TWIG.

Dummified I look at her. She explains that she knows this old witch who does miracles. She went to the witch and asked her for a charm to make men go crazy about a woman. 'sew into the hem of your shirt or hide it inside your bra and men will go crazy about you.' she smiled and added confidently 'you'll have your husband back' and gave me two assuring taps on the shoulder. I was very moved by her kindness. There she was, a total stranger who went out of her way to try fix my life. I tugged it into my bra the next time I saw him – how desperate of me! - and it didn't work, naturally.

Despite my knowing its just a stupid dry branch that smells funny, I still keep it. It's wrapped snug in its original plastic and placed in a small jewelry box on my dresser table. I kept it for the symbolic value of hope in it and for the kindness a stranger displayed for me. Today the twig is my little lucky charm, not that I believe it works, but just because – like all those masses on TV, I need something – even tiny - to cling to.

Heart and Home

2009-10-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

When we’re alone, as in not emotionally involved, we tell our selves all sorts of crap about how great it is to be free and single, how we’re going to travel, go bohemian with zero responsibility towards anyone and how we are going to ‘experience romance’ i.e. screw everyone in sight. We tell ourselves that being tied down restrains us from these adventures. This leads to the final argument that … it is great to be single. What a load of crap we feed ourselves. In the end, we are all looking for that great mono-relationship.

If we do some sincere soul seeking we realize that these are all defenses the lonely use to keep their head above water. We all play cool when we’re alone; we take our books and newspapers and go to our regular cafes. We sit there and keep occupied so we won’t feel awkward about sitting alone. And who has never lifted his or her head and looked up when they notice or feel someone looking at them. How many of you out there – I dare you – have not looked back at them. If you are anything like me, then, just like me, you try to go through this phase with dignity and try not to act desperate or do or say something stupid. And if you are like me and most of us, you inevitably will say something to someone attractive, that makes you want to put your foot in your mouth. But can you blame us! We, like all species, need to be in pairs and groups. After all, doesn’t the old saying go, home is where the heart is.

Years ago a friend in school asked me, what is home to you. I answered ‘my room.’ He found that strange. He said I was the only one who gave that answer. I was not involved with anyone, in fact at that point in my life I had never had a boyfriend or even a crush. My relationship with my family was tense and I was a discrete kid who kept to my books, dvds and music. My room had everything I needed and I made it to be a very cozy nest. I stopped doing that close to 10 years ago. I rarely put any effort to decorate any of the apartments I’ve lived in since I got to Jordan. I’ve lost that enthusiasm. I have a few friends who work in jobs that keep them traveling. When I see how homey their houses are , I wonder how they have the energy to decorate their transit houses – won’t call them homes. How do you invest in a place you know you’re leaving in a year or two? How do you invest in anything you are going to leave behind?

When I use to be married I felt ‘at home’ with him. I felt safe. I told him and myself that over and over. Now that he’s been out of my life for a while I realize that I didn’t quite invest in the house me and him lived in either. I ask myself this question and I don’t know how to answer it; had I lost that sense of home – that energy to nest - when I left Iraq, regardless of being in a relationship or not? Had I lost it for good? Or is it still there and maybe he was a factor to my instability. Did I on some unconscious level feel insecure with him while on the surface I was just believing in a lie to keep me secure – that he’s my for-ever-after? Is it losing him or is it losing Iraq that caused me to lose my inner home. What is home after all?

Justice; killers of Iraqi journalist caught

2009-08-05T02:22:00.000-07:00

A dog took a chunk of meat off my arm this week and I screamed my lungs out. God! I could not stop screaming. When I calmed down, looking at the hole in my arm on the way to the hospital a realization hit me. All that scramming was an excuse to scream and not just over the bite. I don’t scream when I’m in pain usually. It worked. Sometimes I have to punch something solid and get a bruise, sometimes I scream, other times I do something obscenely stupid and try to cheat death. Those are the things that help me calm down when I’m angry over some injustice in this God-forgotten-world!

Last night something amazing happened, there’s a god yet. A murderer of a high school friend, a tv anchor and reporter, was brought to justice. His confessions were televised. I raised the volume and almost glued my nose to the tv screen. I don’t think I even blinked. He said he was following orders. He didn’t know why he was suppose to kill her. He said he shot her first in the head, then in the neck. It was a slight comfort when he said the first shot to the head killed her instantly. At least it was quick and painless, I hope.

They showed footage of her when she was alive. Reporting from bombing sites, the parliament, on the streets of Baghdad, Anbar, Najaf; of her goofing around the office with her camera man – who was killed with her that day – chasing her around and her waving hello at him, her putting on her makeup. Then I saw her mother and sister at the funeral. Her covered in blankets and held from arm to arm to settle in her coffin with tens of mourners. Tears streamed down my face but unlike most of my recent storms this was a quiet one. I was morning her and finally, coming to terms with her death and moving on. I don’t need another dog bit to scream, justice has finally been served.

Saving a life; Rainy Days

2009-07-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

I love helping people because on a rainy day one of those folks will randomly call back and say thank you, or how are you, or we’re praying for you. I guess I’ve always been lonely but never alone.

She sent me a hand written letter – the old fashion way – some photos and some drawings she made. Her drawings made me feel how, despite all her hardship, she was still a little girl on the inside. I’m glad she’s still is a little girl in spirit.

JJ ran away from home after her parents found out she had a boyfriend. That was not tolerated in most of Iraq, or tolerated to different extents. JJ’s family beat her up and broke her wrists and ankles. They locked her in from the outside world. She quit school. She couldn’t talk to anyone, not even on the phone. She didn’t have tv, radio or any other distraction. It was solitary confinement for months. So she ran away first chance she got.

In her attempt to cross the border out of Iraq, she was raped. Then she was arrested. Then she bargained her way out by agreeing to become an interpreter on some US base in Iraq. On one of her R&Rs to Jordan she called it quits and stayed. She approached the UN to seek asylum. The staff doing the filing, one conservative Muslim woman, scorned and rejected her. She told her there were no run-away-girls here and that she should go find her family. JJ tried to explain that she was older 20, thus a legal adult and that her parents would kill her if they found her. It didn’t work and she was sent away.

That’s when she came to me. I redirected her to another organization. I also introduced her to a friend of mine in the US. To cut a long story short, she made it to the US and was hosted by my friend. Her ghosts still haunt her and she’s in culture shock but she seems optimistic. Or so her letters read.

So when I have a rainy day, like today, I take out her letter and read it. In it she wrote that she and a close friend of hers use to dream together about their future when they were children. They dreamt of unrealistic things like a magic world underground, clouds of cotton candy. JJ use to tell her friend that one day she will be able to travel around the world and live independently with no husband and have a career. Her friend called her crazy. In her letter JJ wrote that her friend ended up in a forced marriage to a husband who didn’t let her go to collage. She wrote that her friend got depressed because her parents didn’t understand her nor did her husband. JJ’s friend set her self on fire and died in 2008. Her parents were enraged that their daughter could shame the family as such. It’s a taboo to kill yourself in Islam. They didn’t announce the actual cause of her death but JJ knew.

Such a letter would set anyone over the edge had JJ not ended it the way she did. JJ wrote to thank me for saving her life because now that she is in the US she feels she has an endless world of possibilities, possibilities her friend would have never imagined or dreamed of. She said had she not left Iraq that could have been her, burned and buried in some over-populated over-zealous Shia neighborhood in Baghdad.

So on a rainy day like today when I’m lonely, tired, losing my confidence and cool, I like to take out JJ’s letters, photos and drawings and I tell myself, I saved JJ’s life! And maybe I can save mine.

My New Situation; Divorce

2009-07-12T07:06:00.001-07:00

So it’s a divorce. I moved into my OWN apartment – miracle of miracles! In case you’re thinking what’s the big deal, divorced women are not allowed to live on their own. A woman who’s .. um ... what’s the word ‘experienced’ i.e. is no longer virgin, will come under pressure to live with family. Actually any single, divorced or widowed woman will be forced to live with her family. On rare occasions women will live on their own such as the woman having too many kids to be accommodated by relatives, if she is older than 40, if her family is in another country or if she’s already of notorious reputation and doesn’t care.

I am none of the above; though I have a fascination with notorious women in Iraq. They always strike me as strong and sexually powerful. My mother – a woman who’s as persistent and as weak as an ant carrying a bread crumb up a 4 meter wall - manages to persuade my father after months of nagging that I am a miss independent and cannot move back in with them. She told my father, which is true, that I was stuck in my marriage because I didn’t want to move back in with them.

In case you’re exited that I’m not a sheep in the flock, hold on, I am. My apartment is one floor up from my parents’; this was my dad’s condition. No apartment to the left, right, two buildings down the street, just around the corner would do. My social life has changed and half my wardrobe is tossed out the window because if my father sees me in most of them, I’ll never hear the end of it. In case you’re letting your imagination go wild, I’m talking about sleeve close to bare shoulders but not bare and hem lines right on the knee. I need my parents to approve of how I dress, who I hang out with, where I go and how late I stay out; me a 30 year old career woman, need to be chaperoned like a child. I am, I am a sheep in the flock, for now.

I was too busy to notice my ‘new situation’ with the logistical hassle and the emotional baggage of leaving my old apartment. When I closed the door and left it felt like kissing an entire chunk of my life good bye. It felt like all of my life until then died when that door slammed shut. It’s amazing how every hurt feels as fresh as the one before when you’d think you’ve gotten over it. It felt like my heart was being pushed down by a giant thumb. I wanted things to go back to the way they were. But I slammed the door and left. My life as I knew it was over. I felt and still do, incredibly vulnerable, lonely and longing for my ex even when I knew it was not working. But that door was shut.

My new image in the eyes of society was the last thing on my mind. It was not until last week, when a co-worker called to see if I wanted to meet for a cup of coffee and catch up, that it hit me in the face. I agreed to meet him after work at a shopping mall – anything but an intimate setting. I got into my jeans and sneakers and head out. My father caught me on the out. He asked where I was going. I told him. He frowned and said with words that cut me like a knife “you don’t appreciate your new situation”. My new situation! I felt like me, all the same. But sadly, I am not who I think I am, I am who the society projects me to be. And in the eyes of this society I am a disaster waiting to happen, a family honor hanging by a thread, an emotional naïve damsel in distress who will fall into vise – silly me – for the first man who winks at me.

This will be one bumpy ride; My New Situation.

Nadim Al Ghazali, Nostalgia

2009-05-06T07:09:00.000-07:00

Today it just so happened that all the Iraqis at the office decided to go on a lunch break together. The most fun outings are those unplanned. We were loud – as Iraqis normally are – and we spoke in our strong Iraqi accent – which makes Americans think we’re arguing and leaves Jordanians with an L shape on their forehead trying to catch up on what the hell we’re talking about.

After lunch we went back to the office and – as Iraqis are accustomed – had strong Iraqi tea after a big meal. We did the best we could with mugs and a microwave because we don’t have a stove at the office to brew it the proper way. I am slowly sipping on it because it’s giving me a nostalgic feeling I don’t want to lose. With tea I have Nadim Al Ghazali on my i-tunes. The tea and Al Ghazali brought back old sensations, tastes and smells.

I remembered the winter days when I was at my grandparents’ house. I would lie on the ground spreading all my homework across their Persian rugs. When I got bored I would look at the fine details on the rug. They had this large Russian heater that had a pipe going across the wall and out the window where its chimney went. Even the walls were warm. My grandmother always had a tea pot brewing on the heater. The room smelled like cardamom, my grandfathers’ after-shave, which I haven’t smelled in years, our Assyrian cook’s kleja – Iraqi sweats of biscuit-like dough stuffed with dates or crushed almonds and other kinds of nuts – and there was another smell. I can’t link it to anything but that smell was the small of their living room in winter.

I remembered the times it rained washing the big orange tree right outside the dinning and guest room letting in an aroma of rain and honeysuckle or fresh oranges. I remembered the times we all sat for a meal on the weekend and my grandfather repeated his regular quote “sh’kad hilwa el lamah” how nice our gathering is. My grandparents, parents, my uncle and his wife, me and my 5 brothers and sisters all sat together talking loud, laughing, arguing, rattling our plates and spoons. My grandmother had the habit of tossing more food into her grand childrens’ plates –eat, eat! I miss that.

I live in an apartment suspended away from the ground, barren of children, has few rooms, small windows, no garden, and I have one foot in the door taking me to which ever next country. Sometimes I think it’s a blessing that I’m as free as a bird to go wherever and whenever for now.

When I’m old and gray I am going to own a house on the tigress. It will be surrounded by a big garden and wide terraces. It will have paintings and plants all around. My kitchen will be big and sunny. There will be a second small house where I will host a homeless family to take care of the house and garden – for a fee of course. I will have two dogs. I will feed guests at least twice a week. I will always have leftovers for a dozen stray cats. I will have a library with at least 500 books, many signed by their authors. I will have roots. By God, I will have roots.

But what if another war breaks? The dogs and cats will starve, the books and paintings will burn, the garden will dry and the house will die. Maybe I am better off where I am now after all.

Why can’t I just enjoy a good tea and music and shut up!

Anti Depressants

2009-05-03T08:57:00.001-07:00

- How was your childhood?
- Glad it’s over!
- What’s your marriage like?
- Going down the drain.
- Have you been depressed before?
- Yes.
- What’s your sex life like?
- Puff!

He smiles and hands me a Prozac.’

Yep it’s official I’ve caught up with the millions of adults on anti-depressants in this glorious 21st century. It’s like a sign of maturity. First I got my period, then it’s my first job, then the first time I had sex, then the first encounter with marital problems, then it’s the first stab in back in the work place and now … the first anti-depressant.

I sat back and spaced out not convinced while he pointed with his pen on a diagram of the brain and nerves explaining what an anti-depressant does. I don’t want to grow any older than I already am. I remember laughing at my dog an hour before I made it to his clinic while we rolled on the floor playing. I kept telling myself, I’m ok. Life can be a shit hole, no argument with that. But I’m better off than others. I was resentful of him insisting that I was sick and need to be medicated before I slit my wrist.

On the way out of his clinic I grabbed a pamphlet about depression. One of the things on it says depressed people get these waves of panic from mild to extreme. I don’t ‘panic’ but I get this feeling like something bad is going to happen. I use to take pride in my sixth sense. It has saved me and people close to me from a few bombs and some domestic accidents in Baghdad. I trusted my gut feeling. Now my gut feeling has its signals all scrambled.

To prove to myself that I wasn’t crazy I started browsing the web on depression in Iraq. I quote the World Health Organization on one of its recent assessments;

“424 adult from 159 households were surveyed. According to the Iraqi version of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, Hopkins Symptoms Checklist, Coping mechanism used, 98% of respondents reported at least 4 trauma events, while 26% reported experienced between 5-10 trauma events, and 18% experienced more than 10. A total of 43% showed symptoms of depression, 60% anxiety, and 26% PTSD. Symptoms were more prevalent in women than in men. Rates were higher with higher numbers of traumatic events. Religion and family were the main resources for emotional support.”

http://www.emro.who.int/iraq/pdf/mentalhealth_launch_en.pdf

I remembered all the people I knew first hand who were depressed and suicidal. Four of my friends in school and collage and the mother of one friend confessed contemplating or trying to kill themselves. Then there are tens of people who want to die but are too religious to attempt it. These are people who repeat phrases like ‘when will Allah take our lives and let us rest?’ These are the same people who lack ambition because they feel that this life – so full of sorrow – is a transit unreal stage. Why bother. Suicide bombers have the same way of thinking.

One of my suicidal friends was Hind – not her real name. Hind’s father was an officer in the Iraqi army. After eight vicious years of being on the front line during the Iraq-Iran war he suddenly had nothing to do. One drunken night he raped Hind. She only told me, no one else, not even her mother knew. This dark secret created a strong bond between me and her. One evening Hind and I were sitting on the roof of my house with our school books. When the sun set and we found it hard to read we swung up and sat on one of the walls. We sat on the wall like we were riding horses with one foot dangling outside. Hind’s flip-flop slipped off her foot and made a strong slapping sound as it fell three stores towards the cement pavement behind the kitchen where my mother kept some junk and empty gas containers.

Hind gazed down and was quiet for a few seconds.
- ‘Suppose I jumped.’ She says. I looked down and said in an indifferent tone
- ‘You’ll smash your skull against the gas container and half your brain will ooze down that side and the rest of your brain will splash over there.’
- ‘Do you think I’d die?’
- ‘Maybe, but maybe you’d live and be a vegetable and no one wants that.’
- ‘Let’s jump.’ Now she’s testing me.
- ‘Ok, lets.’ I look her in the eye.
We stand up. I was indulging her but I knew she wouldn’t jump. I don’t know how I was sure but I just felt it. We both stood up balancing on the wall and clinging to the thin palm-tree reefs as if they would support us if we fell. The sun had set half an hour ago and all that was left was a dark pink and purple line on the horizon. It was beautiful. Then a cool breeze came, the kind that tickles the spine. My mother calls us for dinner and we hop off the wall me with two flip-flops and Hind with one.

That was 15 years ago. Hind confronted her father. Her parents got divorced. She married and has children of her own. Life moved on. I saw her in Baghdad last December. We have that way of talking without saying a word. We looked at her baby girl and thought what a loss had her mother jumped and she would have never been born. For a second I felt we were back in school, two teenage girls ourselves and here we were with this baby! It felt like we had never grew a day older than the day we were when we could have jumped. The baby cooing and giggling brings me back to 2008. I sigh and do my cynical half-smile at the chubby cute little thing, what a life!

Moment of clarity; Iraq Perspectives

2009-03-25T23:17:00.000-07:00

It’s 6AM, my dog is sick, my husband is out of town and I’ve had no sleep giving my pooch his medication, keeping him hydrated, and taking him out to poop so often, the poor thing has a bad diarrhea. In the midst of all that, I was talking on the phone to a friend in New York City a couple of hours ago, bitching about my finances and my marriage, when the conversation took its inevitable turn, politics.

She was telling me about some event in Washington where a number of Iraqi expatriates and Americans of Iraqi origins were discussing a what-next sort of agenda for Iraq. Then we got to talk about books written about Iraq including ‘Imperial Life in the Emerald City’ by Rajiv Chandrasesaran and ‘The Forever War’ by Dexter Filkins which is about Iraq and Afghanistan. They are both good reads, though I felt Chandrasesaran was more real than Filkins who’s book was more of a romantic exotic depiction of Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve never been to Afghanistan and I fell for his fist half of the book about Afghanistan. I could not put the book down, especially that I recently finished a novel titled ‘The Kyte Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini which was the best novel I’ve read in years. So I loved the first half of ‘The Endless War’ then when I got to the part about Iraq I realized his writing was more of a personal perspective – in many cases biased – of one American advancer journalist. I love his way of writing, as in the way he tells a story but his depiction of Iraq is lacking. It is mere impressions of an outsider who has not lived in Iraq long enough. Also I can tell he’s been having a hard time adapting to his accommodation, the weather, the food, I don’t know, his personal life, that he hated Iraq and didn’t give it a chance. But I’m Iraqi, so I’m equally biased. And this got me thinking, what would an educated Afghan think of his book? Chandrasesaran had a more hands-on experience not of Iraq and Iraqis but of what the US is doing in Iraq and why things have gone wrong which was all about economics and politics. With every page I went yes! Yes! That’s what we Iraqis keep trying to tell the US administration in Iraq god damn it!

My friend thinks I should write about how Iraqis look at the before 2003 and after. So, here I am. I’m sitting at footsteps of my apartment in Amman Jordan at dawn. I’ve had 3 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours. I’m surrounded by dog shit. And I’m having a moment of clarity; this should be the focus of this blog from now on, an Iraqi take on things and less of my pathetic personal life.

Tribute to Renos

2009-02-23T01:39:00.001-08:00

Renos was a Sri Lankan woman I knew. She was skin and bones, sick all the time with wood and steel splinters under her nails and she had the driest feet I’ve ever seen. She was quiet. She never dropped her smile around me. And Renos was a mystery. She stopped showing up nine months ago – she use to visit me on the weekend and help me clean the house. She changed her number and just dropped off the face of the earth. I knew she was in some sort of trouble. Yesterday she came into my life again, just like that and disappeared one last time.

Yesterday I got a call from a total stranger, another migrant domestic worker, probably a housemaid, telling me Renos died a night before and that she told her a day or two before her death that “I” could help her, but with what! This woman on the phone tells me that she met Renos at a local hospital while visiting another patient and felt sorry for Renos. She kept visiting for a week and making her food. She, like myself, only knew Renos by her first name and nothing else. This woman who I think is afraid to give me her name said she needed to know where Renos lived so she could find her passport to ship her body home. I did not have a clue. I’m restless because I don’t know what I can do or if I can do anything at all. Why in the world did she pick me! What did she want?

What shocks me is the reaction – or lack of it - among local Arab colleagues. I think if I had been talking about a dead stray cat I would have gotten more sympathy out of them. I’m still trying to trace her family.

Here is the little I did know about her;
When I first met Renos I was amazed at how tiny she was. She was about 4.5 feet maybe and her wrists were tiny, had high cheek bones, sunken eyes, dark tanned skin, ashy black hair with plenty of sliver hair though she was hardly 35. She was timid, too timid and I never managed to persuade her to call me by my name instead of ‘madam’ or look me straight in the eye. If we had lunch together she’d feel anxious if I carried a plate or a pot. She was more comfortable eating alone rather than sitting to the same table with me. If we did sit together she’d pick every morsel of rice or bread crumbs the minute any fell off her plate. Renos made me think, how in the world do you break a human spirit that bad? How are you born to serve and nothing else? How can your race be inferior to others by default?

Renos took a job in the Middle East to escape her abusive husband who used to get drunk and beat her. I remember how angry I got when she told me once that she still sent money to him so he could buy booze. She was oceans away and still afraid of him. Her only family – at least the only one she spoke of – was her elderly and ailing mother. Renos told me that after paying for rent and her basic needs here in Jordan, she’d send all her money to her mother. She never spoke of her father or siblings and had no children.

When Renos use to dust around the house she used to turn statues of female figures towards the windows facing the outside of the house and male figures towards the walls and corners. She loved tea but not coffee. She loved the pasta I made and that was the only time I saw her eat with an apatite and laugh when a string of spaghetti made a line across her cheek. She refused to reach into my refrigerator even though I told her she could take out and eat anything she liked. She taught me how to make a special curry and coconut sauce. I still cook that. She didn’t like my vacuum machine and preferred to clean the carpets with a small brush by hand. I felt guilty to walk in with my shoes for two days every time she did that. The TV and radio annoyed her and she turned them off when she worked. I never heard Renos sing or hum a tune to herself.

Last time we spoke on the phone she had broken her promise to come to my house for a third week on a row. I told her that if she had found another better paying job that was ok with me but she needs to tell me. She started crying on the phone after we failed to communicate in the modest English she spoke and very poor Arabic and me not speaking a word of her language. I’m feeling guilty about that.

That is all I have to say about Renos the tiny, timid and tired Sri Lankan woman. I hope she found her peace at last. I really hope so, first for Renos and second for my own sanity and faith.

Seeking answers; Baghdad, December 2008

2009-02-04T07:30:00.000-08:00

It’s been a month since I came back from my short trip to Baghdad. I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions since. I’ve always felt like a tourist in my own country which has its good and its bad; good that I appreciate beauty around me and am keen on art, folklore, local literature and anything unique to the Iraqi identity like I was some western adventurer exploring Iraq in the early 20th century taking it all in for the first time. Often things that make me hold my breath in Iraq pass as an undetected what-ever by fellow Iraqis. I suppose I’m a hopeless romantic. The bad part is I don’t fit in. I’m always an outsider who’s assumed to be half Iraqi and half something else. I’ve heard it hundreds of times ‘you don’t look Iraqi’. I suspect that I blend in with my European, Australian and American friends better, passing as less local more ‘normal’ for that same reason.

I do know one thing with certainty, that when I sat on my rooftop for the first time in years I belonged to something and I felt at home. It’s hard to describe the sensation. I feel like my spine becomes defused into the brick wall and all my anger and pain get absorbed into that wall I’ve been escaping to since I was 12. I felt cleansed, I felt ok. And a breeze would gush into every particle of my skin and the trees around me make that familiar shush and that warm sun on my face and into my joints. I don’t know if I can become a dual national with a US or other passport without being a hypocrite. I don’t know if I’m 100% Iraqi either, my closest of Iraqi friends say I look like ‘ajanib’ - foreigners. But I do know one fact for sure, that house in Baghdad is my home and it felt good, so good, to be home.

Without further ado, here’s the story of my recent trip to Baghdad;

Going to Baghdad:
The driver picked me up at 5AM. It was raining and I thought, maybe that’s a good sign. Jordanians have been praying for rain for weeks and on the night I finally leave, it rains at last. I was struggling to keep the veil from sliding down. It was annoying and suffocating and I hated it with every vibe in my being. I don’t hate veiled women at all, I just felt like so many liberties were being taken away from me by wearing it and by that I don’t mean the ability to style my hair. When I put on the hijab or veil I adapted another character, a more timid, conservative one. I became someone else. I had to pretend for my safety. So with the hijab on and my UN ID inside the padding of my shoe, I was off to Baghdad. I did feel scared and wanted to tell the driver to take me back. When we got to the border I felt the same way I feel when I’m on a rollercoaster and it’s time to make a speeding sudden plunge downwards. This is the point of no return, I am going to Baghdad. Oh my God! We’re at the border, and we’re gone.

Iraqi Border:
When we crossed to the Iraqi side I felt strange. I had not seen the land border point since early 2004. Back then statues and a large portrait of Saddam were still there. They were destroyed, shot at and peed on. The writing on an arch at the entrance of the border point was sprayed on and the words ‘welcome to Iraq the land of Arab brotherhood .. something, something’ I don’t remember, now read ‘welcome to Iraq the land of death and sculls.’ To my surprise the graffiti was still there. Saddam was gone. There were few travelers, three cars to be precise with less than 20 passengers. The rest were all trucks around 40 of them. Our driver told me that there are about 15 cars driving passengers across the border two to three times a week between Amman and Baghdad. When the officers gave us our passports back they would ask what we do for a living or why we were in Jordan. I prayed they would let my passport go with no questions because there was a crowd squeezing against that window and I didn’t want them t know I worked for a UN-affiliated organization; For one there’s a chance I’d be a target: and two, the folks I am traveling with would know I was lying to them when I said I was a housewife. I needed to keep that tightly wrapped image of me in a hijab intact at least until I made it back safely to Jordan a week later. Thank God the officers let it go and didn’t ask, I suppose they understood my situation. I still didn’t feel safe because a year ago these border offices would tip hijacker on the highway in Anbar. Not to brag but I am worth some ransom. As an Iraqi working with the UN my abduction could be a political statement since most Iraqis feel that the UN works for US interests in Iraq. That and my step brother was abducted and returned for a fat ransom years ago, I’m way better looking than him : ) I should be worth more. I soon realized how ridiculous my fears were. Anbar was safe and I perfectly blend in with my fake hijab.

Anbar:
Now Anbar has character. My first impression of Anbar was that it was safe. There were Iraq police patrols every few kilometers. We did not stop for each and every one on them but they were there with their trucks and their guns. Abu Omar – not his real name – our driver would swell with pride and stick his arm out the window and wave to each and every one of them. Those are ‘our’ boys he’d say in his husky voice of a heavy smoker with emphasis. We saw only one US convoy in Anbar, Abu Omar cursed at them as we drove by. He was a member of the Awakening Council, called Al Sahwa by locals, in Anbar and a supporter of the former Sunni insurgency. There were posters of Sheihk Abu Resha, three meter high. He was the founder of the awakening who was killed by Al Qaida over a year ago. The few checkpoints we did stop at had bomb detectors that were so sensitive that we were pulled over and yelled at, at one. Turns out a small bottle of perfume I had in my purse got the bomb detector flashing. Yes Abu Omar didn’t like me much.

Baghdad:
I did not feel at risk once I reached Baghdad either. The first checkpoint into Baghdad was operated by Shia police. Abu Omar cursed them like he did the Americans and called the police ‘shroog’ a derogative term meaning ‘vulgar.’ The term refers to those who come from poor farmers who came to Baghdad for a better life in the 40s and settled in the far east part of Baghdad. Abdul Karim who ruled Iraq at the time build houses for them, sort of like the projects some parts of the US. They are still poor. Militias and crime come from those slums such as Shula, Cader City, Al Thawra and Al Hurrea. They talk Arabic in a southern Iraqi accent and have darker skin. Men like Abu Omar and others like that policeman have killed each other these past four years.

My aunt and her husband picked me up from Liqaa square – Liqaa is the Arabic word for meeting or reunion - it is where all GMC cars stop to drop their passengers who just made it from Amman. You will only see GMC four-wheel drives and large Chevrolet nicknamed ‘dolphins’ because of their long sleek shape. Only American cars will be working the Amman-Baghdad rout. Drivers will not drive anything but American cars because of their monster engines, how ironic.

It was nice to see that, after more than three years of being away, Baghdad looked almost the same as when I left it, or so I initially thought. I felt that tingle under my skin like Baghdad was a living creature and it was welcoming me, I needed to hug Baghdad back.

It did not take me long to realize how much has changed. People in Baghdad were worn out. They had a dark cynical sense of humor joking about bombs and death. When people make plans they always end it with ‘if we’re still alive by then’ or ‘I’m not lending you that much money! What if you die on me ..’ chuckles. The Al Jilawi toy store in Mansuir – one of the largest in Baghdad at the time - had closed after hooded men ambushed the three sons and one grandson of the owner and killed them all in one day. Seeing the shop sign sway, now hanging from one bolt with the second lose, at the front of the shop was very sad. One of those three sons was with me in collage. We use to love going there, even as adults. The dairy shop my mother always went to was also closed. Again, some hooded men ran in there, shot the shopkeeper and his 10 year son, trashed the place and tossed a hand grenade in there on their way out. And here’s the butcher with one arm, he lost it to a bomb in 2004.

My neighborhood had also aged. Young ones immigrated and the old were growing older. Some had stokes that left them half paralyzed; others had such week knees they needed a wheel chair and stopped show up on their front lawns drinking chie like before. The trees in the back yards, which I use to admire from my roof when I grabbed my tea and book and spend hours up there, those trees had gone dry. The gardens had dry wild weeds in them instead of fresh grass and rows of flowers around them. There were no more children playing in the street, I use to be one of them.

My old house, the one I was born in, was now occupied by another family. They welcomed me in, let me look around the rooms, the garden, the roof. I wanted to spend time in each room but felt embarrassed because this is not our stuff and we don’t use these rooms any more. I felt like I had violated their privacy. I sat on my old swing and went high-high up like I use to. It was a bitter sweet feeling. Part of me will never grow old. the women who now lived there stood in my mother’s kitchen looking at me like I was mad, a 30 year old woman acting like a child.

Al Mutanabi book market:
But there was a resilient side to Baghdad which made my trip even a million times more worth while, the book bazaar. Fundamentalists bombed the book market last year. It was renovated, up and running less than a year later. I could still see some remains of the damage. There was one very old building of colonial style and it had a rusty red sign hanging on the side that said ‘post office’. It was something the British left behind decades ago. That was now gone and the only thing remaining was one wall, the other three walls and the roof were now charcoaled rubble. I went with two girlfriends and we instantly split when we got there scouring for the books we liked. The ‘Shah Bandar’ coffee house was also reopened. It is a gathering place for intellectuals and has been for nearly 100 years now. The walls were covered with photos of academics, all regular customers, killed with black ribbons on the picture frames. At Mutanabi you could find books about anything. Islamic books sat next to atheist books, Baathest next to autobiographies of Shia aimams killed by Baathests, no one bothered, a book is a book, read it or leave it. This is not the case in many Muslim countries where fanatics issue ‘fatwas’ to have writers killed in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt to name a few.

The suspense of being on my knees digging into piles of used books not knowing what I’d find, the smell of old paper and dust, the spider web at one top corner of the shop, the wooden staircase that squeaks as I climb to the second floor where there are hundreds of more used and new books, the call for prayer, the clatter of tea cups, the snaps of conversations about art, philosophy, politics, the sound of the Dijla river, the smell of oil paint and canvases, the sight of small ferries taking people up and down the river for 10 cents or less … all of it, all of Mutanabi street came amplified in audio, visual and sensual affect. Just typing these lines gives me goose bumps. The idiots who bombed Mutanabi deserve to be bombed back!

Friends:
Hala was married and had two children and started wearing a hijab after she got married, by choice. Her husband, an engineer, worked for some US funded project and she feared for his safety. She looked 10 years older than me, though we are the same age. She played a Tom&Jerry cartoon on DVD for her two kids. We sat at a corner sipping tea and she told me tales of bombs, abduction and horror. I remembered my manicure-pedicure and shopping spree outings in Amman, how shallow I felt. Hala told me about her eating disorders where at some point she went on for three days not eating and was rushed to a hospital, diagnosed clinically depressed. And she told me about the times when she got hooked on candy and munchies that she gained weight like crazy her knees began to hurt when she stood or walked. She said that for the past year, with security improving and her moving back in with her mother – while her husband was on the field – made her feel better. Her mother lived in a safe district and she could take her kids walking, playing at a nearby park and so on. She now became a health fanatic looking up healthy recipes for her self and kids off the internet. “We’re all eating healthy now, munchies only once a week” she said.

Noor I marveled at. She looked more alive than I ever remembered her and she went from total doormat to a strong woman. Noor was single, focused on her career, doing great at it, looking great and .. how can I put it words, like someone finally switched a light bulb on that girl. Noor is from Tikrit, Saddam’s home town, and her family has close family ties with Saddam’s. Before 2003, she could not move around Baghdad without a driver and a guard. I needed a ‘security clearance’ to see her. And she had no choice when it came to whom she should marry and she would never be anything but a housewife. 2003 bought it’s tragedies to her family, her family was threatened, her brother abducted and tortured and all their assists frozen. But she is taking evening classes at collage, has a job, is providing for her whole family, and she was the one who chased her brother’s abductors and got him out after a pursuit that took over a year. She was so bright eyed and bushy tailed when I took her to the book bazaar with us. She has never in her life been there before! She said she had no idea how big Baghdad was until after 2003.

Anbar again:
The drive back to Amman was not as smooth. The highway heading north to Jordan had a lot of US convoys. If you’re stuck behind one you have to stay 100 meters away or get shot at and they drive very slow. Abu Omar curses at them again and waits for a crack in the fence and all of a sudden he was driving on the other lane – heading from Amman to Baghdad. I never get bored of telling this story.

Picture this; we’re speeding on a 120 on a highway, driving against traffic with speeding tucks heading our way. Abu Omar blinks the front lights at them to notice us, though it’s sunny midday. We’re ‘intimately’ close to the convoy now driving right next to them. I’m thinking if he makes a sudden swerve towards them avoiding a tuck, they will shoot at us, not to mention that if a bomb blows up they are in the armored vehicle not us. And he’s talking on the cell phone.

Now take a look inside the car; Abu Omar has filled it with cartons of eggs, tomatoes and bread – basically any food he finds being sold on the highway. With every bump a bag of bread smacks me on the back of my head and the eggs jiggle. He has ‘insurgency’ music on where music mixes with the sound of machine guns. Next to him is an old man snoring, not aware of what’s happening. His wife, sitting in the back to my right is tugging at my sleeve nervously with one hand and holding a rosary with the other and is praying loud. To my left is another woman who travels regularly on this route, reading her newspaper totally indifferent and chewing gum also loud. One women annoyed me and the other made me want to vomit and Abu Omar’s driving made me close my eyes for a few. Then I open them again and – me being me – I wanted to laugh. I thought what a hilarious story this would be to tell to my friends back in Amman. If not, this has been awesome and my death will be quick and painless. Abu Omar did this stunt twice before we reached Jordan and was pulled over by an Iraqi check point each time.

Jordanian Border:
The Jordan border was a nightmare and I can’t blame them for their tight security. I couldn’t help think how indifferent they were when we left Jordan into Iraq. No one came near us or our suitcases when we left Jordan into Iraq. The woman with the chewing gum had her suitcase flipped inside out and torn because the bomb-sniffing dogs kept going back to her suitcase. ‘We were grilling kebab last night, maybe it’s the scent of the meat’ the women scratched her head all confused. ‘I don’t have anything suspicious!’

When I went to get inspected by the female border inspectors I felt violated. We were searched twice by the way by four female officers. If you have chewing gum, they’ll ask you to chew on it. If you have hand cream they’ll ask you to put some on. Family photos, tell them who each person is. When I got to ‘physical inspection’ part I remembered a common catch-phrase and smiled faintly despite my humiliation “shouldn’t you take me to dinner first!” I wanted to mumble, she would not have gotten the joke. When I was at the first inspection I smiled at them – little did I know what lies ahead – and asked permission to take off my shoe ‘please’ and before I could explain why it hit the fan! What’s in your shoe!? Keep that foot down! Slowly! What’s in your shoe?! I told them I hid my ID in there and explained why I did so though I felt my reasons were - duh! - Obvious. The old man who was, god bless him, in his 70s had his passport confiscated and was suspected of ‘terror’ affiliations … it took us another two hours on the border to sort that out because we could not leave without them.

Back to Amman:
When I got back it was raining again. I didn’t mind, I love rain. Amman is not home but I felt a little less estranged from it and liked it better. I liked it for its little luxuries and I liked it because unlike last time, this time I traveled to Amman by choice and knowing that I can always go back to Baghdad anytime with security improving in Iraq. I thought I’d sleep like a baby once I got home because I was so tired being on the road from 5AM to 8PM. Instead I had a huge fight with my husband – oh yes he’s back – and then went out for a walk. I had a lot of energy in me and I wanted to let it out. I guess I resented him when he didn’t receive me with some enthusiasm. I thought ‘I almost got killed! Now do something grand’. It’s not his fault, I admit to going overboard sometimes.

The next morning I was in that same coffee shop in Abdon as last time sipping my expensive cup of coffee, feeling the same fresh pain and guilt about my dead friends and wishing they were here. But this time I had a drawing my little six year old cousin made for me. She was glued to me the whole time and we did things together, like bedtime stories, watching cartoons and playing football. I don’t have kids, I don’t know if I will. I don’t know what’s going on with my marriage. I have no idea where I’m heading to next. I don’t feel like my apartment, in Amman, is a home, as it is neglected and barren from any ‘homey’ items like a family photo. But her colored scrabbles warmed my heart. I went back home and put a fridge magnet on it. From there on every time I walk into my kitchen, I can’t help but smile at my little trace of home.

Define air raids

2009-01-14T04:12:00.000-08:00

Nearly 1000 killed and more than 4000 injured on day 18 of Israel’s attack on Gaza. According to the news, Israel is just warming up and will launch a more aggressive attack. The population of Gaza was estimated in 2007 to be less than 1.5 million.

I have a friend in Gaza, I just managed to call and spoke to his wife. One of his brothers is in the hospital under critical condition and another brother was killed in these recent attacks. It was not easy to speak to her while her three young children were making a rattle around her. I could hear a baby crying – more like shrieking – nonstop. I can only imagine what those babies and young children are going through these days. She ended every other sentence with ‘if we live to see tomorrow.’

It’s hard to tell young children about death, it’s unfair. In the early 1990s in Baghdad whenever there was a US air raid I would tell my little sisters – then 3 and 5 – that those were fire works. I vividly remember those fireballs lighting the sky, some large and slow and some smaller and faster. I remember one bombing that was about a kilometer away but was so huge that it made a glow which lit the room and felt like it came from right behind our neighbor’s house. I remember being scared and I remember my little sisters clapping with excitement.

I cannot compare my situation to my friends in Gaza. The US did not kill close to a thousand civilians in two weeks via air raids even with Iraq being 20 times bigger than Gaza and almost 20 times more it’s population. Yes there were the cluster bombs in 2003 and yes they did hit the Ameriah shelter in 1991 where over 300 women, children and elderly were looked in and left to cook when all the exists were jammed. But for the most of it the US did not hit civilian targets normally, on purpose or indifferently. If our house was no where near a governmental or military facility we felt a bit safer.

Iran on the other hand let rockets land where they may. That’s why an Iranian air raid half as intense would be ten times more scary because you never know where those rockets will land. I remember one landed on a youth center meters away from my house. It killed two young brothers. I was probably 7 and they were in high school. They were so handsome I had a crush over them both. Their mother had already lost her husband to the war, he was a soldier, and she went loony. Then there was another bombing that landed on a school and killed close to 100 kids. It changed the neighborhood for ever, with all the kids gone. This is the same with Israeli attacks. People are potato sacks and bombs will land where they may.

An air raid is usually at night. The lights will be out. The family will be hustled in one room away from windows. Elderly people will be praying, making a loud whispering sound. They add to their audio effects with an extended sigh or a lengthy ‘allaaaah’ right after loud booms. Time freezes and we all go quiet when missiles whistle and we hunch almost like were getting ready to be hit. I remember images of bodies picked from under the rubble on TV. I wonder if that’s what we will look like. I don’t want to wonder so I close my eyes but the images are still there. I rub my eyes and squeeze my temples so that those images would go away. They don’t.

At an air raid you feel that those bombarding you are so powerful, that you are so insignificant like they were both god and the devil. At an air raid you can hide and pray or you can get so pissed that you go out to the street or on the roof of your house and you face it. You face it and wait for something to fall from the sky and blow you to bits because you are so fucking fed up.

That, my friends, is how I define an air raid.

Iraqi refugee women and girls in Jordan: "Rape is a death sentence"

2008-11-23T04:19:00.000-08:00

source http://www.womenscommission.org/special/jordan/110308.php

The Women's Commission undertook a field mission to Jordan from October 25 to November 2, 2008 to follow up on a mission in 2007. Sarah Chynoweth , program manager, reproductive health program, and Ada Williams-Prince, senior advocacy officer, write:

Amman, JORDAN, 2 November 2008—The Iraqi doctor looked us straight into the eyes and said "I would rather be dead than tell anyone I have been raped." If this woman—a highly educated, successful doctor working for the UN— wouldn't speak out, who would?
The Women's Commission has been in Amman, Jordan for the past week to find out if any improvements have been made for Iraqi refugee women and girls since our last visit in 2007.

Although incredible progress has been made by international agencies and the Jordanian government to help Iraqis, women and girls who have survived rape are still under siege.

Three bad options for rape victims As explained to us by one of Jordan's foremost female lawyers, women and girls who speak out after being raped have three options: 1) to marry the rapist; 2) to be sent to prison for their own protection from their family; or 3) to be killed by their family for dishonoring them. Of course, this is if they choose to come forward after rape and report the crime at all.

An Iraqi refugee told us, "Iraqi women would report anything, but would not report sexual assault – not even touching…Rape is a death sentence."

Health providers unaware of post-rape medicines In Jordan, rape survivors are not provided with life-saving medical care after the assault. Neither health providers nor the general population is familiar with the medicines to prevent pregnancy and HIV transmission. Many doctors, including leaders in the health sector, and most refugees have told us they had no idea such drugs exist. Plus, doctors are required by law to report rape to the police. Even if medical care after sexual violence were available to women and girls, they would not be able to access this care without notifying the authorities. This situation applies to all women and girls in Jordan.
In addition, if an unwed woman becomes pregnant after rape, her child is forcibly taken after birth. These "Illegitimate" children are denied birth certificates and are raised in special orphanages.

And if it seems it can't get any worse, refugees have even more challenges: Iraqis are considered "illegal" in Jordan and the threat of being discovered by the authorities is a constant fear.

Working Iraqi women and girls are at particular risk for sexual violence. Many families are living in cramped conditions and sleep closely together—which is not normal practice—thus forcing a greater level of physical intimacy and possibly increasing the chances of incest. Although Iraqis are not allowed to work in Jordan, some do so illegally in order to support their families. Generally it is women who work outside the home, since men and boys are more likely to be deported. Working illegally as maids, waitresses and in other types of domestic labor, women are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse by their employers and colleagues. In addition, some women have resorted to sex work in order to provide for their families, putting themselves at incredibly high risk of sexual violence. All of this takes place in a climate of complete impunity: women rarely come forward after they have been raped, and rarer still is the successful prosecution of the rapist.

Glimmers of hope Despite this grim picture, there is hope. The government of Jordan recently restructured its Ministry of Health, which included the establishment of a violence against women unit. National protocols on reproductive health are being developed, which are said to include guidance on care for rape survivors. International agencies are starting to implement and expand gender-based violence programming, with a particular focus on the Iraqi communities. Finally, many phenomenal local groups are working to address this issue. In particular, the Noor Al-Hussein Foundation's Institute for Family and Health and the Jordanian Women's Union have developed innovative, effective programming to address these sensitive issues. If their work is funded and replicated throughout Jordan, safety and justice could be brought to Jordanian and Iraqi women alike.

Virginity

2008-10-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

They were in a tight embrace as they danced slowly. His face was buried in her hair and she was tasting the kiss he just gave her. Sigh … I have not had sex in a very long time. I can’t do anything about it and I can’t talk about it to anyone because sex, sex education, sex protection, sex anything is a taboo in the Arab culture.

We are suppose to refrain from all sexual interaction except with our spouses. We are also suppose to refrain from anything sexual like a magazine add with a hint to sex, like a perfume add or a diet pill. That was easy when I was a teen growing up in Iraq since we had no internet or satellite. We had two state-run TV channels where if a movie or TV show included a clip with nudity or sex scene, even kisses they would be removed and the TV screen would freeze until the shameful act is done. Don’t even ask where I got my sex education from! So many Iraqi brides discover all about sexual intercourse – horror of horrors – on their wedding nights. Wedding nights usually end with rape because the penetration and the bleeding has to happen and brides are so freaked out. Then the family will want proof, like the wedding sheet, that the bride is a virgin. In more modern families there won’t be the same pressure but it is taken for granted that the bride is virgin. No Iraqi or Arab man would marry a non-virgin unless she has been widowed or divorced. And these women would have to work extra hard to maintain good reputation because they are looked at with suspicion now that they are no longer virgins thus they can have sex and no one would know. That’s why a widow or divorcee can never live alone, she will have to move back in with her family; a woman with sexual experience on the loose, heaven forbid! You see they have already torn that tissue that gets torn at first sexual intercourse or due to playing some sports. That tissue is seen as a way to keep women from having sex. I remembered how infuriated a doctor friend of mine was when the father of a girl denied his young daughter a life saving surgery because it meant removing that tissue. He preferred his daughter to die than lose that tissue, the only proof that she was a virgin. I’ve come across women who have bragged about having oral and anal sex with dozens of men then brag that their honor is intact, they are still ‘technically’ virgins and waiting for the right guy. Honey, I hate to break it to you but you are ‘not’ a virgin!

Today with the internet and satellite kids are learning about sex at a young age. So what do parents do, lock their kids up, correction, lock their daughters up. Girls will be called whores boys will be called studs. I’ve come across many girls from Saudi Arabia who wear the whole set of black veil covering their faces and the long abbayyia covering their curves. They were either dangerously naive or dangerously sexual. With the lack of education these girls and women get, compared to all the exposure boys and men do get, they become easy targets. They get pregnant, catch diseases and get abused emotionally and physically and not realize it. What is the solution? Many would say don’t let women travel without a guardian – mahram – to include father, grandfather, brother, husband, uncle, son or grandson. That way men will control “their” women because that’s what men should do. If their women conduct themselves in a non-virtuous manner they will be beaten and/or killed. So many women have been killed bases on the basis of suspicion alone. Men will get a slap on the wrist, few months in jail sometimes weeks. They are heroes and studs who did what they had to, to maintain the family honour.

Women’s sexuality is seen as such a taboo that in some Muslim countries they will remove part of the clitoris, performing female genital mutilation on girls from as early as 8. This is an attempt to control women’s sexuality so they stay “virtuous.” There is a big debate among Islamic scholars between those who are with and against. Many women will confuse sexual pleasure with rape. That’s the only way she’d know for her husband to ‘have her’ that's also why sex life will dwindle among some Arab couples after a short while. There are also so many women who would be married for years and with a bunch of kids who have never experienced sexual pleasure. They don’t know an orgasm exists. Sex is an act the husband does to breed more babies. And since it’s a duty not an enjoyable act, a jar of Vaseline will always come in handy; ask women in rural parts of Jordan for one.

I was thinking about all of this when I had a huge argument with my father who disapproved of me travelling alone to Europe. You are going to whore yourself and I know it! My father is concerned because my reputation is also his and the family’s. If I developed a reputation as being a slut the men in my family will not be able to walk proud, my mother will be looked down upon and no one would marry my sisters. How often as a kid I’d be caught reading articles for the Egyptian feminist Saad’awi or and rebuked. I still remember the first time my father slapped me because I was playing with the neighbour’s son on the front lawn of their house around 10PM. “We don’t have daughters hanging out with boys till this hour!” He slapped me right there and the boy fled. I could no longer look him in the eye after that, not even when we were both in collage. It was back then at the age of 10 or 11 that I understood what a big deal it was.

I’m aware of this, it hovers over my head all the time. I wanted to tell him father chill I’m already on a leash! What I will never tell him though is father, I am going to pull free from your leash even if I choke and die in the process; chances are I will. If I have kids someday I will never put that leash on them, ever!

The sad part is my father thinks I’m acting like a western-wanna-be, that I like to copy western people, that I’m a kiss-ass at the expense of my nationality and pride. Why do I have to give up my Iraqi identity because I think different? Who defined sexuality as ‘western’? Who defines what the Iraqi identity is anyway? There must be more to my Iraqi identity than my sexuality or the lack of it!

This one is for Lawrence, Nathalie and Chris. Thank you.

Alan’s Melody

2008-10-14T05:45:00.000-07:00

Alan had a music shop in Baghdad which was also our privet little club. You’d walk in there and a puff of cigarette smoke hits you, red walls with ‘Iron Maiden’ and ‘Metallica’ posters and some screeching electric guitar or a feverish drum tune. There in the haze at the back are a bunch of girls and guys talking rock music, sometimes there will be a guitar around and someone will be playing it. Mohammad or Nawwar would be behind the counter playing a sensational rock tune ‘Ha! Ha! I told you!’ Mohammad would say ‘it’s good!’ he had this way of pulling my foot back into the shop every time I tied to walk out. And also he had a way of making me reach into my pocket again and again to buy more records. In most cases I’d walk in there not knowing what I want and I tell him play something for me.

Since Iraq was cut off from the rest of the world all our records were copies. Yes it is illegal but that was the only way to go. Who ever was fortunate or wealthy enough to travel would buy all these originals drop them on Alan’s counter and tell him to copy them, free of charge, and hand them back. When we traveled and came back with records we handed them to Alan because we wanted the rest to know about this or that new album or band, we didn’t do it for the money. Alan sold them dirt cheep, just about the cost of a blank CD and a little extra, about two dollars.

Alan also had thousands of gramophone records pilled up at his shop, classic rock bands like ‘Led Zeppelin’ ‘Pink Floyd’, hippie stuff like ‘The Mamas & the Papas’ classical music, top of the pop records from the 1980s and 70s anything you could think of. I use to walk in there borrow some and then put them back on my next visit. Alan would never keep track and didn’t charge us for borrowing them and we always brought them back. Needless to say this was an exclusive club for the hip Baghdad society, yes we were snobs.

In 2005 my family was attacked by a gang and we left. In 2006, on a weekend in my apartment in Amman I was all alone, my husband at the time/ now my ex oh joy/ was working in Baghdad. I was sitting in front of the TV late at night and I see Alan’s dead body on the news carried into a truck with a bullet in the head. They showed his ID for a second and I missed it. It was him, oh god it can’t be! I kept waiting for it to show again but it didn’t. I slept on the floor by the TV, keeping the TV on. Near dawn the next morning I saw him, it was him. Damn it!

Before he was killed and right before I left Baghdad I passed by his shop, he was closing it and this was my only chance to say good bye to him, the shop, the old days. Music stores, especially western music had become too much of a taboo with militias in charge. Why the hell would one need to keep a rifle behind the counter to protect copied CDs anyway. Closing the shop was the end of an era. Then when one by one Alan’s customers – some I knew – started getting killed or fleeing Baghdad for different reasons and when he was killed too, I thought there’s another end to the era. Some of us old collage friends married or became couples but most have been widowed, divorced or separated, me included. And I thought shit! A third ending to the same era, we bloody get it already!

I am writing this blog after chatting online to a friend – from the old days, also divorced from one of the old gang but happily re-married now thank god. She had no idea Alan was killed. She was shocked and stopped typing for a couple of minutes when I told her.

After a pause she wrote “it’s so hard for us to be normal people with normal lives. I try so hard to forget and have nice times and it always hits me on the head when I am about to forget.”

This one is for you Alan,
Rest in peace, god knows we aren’t!

Color blind

2008-10-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

It is one of my life’s great ironies that the most beautiful blue-greenish eyes I have ever seen are color blind. He has the sort of eye color that changes between blue and green to even hazel sometimes and he does not know it. He is color blind seeing things only in black and white.

She reminded me of him and I’ll tell you why. She was sitting on the couch at my office back straight, chin down, graceful but very quiet. She is 15 years old, found my organization’s website and wrote to me. Her mother had a round face that went red when she got anxious and she was both anxious and defensive nearly the whole time. She was also restless and incoherent telling her story like I was both the enemy and the savior.

The mother, her husband and two daughters flee Iraq prior to 2003 because Uday, Saddam’s son noticed her older daughter and wanted her. To avoid an inevitable rape, they take their two daughters and flee to Jordan. After 2003 the husband returns to Iraq, is abducted and killed. This younger one falls ill, quits school and is depressed. The mother weds her older daughter to one Iraqi immigrant in Sweden, now it’s just her and the younger girl, lets call her Ilham – Arabic word for inspiration.

The restless mother – I feel – needs a 101 training on how not to traumatize your kid. She spoke about her daughter in the 3rd person tense and pinned all suffering to her and kept reffering to her as ‘the child’; ‘the child is depressed, the child can’t go to school, the child had a nervous breakdown, the child is getting a rash all over her back and unexplainable fevers’ then she tries to pull Ilham’s shirt up ‘come look at this rash!’ to which Ilham shrivels and I ask the mother not to. The mother irritated the hell out of me but I did not show it or act upon it of course. I took notes and asked for more information before I could do anything for her. I saw how Ilham’s eyes scanned my office, the piles of paper on my desk, the tasks pinned to my note board. She did not say a word the whole interview until I spoke to her directly at the end. But she had a strong presence, after all, wasn’t it she who found and contact me. If only she knew that she was not the victim her mother labels her to be, that her mother could not admit to her own anxieties so she projected them on Ilham. Ilham did a school project three years ago, before her father went missing - when she was 12 about the affect of war on the mentality of Iraqi children and was honored at school and asked to give a presentation to a large audience. ‘I’m impressed!’ I said and asked ‘what’s your favorite topic at school?’ ‘I love everything about school’ she answered. I asked why she doesn’t go back to school and she went mute again.

My colorblind friend is one of the most amazing photographers of black and white photography. He has a gift no one else has because what you probably don’t know about colorblind people is that although they only see in black and white and shades in between, they have a very sharp eye for detail, tiny or far images which our color-capable eyes smudge. In other words, had my friend decided to be a sniper - I hope he never does! - he’d be superman. He is a superman, he has a super unique sight. I am not patronizing him, I am jealous!

Back to Ilham, she’s not your ordinary teen. I’ve decided to introduce her to another kid her age, he’s wheelchair bound and has a heap of physical disabilities. This kid recruits kids his age, raises funds and they all work to supply, package and ship assistance to a village in Iraq where people have been stricken by disaster. I hope he helps Ilham find her super-ness and that she realizes she is color-sharp not color blind. I hope she learns to see what I see in her, that she's just as divine as his extra colorful eyes.

I am “Refugee”

2008-09-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

The United Nations defines refugees as ‘persons who are outside their country and cannot return owing to a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.' ~ United Nations, 1951.

I’ve been taught that ‘refugee’ is a state of mind; we chose to settle down or continue to be restless regardless of borders. The grandchildren to Palestinian refugees who have been living in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon since as early as the 1940, born and bread in those host countries consider themselves as ‘refugees’ living in displacement for political and ideological reasons. Some Iraqis who seek refuge in the United States consider themselves refugees and as refugees they are victims who owe it to the world to protect and help them. Some are disillusioned when they are told to stand on their feet and work, ‘but I am a ‘refugee!’ they’d say. They are victims and need others to help them, not them to help themselves. This victim mentality becomes a characteristic, part of their personality which they may pass along to the next generation born in exile – even if the US is now home and not ‘an exile’.

Every refugee needs a home. If you are ‘home’ you are no longer a refugee. So long as Palestinians feel it a betrayal to their country of origin to feel at home in other countries, they will continue to be refugees. And so long as Iraqis idealize the good old days in Iraq - compared to the US, Sweden, Canada or where ever they are – they will never 'be home'.

I have lost my home and indeed I miss Baghdad dearly. When ever I traveled and then returned to Baghdad I’d compare cities. I’d be sitting on the roof sweating because there is no electricity and I’d ask myself do I miss the shopping malls, night life, fast food, filtered coffee, doughnuts, going to the movies; do I miss the security and normality of Jordan or Syria? I’d honestly say no I don’t. I felt submerged into the hot dusty air, infused into the brick wall I’d be sitting on, taking in the sunset and the palm trees; I felt like I was part of all of my surroundings and safe, I felt I was home. But now I’ve lost that.

Then during my time in Lebanon I decided to be flexible. I decided that home was something you carry with you. My Iraqi identity, my family history, the Arabic I speak, everything that makes up ‘me’ and my family – him whom I hug at night – make up a home I carry with me where ever I go. I would tell myself people need to be flexible with the constant grow in migration movements not just because of war and disasters but because it is becoming increasingly easy to relocate. So, so long as we are not alone in this world, so long as we have people like us, who talk the same language and think the same way, it’s ok to be anywhere on the globe. If you have the community with you, then you are home.

Now here’s my dilemma; I’m a product of globalization. I speak as much English as Arabic, I’m not a religious Muslim, I don’t agree with many things in my culture – or as one friend from India put it - I do not belong to anything. I was physically attached to my house and I lost it. I was emotional attached to him and I lost him too.

I’m afraid I have become in a constant state of refugee-ness, border-wise and emotionally. I am lost, scared and lonely. My last resort is to try squeeze it down yet another notch and find home within me, me alone. I am my home. Just thinking that way depresses me.

Well, it’s almost 5 hours past office hours. Time to go home, if an empty apartment in a transit country can be called as such.

the growing up perfume

2008-08-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

I like perfumes, not strong ones, but I like those light natural scents. Delices de Cartier smells a little more bold than other perfumes I have. It’s not apple, peach or green tea, it’s spicy and sexy and I use very little of it. Najlaa thinks that every woman transiting a phase has a growing up perfume – something more woman less girl.

So here I am alone in my apartment, laying on the couch I now sleep and eat on at 3AM smelling like Delices de Cartier and wearing my diamond engagement ring, screw the engagement part, I just like diamonds and that’s why I’m wearing it. Here I am thinking, is it a pattern for smart successful Arab women to marry men who are less accomplished, and/or take more crap from their partners than they should?

Maybe there’s an age factor, by the time women have made much of their career they should be near 30 or older and women here marry young, men not so. If you’re a single woman and you’re 30 then old aunties will be concerned. And maybe it’s upbringing where women are brought up to think less of themselves; where modesty can mean low self esteem and virtuous can mean doormat.

He never told me what I should or should not do and I never asked permission as wives here do. But I saw myself through his eyes more than in my mirror, I’d have to hear him tell me over and over that I was beautiful, if he said I gained weight it would be the end of the world for me. I did all I could to please him and didn’t bother to think why he was not there for me when I needed a friend or a husband. When I’d return home after 8 or 10 hours of work I’d pick up after him with his stuff all over the place – he who wakes up at noon and works half the time I do. But I accepted that and was ecstatic and endlessly grateful if once a month he helped me with the dishes or did dinner. He’d remind me what a favor he did and I’d always say thank you. It was like I was two different women one who took no crap and another who took far too much of it as a part of my duties as a wife.

It’s interesting that Islam – despite common belief – gave women liberties that were later taken away from them. for example women moved from being objects inherited to having a choice, they marry whom they want, they cannot be forced to marry, they cannot marry too young, if they don’t want a man they can divorce, they are entitled to ask for divorce if men are not pleasing their wives sexually, they inherit instead of being ‘inherited’ they can have their independent income which husbands are not entitled to. A good Muslim wife can be in charge of her own finances and life outside the household, as for life inside the household, just be obedient in bed. I know that sounds kinky, but hey, it’s a huge step from woman as objects being enslaved and inherited with zero control over their lives.

No kinky pun intended but I am going to throw all things I was brought up with when it comes to men, women and relationships out the window and start from scratch. I know I will always have my cultural baggage but at least I’ll spot and reverse it before doing any further damage to my heart and my self esteem.

ok, off to try get some sleep

Jenny

2008-08-15T03:31:00.001-07:00

Getting distracted from my situation here, here’s something that always gets me thinking, racism and social prejudice in the Arab culture.

I’m staying at my parents right now, since I cannot be home alone. Jenny caught my attention just now, trying to pick up an empty glass of water I was drinking from. ‘No Jenny thank you, I can pick after myself’ she smiles and moves on to do something else. Jenny is the maid, the domestic assistant, to be politically correct. Jenny is married, has two young children, she and her husband take turns, a couple of years she works abroad and her husband stays in the Philippines to take care of the kids, then a couple of years it’s the other way around. Jenny smiles a lot but doesn’t chitchat much and when I try to it feels like an interview, I don’t want to say a questioning. My parents never raise their voice at her or abuse her – they are not that sort of folk. They give her phone credit to talk to her husband. They buy her clothes every season. They never delay her pay. Suppose Jenny was single and one of my brothers took interest in her, how would that rub on my parents?

I like Jenny, but I am not comfortable around her because I feel guilty, I feel like a hypocrite. I’ve always thought of the situation of women from far Asia being hired as domestic ‘assistants’ in the Middle East as modern day slavery. Is my family part of it? My mom needs help and Jenny needs a job. She is paid well, by standards agreed upon by the ministries of labor here and in her country. Is she really paid well or does Jordan have the upper hand here?

It’s not just Jenny, this part of the world is racist to the bone. Don’t get me wrong, we’re smiley and polite and we love tourists, the ones brave enough to come here anyway. Women like Jenny are called ‘the maid’ like that was her name or ‘the Pilipino’ ‘the Sri Lankan’ etc like every woman from those countries is by default a maid. Same with Egyptian men, almost every janitor here is Egyptian so now the words ‘Egyptian’ and ‘janitor’ are synonyms and to call an Egyptian ‘an Egyptian’ would be demeaning. Don’t call an Egyptian diplomat, university teacher, doctor etc ‘an Egyptian’ although he is indeed from Egypt. Racism redefines the meaning of words, how powerful.

There goes Jenny again, dusting away. Is she lonely, does she have friends, what are her kids like, did she have a heart break like me, what was her first boyfriend like, how did she meet her husband? I don’t know, she won’t talk to me, just dusting, smiling and keeping quiet. Do I give her the impression that I am a stuck-up? Is my guilt about her a form of stuck-up attitude? Ok, I’m taking my empty glass to the kitchen now; I can see Jenny getting anxious to pick it up.

Discoveries

2008-08-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

To Danny

After weeks of public embarrassment - crying at the office, crying in the taxi, crying while with friends, crying at the hairdresser – I have finally ran out of tears. My girl friends have been of immense help, and Ian, a man with a heart as big as the pacific. And there’s Danny – a complete stranger I met at one airport when we were both at the airport at an annoyingly early hour. Danny is a real positive man with an attitude that picks a person straight out of self pity and wallowing. Did it make a difference that he is a single guy? Do I need validation from a man despite my big group of lady friends? Did he just happen to add to the influence of my lady friends? Or is it because he’s positive? Is it him being a new face who can offer some fresh insight, him not knowing me and my is/was husband? I don’t want to over-analyze things and it’s not the battle of the sexes here. Do I have a crush? No. I’m still hoping I can work out my marriage and I still want him back. I will not replace one man with another just because I need a man. Danny just made me feel better, made me ask the right questions, and made me think a little selfish for a change; that is all.

Now that I’ve pulled my self together I’ve come to discover a few things. I was dumped one week before my birthday, it’s the big 3.0 and I always wanted 30 to happen with a bang, something to remember, looks like God granted me my wishes! So rather than remembering my turning 30 as the day I was dumped, I’ve decided to think of 30 as the day I found myself.

First, I discovered that I’m darn fine and can be with any man I chose to and when I chose to. I’m too smart and beautiful for most men but that doesn’t mean slim picking, only ‘refined’.

Second, I’m free to go to anywhere and do anything. I have a career, good health and enough money – I’m out to have fun. What my conservative parents don’t know, won’t kill them.

Third, there is no such thing as ‘transit friends.’ Friends are friends, period! Technology keeps people close. Nothing substitutes for a human touch but that doesn’t mean friends come and go. Sometimes you can reach out and hold them and sometimes you settle for cyber communication. I’ve had an overwhelming number of friends checking on me in the flesh and online. I am not alone. The world is not as big as I thought it was.

Fourth, the violence I’ve seen in my life made me more mature, stronger and better equipped to help others. I don’t talk theory and books, I don’t talk! I feel and hold and hug and understand. Violence and frustration made me creative and I’d rather be that than a pampered lazy brat.

Fifth, shooting a Salafi in the foot is still on my to-do list before I die. Heartbreak has not made me any softer. I’m glad to know some things in me don’t change. Retard Salafis!

My final discovery, what doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.

This post is to all my friends who made me feel safe and to Danny – I needed that kick in the butt

Cold Feet

2008-08-07T07:11:00.000-07:00

for Renos, Virginia, Ian, Arlene, Olivia, Marikay, Christine and all dear frineds ... I would not have picked my self off the floor, had it not been for you.

In the Arab culture we believe that when a person dies his/her spirit will start to come out of the feet, floating towards the upper part of the body until the angel of death pulls the spirit right out one’s nose and flies off with it. It is believed that a dying person can be identified as ‘a goner’ once his/her feet become cold. Little by little this cold sensation will overcome the entire body. I felt like dying when I was rubbing my chilling feet against each other laying on the couch in front of the TV that lonely night. My husband decided to call it quits. I’m loveless, alone and scared to death.

Arab women in general don’t do alone very well. We are passed on from being the responsibility of our fathers to our husbands. There will always be someone to take care of us and to control our lives. I am trying to break away from that pattern but I am scared to death. I don’t do alone.

Virginia believes it is not just about Iraqi or Arab women. We all have a ‘built-in buddy system’ and that it’s just the comfort of knowing that there is someone an arm stretch away. This is true but in my case I have two more dimensions making it much harder for me as an Arab first and as a refugee second.

As an Arab woman I will come under the pressure to remarry and fast. One I’m no longer in my early 20s and two I’m divorced. I must remarry fast and must not be too fussy or picky. I have had an amount of liberty being married that I had not while living with my family and under the watchful gaze of my father. I will have to move back in with them. This means I will have to have curfews and follow a strict dress code. I am trying to avoid this by not telling my family we’re separating. I will tell them once I get a job in another country and run for it! I’d rather be alone than come under a curfew at the age of 30, living with my parents.

As a refugee – this is the part that scares me the most – I feel homeless, losing him. I cannot go back to Iraq and I know the country I currently live in is a transit country that I cannot stay in. I have no ‘permanent home.’ He was my home and I would tell myself it didn’t matter what the future had in store or which country we end up in so long as I had him to lean on. He was my home, the one shiftless permanent safe thing in my life. I felt safe and solid having him with me. I think the concept of being a refugee just hit me, just now. I am scared. No, I am petrified!

I don’t know when or how I’ll snap out of this. I know I will. But for the mean time I will rub by cold feet and cry until my soul rests and slides back like a hand into a glove. Until then, I feel like dying.

The Haj and the Hijeah

2008-07-19T04:59:00.001-07:00

I’m sitting at my favorite breakfast diner on the weekend reading “Baghdad Without a Map.” It’s a book that includes the encounters of an American journalist in Baghdad in the late 1980s to early 1990s. He has a very rich and funny way of depicting some tragic situations like the paranoia of the police state and the death on the front lines of the Iraq/Iran war. The TV was mute and had Al Arabyia news channel on. I could not read the subtitles from where I was sitting but there were images of war in Sudan, war in Palestine, war in Iraq in addition to some other global disasters.

I’d ponder and think at the end of each chapter or paragraph when shift my eyes off my book to scan the room. If God wants to punish someone, He will have them born in the Middle East. The cultural, emotional and ideological baggage of knots upon knots and scars upon scars, the hatred, paranoia and lack of trust that grows in war zones and police states will follow you to the end of the world. Immigrate, change your name, forget your Arab roots, who are you kidding!

This affects me on the most personal and intimate levels. It’s been affecting my relationship with my husband, not that I intend to discuss that on a blog! Do we want kids or not, will we immigrate from Jordan or not, will we have the same plans and be in the same countries or resume an agonizing long-distance relation and not seeing each other for months on a role. Jordan is a transit country to Iraqis and other 3rd country nationals. I have transit friends who never stick long enough for me to call them ‘old’ friends, meaning – as fond of them as I get – I don’t invest in these friendships. I’m starting to feel that my marriage, like my friendships is a transit relationship. I’d tell my self I want roots. I want someone to grow old with, I want kids, I want a country I can live in without the threat of deportation until the day I die. I want stability. But I’m not sure about that either because sometimes I feel I just want to run away. I do not want to live in the Middle East. I am fed up and tired. Bit if I go to a far away peaceful country I’ll be like a fish out of water. I feel I have a moral obligation to stay. I won’t be happy to stay and I won’t be happy to go.

The reason I came to write this blog is because when I stepped out of the diner to grab a taxi I spotted an elderly couple looking for a UN affiliated charity fund for Iraqis in Jordan. I happened to know where it was, had nothing to do and so I walked with them to the place. During the 10 minute walk we chatted. They came from an upper scale part of Baghdad. A block away from where I use to live. She reminded me of my grandmother. She was probably a school headmistress and her husband was probably an engineer or a lawyer. They were embarrassed to give me their names should I probably tell any of my Baghdad connections I saw them asking for handouts. When I asked casually about their names they just said Haj (for male) and Hijea (for female) – common nicknames we call all elderly people in Iraq. Kicked out by a militia, they lost their house and all their belongings. They fled to Jordan 12 months ago with the shirts on their backs and with the old lady’s jewelry, which they have been selling piece by piece and living off. They are in the process of immigrating to the US. They do not know a soul there. How hard it must be for an elderly couple to start from zero at the age of 60. When we got to their destination I gave the old lady my phone number and told her to stay in touch. Her husband lifted his hands up in a prayer gesture. He said “may Allah grant you your wishes.” That’s when it hit me; I could not complete his prayer, I did not know how what to wish for.

But putting my whining aside, if there’s anyone out there who can help an elderly couple settle in anywhere in the US please write to my email, I’ll put you through to them. That way they can know where in the US they should choose to go.

Bill Foley

2008-06-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

met another awesome person last night, he's won the Pulitzer prize for photography here's his website

he was was graceful enough to tolerate my absent mindedness and my anti-social mood. i enjoyed hearing his stories and oh boy does he have a few!

Sunglasses

2008-06-15T03:15:00.000-07:00

I rarely ware shades to cover my eyes, the sun doesn’t bother me usually. I have them on most of the time today to hide my eyes. I’m not ok.

Someone dear to me had to travel to Baghdad early this morning. I went to bed in tears last night and I woke up in tears. I got up real early and so I decided to have breakfast before heading to work, something I also rarely do during the work week. Al Arabia posts footage of its reporters killed. Some were my friends. Al Arabia wrote on the screen ‘so that we do not forget them.’ I freaked out and thought oh God is this a sign! Will he be ok. I swallowed my cereal with difficulty. These were either people I knew when they were full of life, or this was footage I participated in editing although I did not know that particular dead journalist. The whole 60 second spot gave me the chills. It’s horrible to have friends who become ‘dead’ public figures. It’s horrible to see their faces on TV, in your face, in your face, haunting you should you restore some normality to life, should heaven forbid your daily routine become semi-normal, there they are looking at you, fallen heroes, making you feel like a lame yellow coward for being alive. Maybe some people want to forget!

When I was a child the Iraqi public TV played this film over and over again of dead soldiers from the battlefield. It was lots of desert on the Iraqi- Iranian border and there were corpses in uniform and burned tanks. The title of this daily show was ‘so that we do not forget.’ We Iraqis are doomed never to forget. I’m keeping my shades on today. I am not ok. I am NOT ok.

Meeting Chris

2008-06-10T04:25:00.000-07:00

This is a late post that I should have put on last May. It’s about another adventurous American I met late April on a flight to Beirut Lebanon. Lebanon was still in turmoil and I remember thinking to myself he’s crazy. He is, in a fun way. Chris lives it large and wants to visit every country in the world by 2013. If you want to know more about him and his work click here

Severed Heads – don’t read if you don’t have the stomach

2008-06-03T06:02:00.000-07:00

The internet was down at the office yesterday and I ended cleaning up some old archives. I come across a folder with ‘un-publishable’ photos from Iraq which had news agency logos on them and ‘not advisable to publish’ tagged to them. My predecessor must have gotten them from somewhere and forgot to delete them. They were horrible! There was an amputated arm torn from the elbow, it had a sleeve, a blue sleeve and the fingers were slightly curled like they were holding something. There was a head that had hit the pavement so hard it gushed its brain out and half the skull was flat. There was a single shoe. There was the detonated car where some pieces of this child lay. Why am I posting something so horrible, I don’t know. Why did I click on these photos twice and gaze before I could let go, I don’t know. Was I attracted to horror? Was I justifying my hatred to those who did this? Or had I just gone numb? I honestly don’t know.

This severed head reminded me of other served heads and I dreamt about them last night. There was a taxi driver I knew when I lived in Baghdad. Let’s call him Abu Salah. Abu Salah was a taxi driver who had become homeless. He use to live in a mix Shia-Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad but, like hundreds of thousands, was forced to leave to a more homogenous area. He worked as a guard at a deserted house in an upper-scale part of Baghdad. The family fled to Jordan and asked him to move in with his family until they return if ever. He had a beaten up Toyota from the 1980s which he made a living out of after he lost his job as a soldier, thanks to a stroke of a pen from Bremer. He wasn’t fond of American troops in Baghdad but did not want to become an insurgent.

It was a sunny day and the weather was still not quite that hot. I was on my way to work and we passed a bombing site on the main 14 Ramadan Street. A car blew up last night. The police moved what was left of the car but the sidewalk, street and nearby houses bore its remains. Abu Salah spoke about the explosion then got to tell me about his brother. He worked with the police and one day never came home so Abu Salah went looking for him in hospitals and morgues. ‘Here’ said the morgue worker and pointed towards a bath tub covered with a dirty hospital sheet. Abu Sallah was face to face with a bath tub full of severed human heads. ‘There must have been 40 heads in there’ he told me. ‘I was picking them up, shifting them around to get to the bottom of the tub as if they were water melons’ - oh God I’ll have to remember that whenever I see water melons I told myself – ‘then I found him.’ Abu Salah said his head was found with other severed heads in a bush but no bodies were found. They buried the head the next day. Abu Salah was killed two years later, one year after I left Iraq.

So I get out of bed at 2AM for a cold glass of water after the severed heads attacked my dreams. I quiver at the thought of this happening to anyone I know. Toughen up you sissy! I tell my self, toughen up, you’re an adult you can take this. then i thought of my young cousins in Iraq, what horrible impact the sight of a severed head would have on a child. I remembered Alan a blond 6 year old cute child. He was glued to his mom’s skirt at her hairdresser shop in Dora all the time. One day she sends her kid to school – which is meters away from their house – with a group of older children. Few minutes later the kids carry him home shaking like he had epilepsy. Someone had beheaded another police man and left the head and the body right at the front gate of the school. She said her little boy hid under his bed for two nights and refused to talk to anyone. Allan was no longer the little chatter box who use to tell me which shade of lipstick I should use.

So I shake those heads off me and I head back to bed. I touch my husband’s head and the back of his neck with the tips of my fingers so I don’t wake him up. I then turn my back to him, I try to get some shuteye. I blink my eyes twice, no heads, now I can sleep again.

Punching Bag Fundamentalism

2008-05-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

I’m writing today because I’m pissed. Pissed with all Islamic militias - i've been watching Beirut go down the drain on TV this morning - and I’ve decided to launch my own Jihad starting with this blog. I simply cannot stand the freaks. All fundamental religious movements are trouble and when they’re armed heaven help us! I cannot speak for the Christian fundamentals or Jews but I can talk about my own demons being Muslim myself. Here I am taking crap and being apologetic for being Muslim and here I am again watching violence being launched in my name, some are trying to liberate me and some are trying to bring me back to the flock.

We all need a punching bag when we’re pissed, we all need a villain. I have mine, a very sufficient villain too. His name is T and he is a hard core Muslim, I’m Muslim just not hard core anything, except in my haltered to him and the likes of him.

Hard core/ fundamentalist Muslim are called Wahabi or Salafi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafi .The ones with the “if you’re not of us then you’re an infidel” motto, “my way or the highway!”, “if you’re not with us you’re against us” oh wait that was G. W. Bush.

So this guy T, I deal with him from time to time and I’m always a bitch with him. From the day he called my Shia friend Ali an infidel who follows a mutant form of Islam and thus should conform or else, I have been nothing but rude to him. I am never rude to people, I think I’ve been rude to less than a handful my entire life. If anything I avoid confrontations to the point of being a doormat sometimes. But the gloves just go off with this guy. I know I should try understand why he said what he said about Ali, maybe he doesn’t know any better, maybe that’s the way he was brought up, maybe it’s not his fault. I know I “should” think like that as I do with everyone else on earth. But I just have my mind set to hate T and every last Salafi of his sect. One of my American Muslim friends was concerned – she’s born to a family of African Muslim decent and she’s more New Yorker than the New York Yankees. She was encouraging me to watch this one documentary about one Salafi man. She said the documentary made him look 'almost' human and she could understand where his ideology came from. I told her I was still full of rage and frustration and that without my punching bag I would fall ill. If lose my villain I die. It’s more comforting to easier to hate rather than to understand. I know I’m just as bad as the basterd I so badly despise and maybe someday I’ll mature out of this but for now, I’m happy being the bitch. I’m happy having a punching bag. I’m happy being a fundamentalist.

The Atayas & Beirut

2008-05-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

I woke up feeling a bit down this morning because of the hard criticism I got from the panel when I was defending my paper yesterday, some of what they said hurt and because I felt i worked hard on it and I’m a competitive person so I felt jealous of all of those whom I felt did a better job than me. But lets put that behind because wow what an awesome day I’m having. I took a minivan from the suburb to Hamra which is to me an adventure on its own because I like to chat with folks or more often people are so eager to talk to me the minute I smile at them and say good morning or nice day today. They talk politics of course which makes kind of a funny contrast when I get to Hamra and there you hear the completely opposite opinion.

So I sit at Costa – a hang out place for the disgruntled educated elite. I pick a table on the sidewalk and watch passers by. I send off a few emails to friends, drink my coffee and head out. I walk with this old lady who has been walking up and down Harma Street all morning. She survived the long and vicious civil war, had her share of losses and now is … well I don’t exactly know what’s wrong with her but she walks aimlessly and talks to her self. I’ve seen at least three such women during my trips to Beirut, survivors of the civil war atrocities that is still very visible after nearly 20 years of its end, like scars on a beautiful woman’s face. So we walk me and her and then part ways, she walks back into Hamra and I head to Ras Beirut.

I find a sports’ shop and get me a good deal on a pair of Sketchers (half their original price! are they stolen? stocks? don't know, don't care!) Those shoes are like walking on clouds. The Sketchers I was wearing have holes in them but I could not let go of them, only, for another pair of – oh yes – Sketchers! You have to be a walk-junkie to appreciate these shoes. Yes they are big and ugly and make my feet look like camel’s hoofs but who the hell cares. So I put my new shoes on, pay for them and leave. Me and my old shoes of 4 years part ways, after thousands and thousands of walks in 4 countries. Oh I don’t leave of course without a long lecture in politics and conspiracy from the shop keeper.

I go hoping along in my new shoes and find a dingy little junk sales and repair shop. I find a fantastic painting done by a no-body Egyptian artist, it’s 50 or 60 years old with spider web all over it. It’s of a very voluptuous peasant Egyptian woman, have you read Yacoubian Building or any of Nagib Mahfouz? If you have you’ll know what I am talking about. The best part of the deal is it was worth 12 dollars after 15 minutes of haggling.

I take her with me and keep on walking. So here we are at Al Rawda, an old café right on the sea. It serves traditional food and hubbly-bubbly. I can smell, hear and feel the sea on me as I type away. Beirut is under my skin, so under my skin!

So I’m, turning this laptop off to enjoy the view and read my book. Then I’ll walk barefooted on the rocks and let sea weeds tickle my toes as the tide ebbs and flows, good bye – hello, good bye - hello.

This blog is for two Beiruti girls, the Ataya sisters, who to me, impersonate Beirut. Thank you girls, it’s been surreal.

Afghani Tea

2008-04-21T06:56:00.000-07:00

To Sabrina;

I’ve finally been able to breathe and relax after some seriously stressful three days. It’s very soothing to look inside my coffee mug and see those tea leaves floating around and go wow … my good friend Sabrina has a friend in Afghanistan and he sent her a bag of Afghani green tea. It looks like tiny black pebbles. Sabrina explained to me that every ten or so tea leaves would be rolled together and dried hence the shape. Once I poured hot water on it and covered the mug for a couple of minutes the tea leaves just un-curled and blossomed into plenty of whole tea leaves floating all over – they made a generous amount considering the small pinch of pebbles I put into my cup. So here’s to the diligence of the Afghanis in sorting, rolling and drying these hand picked tea leaves.

I asked for some green tea because I need to finish my day at the office and I’m sort of not feeling too well because of all the stress I’ve been under lately. I’ve had to tolerate insults from the same corrupt person (read the stick in the butt blog http://iraqidramaqueen.blogspot.com/2007/11/stick-in-butt.html ) so I could help one more child to get a much needed medical intervention. It ended up with me sneaking around like a thief, just like last time, to help and guess what we raised all the money – yeh baby!! – and she’s going to get into surgery soon : ) I’ve gotten responses from people who have been unemployed for the past two years and can hardly make ends meet and they too wanted to donate. Life is still good. The girl’s mom thanked me on the phone and hearing her voice was exhilarating, especially after I had to watch her sob and quiver two days before.

The good lady from the last blog who’s husband was tortured to death is going to immigrate out of here soon and I hope a fresh start away from all of this will do her some good. It felt like some of the ash covering her entire existence was starting to shake off as she smiled when she passed by a while ago and told me her visa process seems promising.

Then there’s Abu Hussein the good old farmer from Basrah who has 5 kids, no wife, no job and lives in a tiny brick room. We collected money and started him off with a small project so he can feed his family. UN documents, his wife’s death certificate, records from charities slipped out of his shaky hands and went in twirls on the side walk when he tired to show them to me so that I would know he was not faking his vulnerable condition. Today he too hears good news that he will finally – after a decade of waiting – be resettled to a European country. He tells me that as soon as he is ready to travel he will sell all his possession and they are few - gas heater, stove, fridge and blankets - and hand the money to me so I can help one more person!

Is life looking good today? I wonder what’s in those fantastic tea leaves!?

Torture

2008-04-17T01:42:00.000-07:00

She asked me to draft a letter for her in English to an embassy of an English-speaking country, since her English skills were modest. I picked my pen and note pad prepared to take notes. Little did I know that the details of this letter will be engraved into my head to haunt me like a bad dream.

She wanted to apply for asylum to this country because her husband was killed and she could no longer stay in Iraq. He was a surgeon who worked at a hospital in Basrah, south of Iraq, and had his privet clinic where he treated people for free. The people of Basrah loved him, prayed for him and brought him modest gifts when they visited for a check up at his clinic. He got death threats by phone and ignored them. His wife begged him to pack and leave. No he’d tell her, ‘people here need me and love me’ he’d say and ‘there are no doctors left in town.’

One morning he leaves the house at 9AM. He had surgeries to perform that day. They joke over breakfast about having to chase him all over the house last night when she needed to give her husband a flu vaccine. A doctor who can cut a human scull open but is afraid of getting an injection, go figure! He kissed his two children a girl aged 5 and a boy aged 7 and promised to phone his wife around 1PM and asks her to wait for him so they can have lunch together. She sends the children to school. She goes about her work at home since she, a doctor herself, had no clinic today.

She calls at 12.30, his phone is turned off. He’s probably still in surgery she tells her self. She tires again at 1, still nothing. By the time it was 3PM she was freaking out. At 5 she drives up to his clinic and sees his car with the side window smashed. The shopkeepers tell her there was a group of men heavily armed in two cars and that they smashed the side window and dragged him into one of their cars and drove off real fast. The shop keepers told her they had no guns and that things happened so fast.

She stays up all night waiting for the phone to ring. Her children think daddy had work to do. All night she remembered how she would tell him they should join her sister, also a surgeon in the UK and how she has a great career. She used to tell him he should once and a while take money from his patients so they can save enough to get out of Iraq. His response would always be when we die we take no material possessions, nothing but our good deeds, ‘not even our underpants’ he’d jokingly tell her.

She broke into tears now and told me ‘when we found him in a dumpster he was all naked.’ He was found the next morning naked in the trash with torture marks on him. There was not a bone in him left unbroken; ribs, arms, legs, spine, scull. He was also electrocuted and burned. It was concluded that a high voltage of electricity eventually killed him after he had suffered all that torture. She puts both hands on her head and sways in her chair now, ‘he could not take an injection, how could he take all that torture!’ ‘what did he ever do to them!?’ ‘he could not hurt a fly’ ‘he was a good man … a good husband … but damn him! I told him so many times! Look what he did us, to his family’ and she crashed.

I finish taking notes with a steady hand. I get her a cup of coffee while she sits next to me as I draft her story addressed to the embassy. I keep a steady hand as I shake her hand and hug her. I tell her to stay strong for her children – her two beautiful children who still think daddy is busy with work and that he will join them soon.

She walks out, a skeleton in black garments, hunched, broken, bitter, tired, sad … too sad. I smile and wave as she steps into the elevator. I walk back to my office, lock the door, stick my head out the window, close my eyes trying to wash away those images and breathe.

preventing civil war in Iraq

2008-03-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

Bush says he prevented a civil war in Iraq … err … who writes your speeches man!

Bush armed the Kurdish militia and they raided Mousil.

Bush armed and trained the Shia because he didn’t like the Sunni insurgency, he enabled them to enlist in the police forces, army and government, hence the death squads. They have 2 conflicting militias.

When he didn’t get along with the Shia he made peace with the Sunnis and again he arms and trains these former insurgent, not his most brilliant plan so far.

So … 4 militias- i'm not counting small sub militias - , a ghost of an army, a joke of a government, no electricity and water – in a country that is so small on the map and has 2 rivers and a shit load of oil - , no border protection enabling countries left and right to interfere into Iraq not to mention Islamic fundamentalist militias … all these obviously would NOT cook up a civil war.

5 million fled the country, 2 million displaced inside Iraq lost jobs and houses, 1 million were killed … we’re talking about a country that had a population of 15 million. He’s destroyed the lives of exactly half of the population of Iraq, but he has … got to give the man credit … prevented a civil war in Iraq, until the US troops - who lost more than 3 thousand soldiers and spent like 10 billion dollars - eventually withdraw.

Here’s a salute to the second millennium’s top idiot on the occasion of the 5th anniversary for the US "success" in Iraq, cheers.

The fun side of being Iraqi

2008-02-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

Thanks for hearing me whine Virginia …

I am for ever thankful to Allah Almighty for my Iraqi citizenship. There are so many benefits of being Iraqi especially after 2003 so lets start counting them shall we;

1 to hell with Hollywood action movies we’ve got the real shit right here. Come join us in Baghdad for a to-die-for (literally) slice of action. We’ve got a delightful variety of bombs (suicide bombers who are suicidal, suicide bombers who don’t have a clue, car bombs, IEDs, hand grenades, etc) we’ve got friendly fires – oops! We’ve got flying bullets – when we’re pissed at the Americans or when we’re celebrating football and weddings.

2 you get a free ticket to heaven no matter how much of a bad ass you are. Jihadi legislations only give immediate clearances to civilians who die in one of their bombings. Rush to register your free flight and no-restrictions visa to heaven. For those whacked by Americans, window number 2 please to study your case. for those whacked by fellow Iraqis over feuds, theft, or just boredom please go to window 3 you will be given a visa to heaven given that there are no big bombings on date of application. But with the shit you have gone though we’re sure the boss will cut you some slack.

3 Iraqis get an all-inclusive airport entertainment package. You get to do a staring contest with folks of Anglo-Saxon decent at every airport on earth. You discover the fun of scratching your nose while handcuffed to a chair. You discover that the country you just landed in no longer acknowledges your current passport which you just got renewed 48 hours ago, surprises make good cardio exercise. Let’s not forget the Kodak moment on the faces of immigration officers when they first look at your passport. It is to die for!

4 A career crunch package for Iraqis working in surrounding Arab countries that will put you’re lazy ass in tiptop shape in no time. We get to motive you career wise by gluing your legal status to your job. You get fired, you get deported. If that isn’t motivation enough I don’t know what is!

Please tune in more often, more Iraqi-exclusive offers to come!

home of the brave

2008-02-19T12:27:00.000-08:00

another airport post ...

I just watched a movie called “home of the brave” and I got a few things to say.

It was about what the US soldiers face once they get back home and how some have issues that make it hard for them to cope with their normal everyday life, the life they left when they went to Iraq and the one they didn’t feel at home with once they were home.

We Iraqis are a little thick skinned when it comes to the word ‘trauma’ and it’s not that we don’t appreciate our soldiers but they die and die and die by the dozen and we just get use to it and shut up. And average Iraqi living in Baghdad today would think American soldiers are softies watching that movie. Americans are not softies and we are not as thick skinned as we would like to think. We’re all human with different ways to express ourselves. Some Iraqi soldiers took it out on their wives, many became outlaws, junkies, depressed others just had a hot temper about everything … I can confidently say that after three decades of almost continuous war, hot temper is a part of the Iraqi culture.

My father is one of those men who lose their temper fast and end up breaking things, yelling all over the house if we kids made too much noise. We would run to our rooms when he got home. I’ve defied and intimidated several times in my life and lets just say these confrontations don’t end well. Now that I’m married, got a job, totally independent from my father and his authority over me if his name shows up on my cell phone screen I shiver and wonder if I did anything to piss him off. There was a doctor in the movie who served in Iraq, saw horrible things and he took it out on his family. He instantly reminded me of my father. At a drunk moment my father told me once that during the Iraq-Iran war when he was on the front lines he’d have to amputate the limbs of at least 12 Iraqi soldiers a day, all in their early 20s. After the Iraq-Iran war my father worked for the Intelligence, he had no choice in the matter. And among the things he did was take care of torture victims – he basically fixed them up so they could take more torture. What my father has been through, as is the case with a lot of Iraqi fathers who lived this same history, makes the short experience of the American doctor in the movie feel like a pick nick. I could not sympathies although I tried, what is 8 months or a year or two compared to 8 years of bloody war and three decades of violence. But what the movie did give me, to which I am very thankful for, is some new insight into my father’s situation. I’ve decided to cut him some slack.

The movie also got me wondering, isn’t it a bloody shame that the US government would spend so much on launching wars and so little by comparison on the wellbeing of its soldiers. They should get reintegration assistance after long deployments, like how’s the family business going? Or do you need help with your loans? They shouldn’t stand in long lines and have red tape wrap them up like mummies from tip to toe. Psychiatric evaluation and group sessions to talk about their deployments should be obligatory and non-negotiable for all. I’d like to whish the same for the Iraqi army but we still don’t have the basics let alone all other forms of assistance. My friend’s father returned from 18 years of captivity in Iran, yes it took Iran 18 bloody years to let him go including 10 years after the war was over! He had been tortured, forgotten for years in solitary confinement where he killed the time watching insects go about under his skin. He had been a soldier all his life and had no other skills but that of a soldier. When he got home he was amazed – like a blast from the past – at the changes in the Iraqi currency, the culture, there were new words in the Iraqi slang that he never heard before. He had never seen a CD in his life, or TV remote controls, or satellite channels, or PCs. What did the Iraqi government do for this man? A man who had given his life away because the government said so? Nothing.
It’s a good cause to fight for while we’re at it blowing each other off the map, don’t you think?

Blood and smoke

2008-02-03T07:36:00.000-08:00

Here I am repeating myself, telling you again how sad, how angry, how in for murder I feel today. More than 100 civilians were blown away last Friday at two market places in Baghdad and more than 250 critically wounded. They were not soldiers, not part of any fight; it was a Muslim holiday and day of prayer, a day to be respected; it was suicide not jihad; the bombers were mentally disabled women and didn’t choose to blow themselves up so … it was a gruesome mass murder any way you look at it whether you support the insurgency or not, suicide bombing or not.

And Mark, I take that back, I DO support the death penalty. If I can’t pull the plug on them myself I am sure going to stand and watch. I’m in no mood to forgive, understand or analyze such people.

I’ve exhausted my thoughts and words on this issue and I would not have written … except … they were 350 badly injured, 100 wasted lives taken in a heart beat. Now if 50 of those killed had a family of five they were responsible for that’s 2500 hungry mouths to feed, and if 100 of those included an only parent then we’re left with at least 100 stranded children, and if 150 of the 350 need medical attention not available in Iraq, what do they do? God Damn it! God damn them! God do something, anything.

Heart attack

2008-01-28T00:55:00.000-08:00

I wrote this Saturday night one day after a Friday blast which killed a Lebanese anti-terror officer in the Lebanese army and little did I know it was going to be followed by the general outbreak of violence in many parts of Beirut Sunday night. We barely made it to the airport on time.
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Heart attack
I’m alone and flipping out of my mind. I’ve been mixing coffee with diet pills. I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I’m feeling … I don’t know, I think those pills have something that reacts to caffeine. So here’s the deal; I’m going to lose half my weight to fit into a size zero, I’m going to dye my hair flashy pink, I am going to blow up a suicide bomber, I am going to go back home to Baghdad and if someone has a problem with that then I’ll blow him up too. I am going to sit on my roof top in Baghdad and I am going to try a joint for the first time in my life to see what the fuss is about then I’m going to pass out. I’m going to feel like shit when I wake up because I’ll realize that I can never be a size zero and I can never have the confidence to look like a pop star with pink hair and I can’t crush a bug let alone blow someone up and I can never go home and I don’t even know what dope looks or smells like. Why am I angry? I feel too much, much more than what my body and brain can contain. It hurts.

Once I was on horseback - not over caffeinated I swear - and a stray dog chased us and the horse went wild. I’m by no means a professional rider. I know the sensible thing to do is feel scared but instead I screamed with joy. The harder the horse tired to shake me off and the faster it ran the louder I screamed and laughed. When the trainer chased us and was finally able to bring the beast to stop I got off the horse, I sat on the sand and I laughed until my face went red. I felt alive.

Maybe that’s it, a gluttony for life. Every time I see a charcoaled car or a bombing site I feel upset because life just stopped suddenly for those people. They were heading somewhere, making plans that they took for granted, they didn’t think that that insignificant thing they postponed this morning was so important it was their last. It’s not fair! So here I am trying to live it large on their behalf. I’m aiming for the hardest orgasm, I’m going to eat until I throw up, I am going to dance until I faint, I am going to punch a wall until my knuckles go blue, I am going to over-fuel on coffee and diet pills, I am going to blow a bad guy up, I am going to dye my hair pink, I am going to find some dope and I am going to wake up on the cold bathroom tile feeling like shit because people will continue to be blown away for no particular reason and I’ll realize there’s nothing I can do about it.

Beirut, January 26 -2008

Racism

2008-01-14T09:54:00.000-08:00

I try to never be a cry-baby who blames all misfortune, relevant or irrelevant, to racism. Having said that, I am like a radar detecting all forms of racism conscious and deliberate or not since my early childhood. I’ve been black, white and in between.

I’ve exchanged long and lengthy emails about racism with my friend who’s a professor in the US. One day he mailed me a novel titled “can’t quit you baby” by Ellen Douglas which I read two times so far and I could absolutely give it a third. It was about a white mistress and her black housekeeper in the American south who lived in current times. It discussed how both women try to shake off the remains of slavery, socially, culturally, mentally. It was so well written and in-your-face and not as apologetic and preaching like novels of the sort I’ve read before. I honestly couldn’t tell if the writer was black or white, which was the case with all other writers who tackled that issue. And I don’t want to look her up on the internet and figure her out. The chapters about the white woman feel like they were written by a black writer and vise-versa, I stayed on my toes and guessing until the end. I envied the writer for the ability to mature so far as to be colourless. I related to both women in the story.

As a kid in the public schools of England in the 1980s I remember being the only Arab. I was either considered exotic or I was bullied or both sometimes. This is still the case today but to a much lesser extent thank God. There are, today, folks like Paul Bremer who shook his fist and played Rambo going ‘I am the law’ running a country he doesn’t know shit about and blowing it down like a house of cards bypassing the people who know it and have run it including the army, diplomats and academics, but enough about that, enough! Today, I’m just too tired to kick and bite any more and I don’t care to whimper about who dislikes me for my ethnicity or religion, whatever! Besides I have more on my mind today.

When foreign armies withdraw from my country – and if you guys think you can wipe every last fundamentalist before you leave, good luck! So when they eventually withdraw I and Iraqi folks like me will be left to deal with our sore reality. We are the ones to be terrorized by fundamentalists in our own country. We are terrorized by folks in the West who think all Arabs and Muslims are the same, thanks to our fellow Arab and Muslim retards. Inside racism is the worst kind, I say this from experience. What makes it worse is the West won’t let us get a separate identity for ourselves. If we encourage the concept of say bringing the corporate world to Iraq so people can have decent jobs with pensions and health insurance etc. someone out there will link us to, say a British business, and our innocent gesture to modernize our country will be called “westernizing” and the fundamentalist will yell “puppets to the west!” I hate being tagged.

I was affected by social prejudices and the deeply grooved lines between social classes in Iraq, which are also a form of racism because if your great grandfather was a shoe shiner or a sheik you will be remembered by them. It will affect who you marry, whom you associate with, what part of town you’re at, everything. I can’t undermine the wisdom of my ancestors, there is one good thing about that system in the sense that is reputation and honour are everything. If you come from a big family name chances are you will work hard not to tarnish your family name. But if you’re a no-body then you won’t care because you don’t have much to lose. That’s when people from lower classes or those who are not connected to well known tribes are assumed to be less honest, not fair I know. If everyone knows my father and grandfather then any misconduct will make ripple effects and my reputation will be ruined. That’s also why we have crimes of honour and that’s also why they are so nonnegotiable.

During Eid my grandmother use to prepare three trays of sweets, one formal – for the people we want to impress, one middle – for extended family and casual friends, and one tray of the cheapest sweets like a kilo of toffee that costs .. what .. half a dollar. This last kind was for people like Jumaa the janitor. His wife worked for my grandmother since she was a child when grandmother picked her off the streets and gave her shelter, in return, she worked for my grandmother. That woman was the most loyal person to my grandmother. She was such an impressive woman. All her kids went to school and graduated top of their classes, none was out of the top ten students in their schools and colleges - oh and they all went to college and half are post grads. Also her house was spick and span at all times, all this despite the gruesome neighbourhood they lived in full of gangs and the smell of sewage. So Jumaa came to visit us on the occasion of Eid and my grandmother asked me to bring in some sweets and shifted her finger to the far left meaning to go get the 3rd degree sweets – without him noticing. Me being naughty grabbed the expensive one. She frowned and I had a playful smile on my face. Jumaa understood what was going on and put his hand on his heart as a gesture of appreciation and said no thank you. When my grandmother insisted he picked one but left it on the table when he left. I realized I had toyed with his feelings when I saw him walk out. If only he knew how tall and mighty him and his wife really are. At the end I guess that’s another reason why I don’t want to whine about prejudices projected upon me because I’ve done it too; what goes around comes around.

This one is for Professor Polk, thank you so much for sending that great book my way.

Getting Away with Murder

2008-01-04T23:26:00.000-08:00

Writing was one of my means of coping with life when things drove me up a wall; Writing and lots of other stupid things I did to let off steam that I’d rather keep to my self. I was annoyed mostly by my parents’ warnings and scolding when I talked politics, complained about any current events in Iraq, cracked a political joke, things like that. They’d always tell me my blabbering big mouth was going to land the entire family in jail and that I should – at all times – shut up. The phones were monitored, taxi driver worked for the intelligence, university students were paid for every head they reported. All of Iraq was paranoid.

To cope I wrote. I didn’t write diaries but stories. I’d unleash my characters in my stories to do things I could never do, like escape Iraq or have super powers. Because my writings were mostly protests against the system in Iraq, and because such an opinion could get people abducted off the street in those days – err you see such diaries and stories could be a threat to Iraq’s national security – the intelligence would gladly sever a little sore thumb like myself.

I kept my notebooks hidden under my bed mattress. I would get gutsier the more I wrote and the closer I got to the end of the notebook. Then I’d pull it out from under the bed and reread parts of it. If these were to be discovered my father would be accused of treason and executed, I’d tell my self and tremble to the thought. The pressure would build up so I’d burn my papers and all the stories and all the characters I created. I would wake up early in the morning, head to the back of the garden where my mother burns dry branches and grass, I’d light a match and I’d watch them burn. As the burning papers start to curl and turn to ash I would feel my heart aching as if the characters in those stories were real flesh-and-blood people. It was I who gave them names, features, personalities, decided their happy or sad endings. I felt like I was killing them, like they wanted to emerge from those pages before they burned. For that, I felt a twitch of guilt. You must excuse me, I was a kid with a vivid, sometimes sick, imagination. The scary part is I kept writing and killing note book after note book until the former government was overthrown. Today my creations bounce from file to file as I copy and edit on my laptop. Today the killing stopped. I know this is crazy and I know these are fictitious characters but I feel like I’ve done allot of killing in my life time.

Radio gaga

2007-12-29T11:14:00.000-08:00

This post will be about a once-considered ever essential piece in every Iraqi house, the radio.

When I first got back to Iraq I spoke broken Arabic and mostly an Irish-English, yes I was Iraqi/Irish go figure! There was a local radio station that broadcasted in English. Great music really, with an hour for metal and hard rock, another for country, oldies, pop, billboard top 40s and lots of other stuff. The whole staff spoke flawless English and I spent my evenings in my bubble with the radio and my books.

Uday, Saddam’s son took over the radio in 1992 and things just plummeted. The broadcasters spoke a fake exaggerated English and all they played was new tunes which they repeated ten freaking times a day! But I continued to tune in out of my hunger for the outside world. All my friends who were either half Iraqi or have spent half their lives abroad, tuned in as well. Thank God, some even joined as DJs and broadcasters to clean the station up, despite the intimidation of having Uday Saddam as their boss.

In 2003 I discovered the freedom radio. I loved it. I had many surreal experiences with that station. One of them was on a hot Baghdad summer night when the power was off and I was on the roof trying to catch a cold breeze at 3 AM with my headphones on. I like my music loud so I didn’t hear an army convoy driving by and all of a sudden I get a blinding neon light and a red beam on me. I sat still for a second after I moved my arms up indicating that I had no weapon on me. The headphones were still in my ears and a country song was playing. It was a flat out weird experience. The next time, after they seemingly settled in an abandoned house few houses away, I’d only get the flash light to my face and they’d let me be. In the early mornings of 2005 I’d listen to one DJ who played some fast beat tunes like “ain’t talking about love” by white snake, “BYOB” by system of a down and such tunes. I would try to refrain my self from just head banging along because there was always a neighbor on his or her roof guessing a location of an explosion and praying their spouse, kid, friend was out of harms way. Some times some black hawks would fly real low in the early mornings making palm tree reeves flap like crazy adding to the impact of those insane rock tunes.

During the time of the economic sanctions when people in Iraq were getting grumpy and Saddam getting power-paranoid, the only window to the outside world was the radio. All publications after 1991 were banned and those permitted to enter Iraq were censored and the internet was all blocked and monitored and the only email accounts we could have were those given to us by the government where they had our passwords to keep tabs on everyone. One time a friend brought a Readers Digest of that same month with him from Jordan and we were blown away because the most recent was 6 years old. We passed it along secretly at college like it was porn or drugs. The one thing the government could not control was the radio. BBC, Monte Carlo, VOA and others told us what was really happening in our own county that we lived in because we were totally in the dark when it came to weapon inspections, developments about the economic sanctions, the Iraqi opposition in exile and such issues. As far as the local media was concerned, we won the war; yes all of planet earth launched a war against us and yes they bombed the wits out of us and yes, yes, yes we never took over Kuwait, we lost our sovereignty over own skies with the no-fly zones and we could not even import an aspirin for fear of manufacturing a bomb out of it .. but according to the local Iraqi media we wonnnnn …hooray! Let’s rejoice Saddam’s birthday, Saddam’s re-election by 99.9%, Saddam’s victory, life is rosy and all is well.

Today, with every house in Iraq hooked to satellite channels and the internet, the radio is not as popular as before. This post is for all the radio people out there with much appreciation; I’m still a loyal fan.

Gunshots

2007-12-24T05:55:00.000-08:00

For Aaron

I sat on the cold bench with my coat zipped from my knees to my throat warming my fingers on a hot piece of pastry fresh out of the oven. It was the holiday and there was no one on campus. The University is surrounded by hills glittering with lights on that dark lonely night. Shooting started but that’s normal in this side of Beirut. The sound of bullets echoes from the left to the right and back. The sound of bullets and the shape of the surrounding hills made the sky feel like a huge dome. I felt like someone was going to pick everything up, flips us upside down and shake.

My last New Year’s Eve in Baghdad was on the roof, bundled in my coat from knees to throat. A machine gun would shower occasionally but for most of the night it was just choppers flying low over my roof. I bought candles and arranged them in a peace sign and lit them all night, silly me. You see I was thinking of two little boys I knew.

Our neighbor’s kid was showered with bullets and killed by Iraqi police. A speeding car shot at them so they used a machine gun raiding the side walk one block away from a school. He was killed on the spot. His cousin was a beautiful 5-year boy with long thick black eyelashes and dimples. Overnight he started to fumble when he spoke repeating a word at least 3 times before he could say anything; two syllable words were even out of the question. The experience traumatized the little boy and suddenly he went from the chatter box that he was to shy and quiet. I watched over him while his mom was out. He liked to cycle up and down our runway with his little tricycle. A convey of three humvees with US soldiers stopped meters away. The child got curious and started to expand the circle he peddled around getting closer and closer to the solders. I kept my distance so neighbors won’t think I was trying to attract the soldiers’ attention, something an Iraqi girl should avoid for her own good. Suddenly the child extended his arm like he was holding a gun and went “ta ta” in their direction. That’s when I rushed towards him to take him inside before we got into trouble. Surprisingly the soldier played along and pretended to be shot. The kid started clapping and making those childish squeaks. By then I was half way between the garage door behind me and the little boy and the soldier ahead. I stood there for a bit then walked ahead grabbing the child under one arm and holding his tricycle with my other hand. My heart was beating so hard I could hear it.

Where will we all be in a year? One can only wonder. Wishing you all some peace of mind.

Iraq women

2007-12-15T05:44:00.000-08:00

I’m reading about “the Wife” by Meg Wolitzer. A doormat wife married to a total jerk. It got me thinking about women in Iraq, where we were, where we are today.

During the Iraq/Iran eight year war women worked the factories, schools, banks, everywhere. Men were dying a dozen a day on the battle field and there was a whole culture of widows. I remember them well because allot of my teachers were widows. They’d dress in black for the rest of their lives, raise their kids, spend the lonely nights knitting or correcting our quiz papers. None of them was ‘a favourite teacher’ for me, they were boring and mechanic. But I understand now that this was a way to cope with life. They even dressed the same and decorated their houses with beige all over for some strange reason. When the war was over there was a sex frenzy around town, too many women and few men. A mosque clergy “IMAM” was really pinned to a wall by the Iraqi Women’s League in 1989 when he delivered a speech saying it was men’s religious duty to have more than one wife to protect widows from the “wolves out there” i.e. the sex hungry men who are looking for a non-virgin for some causal sex. My friend from Mississippi laughed to tears when I told him we Iraqis are a sexually frustrated nation. I was dead serious.

But the restrains against women during Saddam’s time were cultural really not institutional. Saddam gave women their rights. I know this may come as a surprise to allot. He was a dictator, but women were no threat to him. They could vote, work anywhere and as high-ranking as they can earn, rip their husband’s clean if they divorce! The Islamic conservative voice was silenced because Saddam had issues with them. He crushed them brutally, the infamous Iraqi intelligence would raid a mosque and put everyone to jail and torture because the IMAM said something that could-maybe sound anti-Saddam. Those conservative Muslims are the ones who want women to stay home, not gain an education, not mix with men in the work place if they must work, wear vales whether they like it or not and all that drama. Saddam suppressed those. But today women are crushed with those once-suppressed groups surfacing thanks to errr .. the new democracy. Ironic huh.

Iraqi women have to go through so much shit it’s not even funny. God knows where we’ll be in a decade or so. We’ll talk then .. for now I’m back to this sob story about the doormat wife and the jerk of a husband, too much drama if you ask me but what the hell.

Does violence get to you?

2007-12-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was browsing the internet like everyday about the violence going on in Iraq, all emotionally detached, after all it’s the news and it happens every day. Wait ... that didn’t sound right!

Well here’s the story; for the past four decades we’ve been very good at dehumanizing ourselves in Iraq. The Iraqi media was partially to blame with its war propaganda, we saw dead bodies on TV every day. Children were asked at school to pick up their crayons and scrabble scenes from the battle field during the Iraq-Iran war so there’s the war creeping onto our children, I use to be one of those kids. It’s also a coping mechanism where you start feeling numb after a while. At other times you feel angry and capable of conducting violent actions or accepting, even admiring, violence in others.

Bombs give me an instant high. Once a bomb blew up meters away from my house in Baghdad, I woke up at the sound of a loud bang. A big piece of my bedroom window flew across the room, and pierced my pillow centimeters away from my face. I ran around the house checking on the children, younger siblings, cousins, friends of siblings and cousins – what can I say, we’re a big family! Everyone was ok, shaken but ok. So I rush to the roof to see where the smoke came from and saw a piece of the car engine on our roof. I examined it. Would I find a piece of flesh from the freak on it? We had a party that night and we planned the catering and hired a DJ. An explosion was not going to stop us. We patched the windows with plastic sheets and danced past curfew hours. The DJ had to leave so we got our own music and life was good. The explosion gave all of us a high, we’re alive goddamn it and we were going to have fun.

Violence made me feel like a hero. At the school where I taught bombs and death threats only made me more determined. I enjoyed the idea that I was defying people I despised, that I was brave. At the classroom where I taught there was writing on the back of the door calling me an infidel for teaching what ever I was teaching. After a while I decided to stop wiping it off I kept it there and closed the door so I could glance at it while I taught. Fuck you! I am not going anywhere!

Dear friends of mine got killed for working for this or that news agency or NGO or political party. I’d see their blown up parts collected in a blanket and carried away, or I’d recognize their shoes or back bags while they lay inside an ambulance or on the back of a pickup truck. But my friends knew about that risk and took it. They got threats, had my same - Fuck you, I am not going anywhere - attitude and decided to continue doing what they were whole-heartedly doing and many got killed. I accepted and respected their choices. They wanted to be martyrs and heroes.

So yesterday I was browsing the internet like everyday about the violence going on in Iraq, all emotionally detached .. I read about the bombing in Karada in Baghdad. 30 people injured, more killed, wow I think to my self, that’s a big one and I move to the next website reading something else. An hour after I head home we get a phone call. Suddenly news is no longer just-the-news. A relative, a dear one, was injured in that bombing and we were told she got shrapnel wounds to the spine and that she was unconscious. She was buying new clothes for her 6 month old baby girl and got blown away walking out of the shop with some new overalls for the baby. Her husband and baby were waiting in the car at a safe distance. My husband and I looked at each other in denial, this is a bad prank. But it wasn’t. Her injures were close to the spine but her spine was intact. She lost allot of blood and had a few broken ribs, shrapnels were all removed and she was ok. Sigh …

I don’t know why now but violence suddenly got personal. Suddenly I didn’t feel like a hero out of the comics. Violence got to me.

A stick in the butt

2007-11-28T04:37:00.000-08:00

Pardon the title but I am way too angry today and I need to blow off some steam.
In this unfair world there’s the underdog and those who can’t have enough, then there are the idiots like me who fight windmills.

I got into an unpleasant encounter with a horrible corrupt-to-the-core person at work. Problem is that person is so sleek I can never nail him. My fight with him was to save a child’s life. He takes patients off waiting lists replacing them with wealthy healthy people because there are mutual favors going on. I’m just a dispensable no-body and friends tell me not to mess with the devil. The best I can try is to make sure those patients get a chance elsewhere which means I go behind his back. Sometimes I get caught and heaven help us!

There’s a story our Assyrian cook told me when I was a kid, probably not the most appropriate thing to tell a 12 year old! But it helped me create a healthy way of weighing my choices in life.

There was a mystery going on in Khami’s village near Erbil in the north of Iraq. Iraqi Christians burry their dead in their finest clothes and those who are/were wealthy are buried with all of their jewelry. We Muslims just wrap people in a white coffin. Now in Khami’s village there was someone digging up newly buried were-wealthy-people, stripping all their jewelry off and like that was not enough this someone also stripped their clothes off leaving them stark naked, flipped face down and with a stick in the butt.

Khami’s moral of the story is relax, when you die you don’t take any of it with you.
Of course there are those who are born with a stick in the butt but that’s another story.

south park_bomb heaven!

2007-11-25T05:32:00.000-08:00

South Park are as hilarious as ever!

Sister Carmen's cup of espresso

2007-11-15T13:44:00.000-08:00

The other day I hear from some of the old collage gang who are now in the UK. They did a fundraising for Iraqis in Jordan, there was an Iraqi rock band and a marathon. It went real well and we expect to transfer the money to a local charity here for winter supplies now that it is getting real cold in Amman. Here's a bit i worte for the fundraising;

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Saturday September 8th 2007
Downtown Amman – Jordan
At the request of a friend in the UK I took off to visit the nuns at the Italian hospital, one in particular, Sister Carmen who is one of the people in charge in addition to the doctors and other administration personnel. She welcomes me with hugs and kisses and we tried to walk our way to her office, I say tried because we never made it that far due to people walking up to her asking for instructions or help.

It was not a busy day at the hospital. There would be a maximum of 10 people at the hospital reception counter at a time. On any day other than the weekend the place could be swarming with an average of 200 individuals all coming to the Italian hospital for treatment, medication and twice a year for a modest food package which the nuns prepare for a selection of the neediest of the needy since they cannot feed everyone.

Most Iraqis visiting the hospital were sent there by the United Nations High Commissionaire for Refugees (UNHCR) who are given a card that certifies them to receive medication and/or medical attention. Sister Carmen drew my attention to the fact that this flood of Iraqis is quite different from that less than two years ago. In the past Iraqis seeking the assistance of the Italian Hospital came from very modest backgrounds and were literally starving. Now the current trend of Iraqis includes the middle class, trendy and educated.

I spoke to an elderly Iraqi couple who just walked out of the pharmacy with their stack of pills for chronic illnesses, they looked like mid 50s. They left Baghdad three months ago under direct threat. Their daughter was three months away from obtaining her Bachelors Degree and was forced to quit and leave with her parents. Will you return home? I asked “yes!” “No!” I got conflicting answers from the couple. Then I asked frankly “you don’t look like the financially vulnerable uneducated lower class of Iraq, why do you feel you should receive benefits from this hospital?” “Because we’re old and we had to leave with the shirts on our backs. We are eating out of our savings and it isn’t much” the husband said. “How long do you expect to stay in Jordan before you go broke?” “Less than a year, even if things don’t improve in Iraq we are heading home what ever the consequences.” “Yes we need to save some money for when we’re really old” the wife added and rubbed her gold chain with her fingers.

Also standing outside the clinic was a father of five in his mid forties. He looked much older with his gray hair, unshaved beard and dark brown circles around his eyes. He thought I worked for the UNHCR and came asking me for help. “I want to immigrate to anywhere” he looked me straight in they eye. I fumbled “I can’t help you Sir” he was still kind enough to sit down and talk to me. “I have been living here for a year doing jobs that pay day by day, what ever I can find. I send this money to my wife and children. Now with the situation getting worse I feared for their safety and they all came out here but I cannot feed them and I don’t know what will become of us.” He has a degree in electric engineering and his wife is a collage graduate as well but his children will not continue their education.

So I’m standing there with Sister Carmen looking forward to a private chat and a mean espresso she makes but we never made it to her office. Along came a senile man humped and holding up the left side of his trousers displaying a bag of urine with the tube going up his left thigh. He begged Sister Carmen “no money, no money” and he pointed at the bag of urine. She shrugged at me and held her arms up in a helpless gesture, “sorry but I have to go.”

So here I am hooked to my laptop and I-pod writing about other people’s misery, humbled, helpless and feeling very small.

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Police raided our house in Baghdad

2007-11-13T02:50:00.000-08:00

Last week my mom tells me the nearby police squad kicked the door open and started tearing things apart at our deserted house in Baghdad. One of our neighbors who are still hanging in there protecting our house, God bless them all, rushes to the police and tells them the family is on a ‘short vacation’ and he follows the police as they go room to room to make sure they don’t allow themselves to anything. Then the neighbors managed to close the door once it was all done with.

It shook me to the core although I could see it coming. This was their 4th visit in the past year. How much longer will the neighbors be able to keep this up? How much longer will we stay in another country, a year? Ten? Will we ever go home? For some reason I don’t think so. Then why do I care about a house I can no longer use or even visit? Why can't I bloody move on with my life already?

They tell us when we assist refugees and migrants that we should help them adjust to their new situation and move on, not to cling to the past. A migrant cannot help him/her self better their current life situation when they are too nostalgic, comparing every current situation to the past. If they do they are living in a ‘rebound stage.’ It’s not healthy when one hangs in this stage for too long and we can’t help until a migrant snaps out of it.
How the hell, then, will I help others!

Sad building at upper-scale Beirut

2007-10-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

A building bombed in the civil war at the upper scale part of town. It's neighbouring inter-con 5 star hotel painted white doves on the concrete barriers to soften the view, they just look ridiculous if you ask me.

Beirut south suburb, Hezbollah banners everywhere and bombed buildings from the civil war 20 years ago, is my Iraq heading that way? hope not!

2007-10-23T23:46:00.000-07:00

faces of Beirut

2007-10-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a fun day mingling with different Beiruti crowds. Everyone expresses genuine hospitality and they poured their hearts out to me, an outsider, telling me about their perspective and concerns about their country and sometimes Iraq as well.

I took the public transportation – a mini buss – for a 30 minute drive from the south suburb where I'm at to Ras Beirut at the north tip of Beirut. A woman, dressed conservative but not veiled sat next to me and decided to chat. She blamed the US and France for the troubles in Lebanon and considered the current Lebanese government as corrupt and a tool in the hands of the west. This didn't surprise me considering that she lived in the south suburb where people mostly think the same. I didn't approve or otherwise to any of the woman's speculations but nodded my head and repeated phrases that wished Lebanon well, which were sincere.

I wanted to take out my camera and take photos but then remembered some advice I got to NEVER flash a camera in public transportation especially in that part of town. It means you're a tourist or a UN, an excuse to get you abducted and there is a chance you take a snap of a residence of some Hezbollah leader or office building which means you're spying. But I had, a day before, taken plenty of shots when a friend picked me up for a spin around town. So don't worry, you have plenty of pictures from the south suburb.

Once I was at Ras Beirut, I looked around shops and took a stroll to the beach by the light-house. Awesome place to be! Close by there are lots of new luxurious apartment buildings that face the port; prime property where an apartment can cost up to a million dollars to buy and you can keep your private yacht in the waters facing your terrace. I don't know about you but I'd invest my million dollars in a safer country .. anyway.

I pass the Intercontinental hotel close by. Right next to it is a huge tower-building. It had not been repaired since the civil war and had huge holes in it, so huge they looked too big for an RPG; it had also been showered with bullet shelling everywhere. the building was of a pale blue, deserted and inhibited by seagulls and smaller birds. Its emptiness made it look bigger, emptier and lonelier. I saw in it an aging reminder of the civil war, someone nock the poor thing out of its misery. If it could commit suicide I'm sure it would have leaped into the sea years ago. While I was taking a photo of it a security man saw me and started flirting "you married? Oh, pity, I'm looking for an Iraqi bride." Funny guy : ) Sudanese and Egyptian workers at a nearby construction site gave me a bored look "bloody tourist!"

From there I found myself in the Downtown area. It was empty but fabulous. Its chic classic French style was a dominant stamp on all the buildings in that area. Don't get me wrong it's 100% Lebanese. The French language and culture is strongly visible in upper class Beirut and among educated Lebanese. I had lunch at a traditional Lebanese place that serves Lebanese cuisine called Al Balad, a must-try right in front of the clock tower at the center of the downtown area. The food was fabulous and dirt cheep; I spent 10 dollars on two appetizers and a main course and a refreshing lemonade. I finish and am back on my feet. I get to a church and almost wall to wall is a mosque both old and beautiful. It reminded me of Baghdad how we too have mosques and churches right next to each other even older than these. If anything it tells you we got along just fine, so fine to be wall to wall, what the hell happened!

A little boutique catches my attention and I walk in trying earrings and bracelets. I got less than 100 dollars left so naturally I have a tight budget and I'm looking for one item and cheep. Bebe a Pilipino woman working in the shop helps me out, sweet lady and we start to chat. She's been in Lebanon for 13 years including the 2006 Israeli air strikes but she didn't express any closeness to Lebanon, it was not her home and I probably had developed a more homey sensation about Beirut in these few shot trips than her. The Lebanese community like most Arab communities in the region looks down on Pilipino nationals as servants, modern slavery if you may. She looked anxious when I told her I was Iraqi and asked me tens of questions about Baghdad and how the security situation is there. Turns out her boyfriend who lived in the US was a navy marine serving in Baghdad. He's been there for 3 months and she hasn't heard from him. I comforted her, what do I know! And I gave her my business card. I went in for a bracelet for 10 dollars and ended up with a much nicer bracelet for free and a matching necklace and a pair of earnings for 13 dollars. She gave me a good discount because I was nice to her she said. Sweet Bebe, I hope she hears from him soon.

I walk to the Parliament building where tens of tents are set for protesters who want the current Prime Minister to resign. I don't know what Lebanese sects they represent and it seemed like a sensitive question to ask considering the ethnic tension but I noticed Hezbollah posters and graffiti. I was stopped by two security men, dressed civilian, at two different locations when they noticed I had a camera. I showed them the photos and assured them I took no close pictures and certainly no faces. They let me go and were very polite. They expressed resentment to what was going on in Iraq and told me they were ready to fight for Iraq. fighting is not how I see a better future for Iraq but I sensed their sincerity and like with the woman I met this morning, I thanked them and wished them well. I wanted to argue that not all Americans were bad but I sensed it would jeopardize my safety and probably have my camera confiscated and it's just not my fight.

I was dying for a coffee so I took a cab to Starbucks also facing the beach in Al Rawsha. I didn't tell the taxi I was heading to Starbucks since everyone views it as an Israeli investment. I ordered a coffee and sat there sipping my coffee exploring my new map of Beirut and smelling the sea.

Then I took a cab back to the south suburb. The cab driver was Christian. He hated Syria with a vengeance and blamed it for all the troubles in Lebanon – which means he's the team against Hezbollah. I have Syrian friends and Damascus was just as welcoming as Beirut but again I didn't say a thing. He did emphasize how Muslims and Christians are brothers and how nothing should shake the unity of Lebanon. I agreed.

I tired to get some sleep but I kept tossing and turning, I get a little anxious about flying. I get up and wash the day off with a refreshing hot shower. Joseph one Christian cab driver picks me up to drive me to Al Hariri International Airport. I'm saying Christian because in Lebanon it identifies how you think and where in Beirut you live and everything. Normally I really don't give what people believe in. Joseph steams off about how corrupt the Lebanese government is. Everything he said sounded exactly like another cab driver I know in Jordan, except he criticized the Jordanian government. I must give the Jordanian government some credit; Jordan has come a long way since the early 1990s despite Jordan's limited natural and other resources. But still both men criticized their governments all the same and compared them to the west where everyone is nice and money grows on trees. Again, I kept quiet.

Well here I am sitting on this bench waiting for my flight in 45 minutes. I can't wait to hug my husband and have some sleep. Catch you all later

Beirut, Muthafar Al Nawab and other pains

2007-10-08T05:58:00.000-07:00

Beirut really grows under my skin. It has a melancholy and a violence that is part of my identity as Iraqi whether I like it or not. I take public transportation looking at buildings repaired from the civil war and the ones that are still full of holes, big RPG ones and bullet shelling. There are soldiers on foot, in busses and in jeeps roaming the streets and with this new government election and the fact that ethnicities in Lebanon cannot stand each other but are trying one can almost cut through the tension and pain like a chord vibrating every time you touch it. I am addicted to that chord. At night I sat at a café with a band playing Ud, it’s an Arabic music instrument like an acoustic guitar but it sounds very different, more like rain on a tin roof, hard to explain you need to hear it to understand what I’m talking about. There was a full moon and we were right on the beech where you could hear the waves beating. A row of beautiful children danced to the music and some people tapped their fingers on the tables, including me, to the tunes. The bullet-shelled buildings and soldiers could not be seen in the dark and this was an entirely different night-time Beirut.

I was surprised to hear from my Lebanese friends that they were fond of one Iraqi poet called Muthafar Al Nawab. Most of his poetry is in the Arabic slang of the Iraqi south which is hard to understand by a non-Iraqi. I found my self explaining half his slang before reading so they could capture what Al Nawab meant. They nodded their heads in enjoyment. Al Nawab criticized dictatorship and the abuse of farmers by the feudal system in Iraq in the 1960s. Al Nawab also wrote in standard Arabic about the political issues of the Middle East which made me wanted by most regimes in the region and his poems were absolutely banned in Syria, Jordan, Iraq and other Arab countries. I got a copy of some of his poems in 2000 when a friend copied it from another friend. You get caught with that in Iraq before the fall of the regime in 2003 and you’re a goner. I hid it under my sweater and fastened my belt tighter squeezing it around my waste and attaching the book to my undershirt with a safety pin. I had the palm of my hands feeling the book every now and a then like I was pregnant with my precious baby; that and I could be jailed, tortured or killed or all three of them being caught with Al Nawab’s poems. What a sensation! Beat that America!

I don’t want to immigrate to America I want to stay here till I can go home. But what passport will you have? Asked my good American friend and I sighed because I knew he was right, my Iraqi passport will not protect me from being rejected visas, treated with suspicion and even deported. I will not pass that to my kids. They either have their God-given rights or I’m not having any. I’m still afraid of having children, what sordid reality will I bring them to.

Here’s a translation of Al Nawab’s poetry for you;

>>>>>>>>>
Water is being tortured in courtyard
It was given confession papers but it washed them blank
For it is but water.
It was given more papers until they gave up
For it is but water.
>>>>>>>>>

Now I need to take a hot shower, every joint in my body aches today.

Iraqi dates

2007-09-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_palm

Our house in Baghdad had 6 palm trees each with its own breed of dates. My all time favorite is a type of dates called BARHI. We had a barhi palm tree in our back garden side by side to our house all the way up to the third floor. The third floor was just one storage room and the rest is open roof. I’d climb on a ladder then the window railing of the storage room and swing my torso up to land stomach down on the rooftop of the storage room. And I’d sit there on that little patch of roof, blazing hot, pick dates right off the tree hiding in its spiky branches waiting for the sunset. It was my private little heaven.

Yesterday a relative who checks on our deserted house visited Jordan and brought with him a little plastic box that he filled with dates which had fallen into the grass. They were darker, instead of golden, and so smaller than I remembered them. no one was taking care of our trees and so palm trees deliver smaller sized dates and less than their usual product. My heart ached for that. I took the box home and I put one in my mouth after removing a piece of grass off it. It was like someone punched me in the heart and I got a rush of goose bumps up and down my spine. It was a taste of home and I missed it. I was about to drop the bit of grass into the trash but then I sat there like a dope looking at it stuck on thumb. I opened the lid and dropped the bit of grass back into the box. I want to get that rush again but I’m afraid I’ll finish them too fast.

George Bush in Anbar!

2007-09-04T00:33:00.000-07:00

Surprise! Surprise! The US president is in a once-insurgency hotspot part of Iraq. He lands in Iraq to see his troops, oh and he completely bypasses the sovereign government who didn’t have a clue, better yet he doesn’t land in Baghdad but goes straight for his troops, completely bypassing and belittling the Iraqi Government.

Do I sound pissed? Halleluiah I am quite the opposite.

I don’t like Al Maliki, any decent Iraqi regardless of ethnicity can tell you he’s a bloody murderer and that he is fully responsible for the ethnic cleaning of prominent Sunni leaders. And no I have no grudge against the Shia, some are my best friends and they hate the bastard more than I do. He also led to the alienation of the Sunni-Arab sect from the parliament and the resignation of some Shia parties who couldn’t go head to head with him. As for him brining security to Iraq, great job I’m clapping here .. great job if it was your intention to have Islamic militias 'including Al Qaida' go hey-wild, to increase the number of Iraqis fleeing to neighbouring countries living under poverty, to have two thirds of your own government boycott you to have the shit hit the fan so often just when we thought it can't get worse, great Job Maliki you’re THE man.

The US president made two statements from my perspective. ONE; what the hell is taking so long to negotiate the Sunnis back to the flock?! There I’ll do it. TWO; I told you to negotiate with them, don’t get cocky coz I call the shots here.

Either way I’m hell amused :)

terror has no religion

2007-08-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4AIjGchpYGM

seeking answers Baghdad 2005

2007-08-19T06:00:00.001-07:00

I was considered a rare commodity to international NGO friends mid 2005. Not that I was such a hot shot or a professional reporter. I spoke fluent English, lived in Baghdad when sane people already left at least 12 months ago and I was/still am angry to the point of recklessness that I'd do anything. So anyway from time to time I got requests for information which I obtained easily and I emailed my friends back with answers.

I set out to the street to find answers for one British NGO's questions related specifically to healthcare in Iraq. My first destination was a church near where I lived. "Salaam Alaykum" the Muslim words of greeting meaning "peace be upon you." "And upon you too" said the old lady sitting on a chair under an arch at the entrance. "I'm inquiring on the behalf of a" .. I hesitated, "a British organization offering to help and they have some questions". She made a big smile and let me in. I walked in to meet Archbishop Andoras, a solemn but peaceful looking man. "Oh they're British! You take care of yourself" he said as soon as I introduced my self. He told me that he feared for his church from getting involved with a British or any other Western organization because he didn't want someone to point an accusing finger of having the church be pro-American and Pro-occupation. Several churches in Iraq have already been attacked mainly because Iraqi Christians and Americans share the same religion and are suspected of having mutual sympathies. Archbishop Andoras said that his church cannot guarantee that the supplies won't be stolen or the convoy not being attacked on its way from the border to Baghdad. "It's a pity" he said "that there are tens of foreign offers that come to the church 'to supply the tens more of needy people out here but the church just cannot deliver."

My next destination was the Ministry of Health carrying Archbishop Andoras's concerns and other questions I had. A morgue stands right out side the ministry at its only entrance. It made me feel absurd. There were tens of mourners waiting in line to get their loved ones in coffins, some were still in shock crying and slapping their faces but most were terribly quite. I wished I could turn invisible because my colored clothing seemed to offend them. After the war, Baghdad mostly looked like it was under a gray and brown vale covering even the green of trees. And there I was with lipstick and a vivid pink shirt. I love colors, I love to live. "Not just yet" I told my self and looked back at the coffins.

Once me and my handbag were searched twice by two different women I walked into the huge Ministry of Health. There were about ten desks in the lobby and one employee asked me to approach.

"What's your business here?" I told him I wanted to meet someone
"Why?"
"I have some questions to ask"
"Who do you work for?"
"I don't work for anyone I just have some British friends .." I was starting to get irritated
"Oh .. they're British!" Great a militia will pick me up before I even walk out of here I thought. "And who are they?" I told him
"Never heard of them" Was I supposed to reply! I thought
"That way" he pointed at the door to the right "take the stairs then go to the left."
"Thank you"
"Hum.."

I met with Mr. Qasim Alawe the official spokesperson for the ministry at the time and I passed the questions my NGO friends had about health insurance, public clinics, the availability of medical supplies and about health monitoring. "Iraqi employees do not have health insurance and there are no plans to have any in the future", said Mr. Alawe, "because the salaries are currently too slim to deduct insurance out of them, it will cause a roar, people will not accept it". He then answered my next question "we deliver free medical supplies to public clinics in Baghdad and medicine is offered to people for free in those clinics". He also said that Iraq receives an average of around 5 million dollars worth of medical supplies per year. Health monitoring in Iraq is applied on all items legally entering the country and it takes the ministry from 2 to 10 days to inspect them. Mr. Alawe admit that there are difficulties in monitoring medical and food supplies because of the lack of security and the wide smuggling of goods across the Iraqi borders. He also said that a fully armed police force accompanies public inspection groups to protect them during their inspections around Baghdad. As for the Ministry's agenda and future plans he said that a full report can be found on the web (for the record I couldn't find it). "Have you carried out any of the goals on this plan?" "We did" said Mr. Alawe "we also change our goals according to the circumstance in Iraq."

I wanted to get more details about the ministry's agenda and what exactly had been achieved. But a woman walked in with black banners morning the death of a popular Shia imam who was killed like in the 6th century. And a man also walked in with a large size poster of Al-Sader to show Mr. Alawe and he became very preoccupied so I walked out of his office.

From there I went to meet an official to answer questions concerning mental care in Iraq. I met with Dr. Fawzi Manager Assistant of the "National Program Against Narcotics and Misuse of Drugs used for Mental Care" who is also a psychiatrist. I felt like I was under scrutiny when he looked me up and down, looked at my pink shirt and my hair then he smiled. "I am optimistic about the future of mental care in Iraq" he started slowly and continued "during the time of the past regime mental care received poor attention because of the lack of education and it being ignored by the government before Saddam as well." He added that a much better attention is currently given to mental care in Iraq due to educational campaigns and to the growing need for mental care specialists after the war. I hit on this last point "why after the war?" "Yes … because of the increase of drug addiction and mental illness after 2003." He made one last statement saying that mental care still needs much aid and patience due to the security status in Iraq that hinders the efforts exerted in this department. "I am optimistic about the future" he repeated with a smile taking his time on the vowels and adding a slight 'h' sound to everything. As I head towards the door I thought he reminded me of T.S. Eliot's Hollow Men for some reason.

There was no militia waiting outside the ministry for me. I nervously walked passed the coffins, I looked behind my shoulder to check if anyone was following me " not just yet."

We drove around looking for a clinic to see for ourselves how accurate Mr. Alawe was about the public clinics, me and a Shia cab driver my family knew well and trusted, Abu Ashraf. He was targeted and killed a year later leaving a widow and 5 young children behind.

We ended up in front of the Islamic League for Public Clinics, the same building was used as headquarters for the Islamic League in Ada'meah after clinic hours. "You wont like what I have to say" Dr. Al Qayse warned me the instant I set foot into his office. "The last time a journalist was here she got offended of what I said" I was still standing motionless and embarrassed at the door. "Please have a seat" he finally said. He asked who I represent and how he may assist me. I mentioned the NGOs name. "Oh British! I like the British" he said in a dramatic tone then leaned forward "you watch your back ha" he winked. I responded with a nervous laugh "I'm Iraqi to the bone Doctor!" Dr. Qayse said his clinic received nothing from the Ministry of Health and that the clinic depends on the donations coming through mosques. Supplies for the clinic are bought from the local market and sold to people for its cost's worth. Nothing in the clinic is for free. He said that one French organization sent them two truck loads of supplies that kept the clinic running for three months but then the French organization members were threatened and left Iraq and so did their support. Dr. Qayse told me the clinic was in desperate need for supplies from abroad.

I passed Archbishop Andoras's fears about dealing with foreign aid groups and he said "let them send, we will take that risk and protect the trucks and the drivers who deliver to us." "Aren't you afraid of being attacked if people discovered that you accepted aid from the British?" he folded his arms and said confidently "No! This is the Islamic League, no body will threaten us." (also for the record, the Bader core raided the clinic and forced them to close down less than a year later). I couldn't help asking "But how different are the British from the Americans?" "Let me tell you something" he made eye contact "the image of real insurgents is being distorted by the media. Real insurgents don't attack foreign aid groups and journalists because they can distinguish between occupation and aid."

I told him about my fears when I first set out to make this report. Fears of not being welcome in a mosque because I represent a foreign group, fears of being spotted by a member of the insurgents who might do me harm, or by the government who would consider me guilty by association for visiting Sunni groups that distribute aid, like his own, because they are viewed as supporters of insurgents. "Yes sadly there are many fundamentalists out there." He paused "But I'm open minded, why oppose those who offer help! Fundamentalism is a big mistake and does no good to public interest." "Would you accept help from an American aid group?" I asked. "No" he responded.

On my way home I heard a far echo of an explosion and saw a huge cloud of smoke. I sat back and wandered away with my thoughts rewinding and editing the events of the day in my head thinking how to start writing. I met Ammar, a colleague, later that day and narrated the events of my day. I was exited. "don't try to be a hero" he mocked me. I paused then blew out at him defensively "if we continue to be sheepish no progress will come to this country." "I didn't say be sheepish! Just keep your head down, there is no such thing as heroism and a bullet is worth 300 dinars." (that's like one to tenth of a US dollar) "It's stupid to die for 300 dinars."

I didn't feel like writing right away that night but I did have an urgent documentary from Ammar to do the subtitles for. The generator power came back some time after midnight. We pay the generator owner per voltage and so I could use the PC and the fan but not the light and it still gave unsteady voltage. I typed a joke to email later to a friend, one of our "how do you know you're living in Iraq jokes" I'm using Microsoft software, I'm lighting my room like in the Middle Ages and my screen is winking at me.

The documentary was about the dangers journalists face in Iraq. Once I was done a black screen came down with the names of journalists who were killed since 2003, slowly scrolling down screen. I double checked each name, some were my friends. Here I am scrolling their names down a black screen like they never existed, as if they were fictitious characters and I thought it could have been my name on that screen and how would I have liked my name to be spelled in English. Ammar would misspell my name no doubt.

Hours before Duraid was killed he emailed a friend. He was filming the aftermath of a shooting and there was an elderly man holding his dead son. Duraid said the dead son looked our age and looked like he could have been our kind of crowd. Duraid concluded his emails with "that could have been me."

Looking back at all this, now that I escaped Iraq, typing away at my laptop in lala-land upper class Abdoun (the Beverly Hills of Jordan) sipping a two dollar coffee (that's like worth 20 bullets in Iraq and at least two lives) looking back at it all I can't help but think that could have been me. What's the moral of the story? Why am I telling you this? Beats me if I know!

I discovered that honour is insignificant compared to the hunger of my children

2007-08-14T01:41:00.000-07:00

By Afif Sarhan/ Al Jazeera English/ Baghdad/ August 13

When Rana Jalil, 38, lost her husband in an explosion in Baghdad last year, she could never have imagined becoming a prostitute in order to feed her children.

A mother of four, Jalil sought out employment, but job opportunities for women had decreased since the US invasion.

She begged shop owners, office workers and companies to hire her but was treated with what she calls chauvinistic discrimination.

Within weeks of her husband's death, a doctor diagnosed her children with malnutrition.

Fighting tears, she recalled the desperation which led her to the oldest profession: "In the beginning these were the worst days in my life. My husband was the first man I met and slept with, but I didn't have another option … my children were starving."

She left the house in a daze, she recalled, and walked to the nearest market to find someone who would pay her for sex.

She said: "I'm a nice-looking woman and it wasn't difficult to find a client. When we got to the bed I tried to run away … I just couldn't do it, but he hit and raped me. When he paid me afterwards, it was finished for me.

"When I came home with some food I had bought from that money and saw my children screaming of happiness, I discovered that honour is insignificant compared to the hunger of my children."

Iraqi widows desperate

Prior to the US invasion, Iraqi widows, particularly those who lost husbands during the Iran-Iraq war, were provided with compensation and free education for their children. In some cases, they were provided with free homes.

However, no such safety nets currently exist and widows have few resources at their disposal.

According to the non-governmental organisation Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), 15 per cent of Iraqi women widowed by the war have been desperately searching for temporary marriages or prostitution, either for financial support or protection in the midst of sectarian war.

Nuha Salim, the spokesperson for OWFI, told Al Jazeera: "Widows are one of our priorities but their situation is worsening and we are feeling ineffective to cope with this significant problem. Hundreds of women are searching for an easy way to support their loved ones as employers refuse to hire them for fear of extremists' reprisals."

She said the NGO has documented the disappearance of some 4000 women, 20 per cent of whom are under 18, since the March 2003 invasion.

OWFI believes most of the missing women were kidnapped and sold into prostitution outside Iraq.

Although few reliable statistics are available on the total number of widows in Iraq, the ministry of women's affairs says that there are at least 350,000 in Baghdad alone, with more than eight million throughout the country.

Bitter trade

As Iraqi families continue to fall on hard times, some have been forced to make the most painful of decisions – selling their daughters.

Abu Ahmed, a handicapped father of five who is himself a widower, sold his daughter Lina to an Iraqi man who came to Iraq to "shop" for sex workers. Abu Ahmed said he could not afford to buy food for his other children.

He told Al Jazeera: "I'm sure that whatever she is, at least she is having food to eat. I have three other girls and a son and what they paid me for Lina is enough to raise the remaining ones."

Abu Ahmed had been initially approached by Shada, the alias of a woman living in Baghdad, who sought young women for Iraqi gangs running prostitution rackets in neighbouring Arab countries.

She told Al Jazeera that her role was to convince young women from impoverished families that a better life awaited them beyond the country's borders.

She said: "Families don't want them and we are helping the girls to survive. We offer them food and housing and about $10 a day if they have had at least two clients."

"Our priority is virgin girls; they can be sold at very expensive prices to Arab millionaires."

Shada said she sleeps in a different house every few nights as armed groups have marked her for trial and assassination.

Escape from Jordan

OWFI's Salim says cases like Lina's have become very common as poverty is increasing in Iraq and desperate families sometimes sell their daughters for less than $500 to traffickers.

But increasingly, young Iraqi women arrive in neighbouring capitals to find that prostitution carries a heavy and dangerous price.

Suha Muhammad, 17, was sold to an Iraqi gang by her mother, herself a prostitute, after her father was killed.

When she arrived in Jordan, she was gang-raped by four men who told her they were teaching her the tricks of the trade.

She told Al Jazeera she had been sold to a gang that caters to VIPs in Syria and was often shuttled to Amman, the Jordanian capital, for high-profile clients.

After six months, she escaped: "I ran away and an Iraqi family helped me by driving me to the immigration department where they helped me get a passport to return to Iraq.

"My aunt is now taking care of me in Baghdad. She never imagined that my mother could sell me, but unfortunately women in Iraq are not important and respected."

Traffic

Mayada Zuhair, a spokesperson for the Baghdad-based Women's Rights Association (WRA), said Iraqi and Arab NGOs are trying to monitor the trafficking of young women from the war-ravaged country to neighbouring destinations.

She told Al Jazeera: "We are trying to find out the fate of many widows and teenager girls who were trafficked. Unfortunately it is not an easy process and without international support, funding, and resources, we fear more young Iraqi women will be taken abroad to work in the sex trade."

In the meantime, however, prostitution remains the only option for Nirmeen Lattif, a 27-year-old widow who lost her husband in an attack on Shia pilgrims south of Baghdad.

When she turned to her husband's relatives for financial support, they could not afford to help her.

She says she tries not to think of the gravity of what she does or the dishonour it carries in conservative Muslim society.

"I think of my children, only my children; without money we starve in the streets."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/36B04283-E43F-4367-90BB-E6C60CB88F76.htm

Mustansiriya bombing

2007-07-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

Image link http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6268327.stm

I left Iraq almost two years ago and its troubles but I have this almost sadistic urge to hear stories of my Baghdad. Here's one of them...

A friend who's a post grad at Mustansiriya University was there when a suicide bomber blew himself up and killed more than 100 students January 2007. let's call him Esam. Esam walks out with three girls who attend his same classes towards the main gate of the university. At the gate they split, he walks towards the parking lot to warm up the car and wait to drive them home and the girls walk towards the photocopy shop to get some class notes. Esam hears a huge explosion and his car flies up and crashes back down. He runs instantly towards the main gate again to see his friends, there's a charcoaled car that was wired with explosives. Esam can see how everyone around him is shaky and disoriented including the police. Then Esam noticed one man who was walking calmly with a very serious face and had a long black coat on. He noticed him and so did the police. They yell at him to stop so he runs and Esam can see that he's heading towards the photocopy shop were terrified students who survived the first bombing crowded in. the police shoot at this man but they can't stop him and he blows him self up where all the students were. Esam flies in the air and lands on his back. Terrified by all the torn carcasses around him he runs inside the university again. He calms down looks for volunteers to help identify the bodies. When him and other students walk back out again there's utter silence.

Esam said he couldn't believe how vibrant this pavement was minutes ago with tens of students, the place was like a beehive. Now they're all dead, disfigured, shoes, phones, papers, handbags and back bags were everywhere. The cell-phones were ringing like crazy some had very funny ring tones. Esam just stood there hearing a hundred phones ring all together and he just let them. He said he didn't have the heart to tell any of the parents and families what happened. To this day the face of the suicide bomber is engraved in Esams mind. I asked Esam to describe him for me but he shook his head like shaking off a bad thought and said no.

What would I say to the suicide bomber if I came to face to face with him? I'd like to shoot him where it hurts and pull a chair and watch him die! But that just wont solve it now would it coz there will appear another bomber elsewhere and my revenge wont solve anything besides satisfy an urge for revenge and oh I would enjoy it. I need to know why!? I don't think I'll ever come close enough to ask.

July 14th 2007 Syria, a shabby hotel, and Old Damascus

2007-07-29T09:47:00.000-07:00

July 13 I'm punching fists in the air and I break down in tears. I'm having one of my depressed mood swings when look up my house in Baghdad on google earth knowing that I can't go home, not even to pick up school certificates, pictures, memories. On July 14 early morning, I pack a few things in my back bag kiss my husband and slip out at 6 AM to catch a taxi to Damascus - Syria. It's a 3 hour drive from Amman to Damascus and I don't need a visa. Last time I was there was 2003 one month before the war but Damascus looked all the same 3 and a half years later. I didn't have a clue where I was going to spend the night, I'll figure it out when I get there. In the cab I end up next to a chatter box from Yemen who spoke in a sympathetic tone with the insurgency in Iraq so pretended to be on the same page with him, as I often do.

I reach Damascus and it takes me an hour to find a hotel that isn't full. I find one all right; The nastiest dirty eyesore that starts from the 3rd floor of a dilapidated building in the red light district with an Islamic posters at the lobby. I take a look at my room, mold on the walls, no windows except a line of windows near the ceiling leading to the corridor outside my room. The bathroom was .. lets not get too graphic. I have one tv channel, Islamic of course. I didn't care much, I was going to spend the entire day out, spend one night in this dump and return to Amman the next morning.

Across the hall I can hear an Iraqi man calling his wife a whore on the phone for reporting him (to whom and why I don't know) but it seems she reported him and he fled Iraq as a consequence. Now he was running out of money and is still stranded in this hole of a hotel, nice neighbors I have!

'Dimash'k El Gadema' (Old Damascus) is my catharsis. I love getting lost in that maze of narrow side streets hundreds of years old. Old Damascus has plenty of beautiful churches and mosques and I tired to visit as many as I could. I spent from 2 to 11PM just exploring. I saw art galleries, chat with musicians, painters, sheiks and priests and concluded my tour by sipping a Turkish coffee at a café right out the fence from Salah Al Din castle looking over the old city. I spent another hour shopping and was at the hotel near 1AM.

Back at the hotel the man behind the counter gives me a wink, 'hey what floor are you on?' 'Um .. up' I say and rush up to the 3rd floor before he follows and I lock my door. He knocks my door at midnight "miss do you want coffee?" "no thank you" a couple of minutes pass "miss do you want water" "no thanks" "but I already got you a bottle of cold water" "NO! Thanks!"

I spend the entire night looking up at the ceiling so that creep won't crawl down from those weird useless windows almost 3 meters up. There was a ceiling fan but the ceiling was so high up that the fan didn't send down not even a faint breeze. I began to think to my self what the hell was I thinking.

So I'm up all night watching the one Islamic channel, there's this miss virtue campaign, girls send their pictures (all veiled) with their sob stories of how they have been good girls and how their lives are tough. Miss Iraq won for being the most pathetic. During the show there's a text bar at the bottom of the screen where people were sending text messages asking for some Islamic advice. I wished I could tap into their system and send my own replies. One person asks if eating imported meat from Brazil is a taboo since he can't really tell if the cow was slaughtered the Islamic way or not. My reply "if you think the meat packers in Brazil have time to say a prayer and do rituals for every one of the thousand cows they slaughter every day you're out-of-you-mind! " A women writes "I think I have a genie in my bedroom what do I do? Is this adultery?" my reply "an exotic sexual experience with no strings attached! Have fun! .. or right, you're probably still a virgin" it got me thinking how the Middle East is belly up in it's corruption and violence and this is all these people can think of, amazing!Around 3AM I hear a loud bang on the door across the hall. They kicked the Iraqi guy out for not paying.

I hear the birds chirping at 4:30AM and I run out of there, and head to the buss station. I end up with a Palestinian family. The grandmother likes me so she keeps bugging me asking why I don't wear a veil and how it would be such a pity that a nice girl like me would go to hell. I try humor her but I am just too tired.

By 9AM I was back home, wrapped in my bath robe, hair wet, there's a breeze coming from the window, it's quiet, my husband is still sleeping. I sit motionless watching the branches sway on the berry tree outside the window. I wore out all my negative energy, I feel like I've just been medicated. I'm good for another few months before I am punching fists in the air again.