May all Iraqis rest in peace

When I came back from work to the neighborhood last Wednesday after the attack, my eyes caught a chain of black banners announcing the death of the martyrs that fell victims in the explosion. They were all lined next to each other on a fence of a small farm just across the bridge that links the neighborhood with the high way.

Verses from the Holy Quran and a big Cross were put next to each other as if they were hand in hand declaring the victims were Muslims and Christians and all died together in one crime.

“People of the neighborhood denounce the criminal act happened on Tuesday,” read one big banner in the center accompanied by other black ones with names and ages of the martyrs. What broke my heart was my friend’s mother banner. Coming closer to the banner which says “The Martyr Um Bashar…” made me feel so miserable. She was there few days ago when I saw her, joking and advising us to be careful as “it’s dangerous outside.”

The funeral of a female victim [Um Bashar] takes place Wednesday, after a bomb planted in a motorcycle parked in the courtyard of a Shiite mosque Tuesday exploded in northern Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

It was four p.m. by the time I arrived. I wanted to be with my grieving friends in this hard time. So I left work early at that day. The streets were blocked off by palm trees stems, metal bars and barbed wires by the people of the neighborhood who no longer trust anyone, starting from the security forces who were absent for months leaving the neighborhood lawless and unprotected. Residents volunteered to control it from any other possible attack that may target the funerals of the martyrs. They took up arms and set up checkpoints searching every single car entering the neighborhood.

The explosion occurred last Tuesday when a hateful criminal left a booby-trapped motorcycle near a falafel stand in a rush hour when dozens of people were standing in lines to get some hot falafel from the poor Abu Asaad whom he and his two teenage sons also died in the blast. Abu Asaad’s stand was near a Shiite mosque built after the U.S.-led occupation to Iraq in 2003. By the time the explosion happened, the street was full of people who were there for shopping. Men’s and women’s wear Shops, ice cream shop, and a bakery where all lined up on the other side of the street. I was always worried that this area would be attacked. A similar nearby commercial area was attacked by twice by car bombs and killed dozens as well the last month.

On the same day of the attack, I returned back from work tired. I decided not to go out and hang out with my friends like what I do every day having no other place to go to in Baghdad. It was 8 p.m. when S called me to see why I did not show up. I told him I my reason. So he and the other friends decided to return back to their houses. Shortly after that, the explosion happened. It was powerful enough to shake the house but not to break the windows like the previous one. We left one of the windows open to absorb the pressure of the blast.

My mother came running from the kitchen with pale face and shock to see if my father and I were ok. We thought about the whereabouts for few minutes until my cell phone rang. It was A, my friend. “Um Bashar is missing in the explosion,” he said shaking with sounds of people screaming around him. “What? What happened?,” I asked hysterically. “She was near the Husseiniya [the Shiite mosque] and Bashar is looking for her,” he said. My other friend also called and said, people saw a woman lying dead there. “Oh my God!” I held my breath for a second. “I hope she is not the one.”

At that time, we started calling each other to check if we are ok and none of us was hurt by the explosion. We then found out that Bashar is still looking for his mother. Weeping and shouting “Mother, Mother” among the dead bodies, he did not found her. He found nothing but blood and smell of barbequed bodies of women, men, elderly and children. A man rescuing wounded people told him that someone took her to the hospital. The man did not want to tell him that he saw her dead.

Bashar took another friend and sped to Kindi hospital where she was supposed to be. Time was 10 p.m. when he finally found her after a long trip in the dark, scary, lawless streets of Baghdad. She was there but covered with blood from head to toe. Shrapnel shattered her abdomen area and her lungs were filled with blood. Unable to control himself, Bashar lost conscience and fell on the floor.

Her body was brought the next day to the neighborhood for her family to bid her farewell and take a last look at her before being buried. She left a husband, a 20 year-old daughter and Bashar my friend, a great and lovely family I have ever known. As a Shiite married to a Sunni, she never taught her son and daughter that there is a difference between the two sects. She raised them very well as being Iraqi and only Iraqi.

Fawzi Yacob, right, grieves at the funeral of his wife Linda Matti [Um Omar, the Christian woman] Wednesday, after she died when a bomb planted in a motorcycle parked in the courtyard of a Shiite mosque Tuesday exploded in northern Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

In Iraq, funerals take three days. Today was the third and the last. People of different sects and religions attended the funeral which was held in a tent in front of the house. Thirteen other funerals were held in the neighborhood, including the one that killed Um Omar, a Christian woman who was shopping with her 25-year-old daughter. Susan, the daughter, was a bride who got married few weeks ago. She did not die but she lost her two legs in the blast and has become crippled.

Local newspapers showed the pictures of the funeral procession of the fourteen martyrs. Women were seen weeping and crying for Um Bashar, Um Omar and the other victims, including the two boys who were in their father’s car waiting for an ice cream to enjoy. They enjoyed death instead. The car was parked in front of the falafel stand. They both died as shrapnel tore their little heads into pieces inside the car.

As I walked from my house to the funeral in all three days, I noticed how this explosion was successful enough to turn it so gloomy, dusty, and sad. All shops were closed, people went out to offer condolences not to shop, and fourteen funeral tents welcomed the mourning people who were marching to each martyr’s funeral even if they did not know them personally. We considered all the dead our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters and we all shared the unforgettable pain and grief…

May she and all the Iraqi martyrs rest in peace.

SHE DIED IN THE BLAST

I had a terrible night. My friend’s mother has died in a huge blast rocked my neighborhood and killed more than 12 people and wounded dozens last night. I’ll write about everything later but for now, I feel so sad and desperate. It was so hard to see her dead. She was a kind woman. I just saw her few days ago when I was with her son.

My heart is full of sorrow and pain. My friend had a horrible night searching for her in the hospitals by the time the city was all in darkness due to the lack of electricity.

I can’t even think of any hope at the meantime. It is only despair that hovers over us. It seems it is going to stick with us. I don’t know why we have to live like this. Why do I have to wake up everyday on sounds of explosions and shootings? Why do I have to be afraid all the time, why do I have to sleep and wake up with a tear in my eyes? why why why? I don’t want democracy and freedom. I want to live. I just want to live. These two damn words brought only destructions. They never brought hope. It is only death and death and death. I don’t want them…. take them and give us back the normal life. I wish I could change the time to the past.

BOOOM

“BOOOOOM” was the first thing that woke me up this morning. Another BOOOM followed to make me feel that I wasn’t having a nightmare. It was not meant to kill or hurt; it was meant to remind me of the daily horror we should embrace everyday. I felt the BOOM telling me, “Wake up! Did you forget me? Sleeping will never let you forget me. I am always there.”

I barely opened my eyes. I was very tired. I couldn’t sleep well the whole night which is something very normal in Iraq. It was hot and impossible to endure.

When the explosion happened, I felt the ground shaking as I was sleeping on a matrice on the floor in the living room. I can’t sleep in my room on my bed anymore. There is no electricity to run the AC. I sleep in the living room because we can turn on an old fashion technique, called air cooler when we turn on the generator.

The explosion was followed by gunfire. It seemed there were clashes outside. “Ah! Clashes, nothing new,” I said within myself. I was sleeping near the window and was so reluctant to move. I didn’t even care. A bullet, two, or three break the window next to me?! Who cares? Even if I die, who cares? Hundreds and thousands are being killed. I am one of them. There is no difference. Maybe one day I join them unwillingly proudly in irrigating our land in our blood instead of water.

On the way to work, I was thinking of the two young men who were found shot dead in the neighborhood yesterday. My friend S told me that he saw a young man in his twenties lying dead in front of his neighbor’s house. The neighbor told S that as he was getting ready to take his children to school, he heard a sound seemed like opening a can of pepsi or something like that. As he went out, he saw the young man dead at the main gate of the house with his face covered in blood due to a shot in his forehead. Young men and women gathered to see the daily scene, which became like their breakfast. S said that it was the first time he’s ever seen a dead body. He was quiet the whole time we were together. He is the one whom I described once as having the best sense of humor among us.

The slain young man was skinny and putting on shabby clothes, S recalled the scene. He appeared to be a poor construction laborer. All people around his body agreed that he was a stranger and was brought and shot dead by a silencer in the neighborhood which hasn’t witnessed any presence of police or army for a long time.

Another young man’s dead body was also found shot dead on the high way alongside my neighborhood. People said he was shot in another place and his body was thrown there. His body was thrown where 14 young men were shot dead in the same area a month ago.

When the driver dropped me off at the place where I meet with my other colleague, shrapnel and broken glass of a previous car bomb was still at the sidewalks of the street as if they are like the “BOOM” reminding me and the others that “hey, I am surrounding you. I am always there wherever you go.” This time, I didn’t even care. I kept on walking until I met my colleague and went to work.


Once my mother recalled how she used to see and hear the news about life in Lebanon during the civil war. “I used to ask myself, how come people live , work and study while they are in a war?!” she recalled as we were having dinner. “Now, we are going through the same thing!” she said. “it is so sad that we go backwards not move forward,” I said.

Like Lebanon during the war, life goes on in Iraq. We are following the Iraqi saying “The wet doesn’t fear the rain”. We have nothing to be afraid of anymore. Life became like something we have to do and that’s it. People still go out, study, work, try to have fun, and struggle to stay alive for the sake of keeping themselves busy, maybe till they die by a car bomb or shootings.

When I left home this morning, the streets were full of people who were going to work and schools with full determination as if there were no clashes and bombs an hour earlier.

BOOOOOOM!!

Who else wants to die in Iraq?

I was at work yesterday when my mother called to see if everything was fine and if I am going to come back home early or not. While we were chatting, she told me something that made me freeze on the chair I was sitting on.

As she was at the school where she teaches, one of her colleagues was sobbing in the teacher’s room surrounded by other teachers who most of them were crying. “I said to myself, it seems someone has died,” she said within herself. As she peered closely, she discovered that the teacher’s 6 month-old- infant was killed!

Few days ago, a group carrying identifications from the health ministry knocked at the door of the teacher’s daughter’s house. “Do you have children?”, the men asked the daughter. “Yes, one,” she replied. Then the men asked her to bring him to be vaccinated against polio. The infant was “vaccinated” but two hours later, he died.

The victim’s sobbing grandmother narrated how her daughter lost conscious when she discovered that her son was not vaccinated and was poisoned instead. At the same time nearly, two more infants in their early months were also poisoned the same way the first infant was killed with.

The teacher’s daughter was like all Iraqis who trusted the health centers teams who come each season to vaccinate infants against polio. This time, no one expected that the new target is going to be infants.

My mother said she immediately called my sister to warn her. She told her not to open the door for these people even if they were real health teams. My sister was shocked and decided to take her 9-month-old infant to the health center as she did in the previous times.

Things have never calmed down. It is going from worse to worst. A 28-year-old Shiite neighbor of mine was killed as he was driving with two friends in the Sunni majority neighborhood of Adhamiya. As they were driving, a group of armed men stopped their car. After 15 minutes of arguing with the armed men, the three young men gave up convincing them that they live nearby. The armed men decided to search the three men and found their IDs. The two Sunnis were told to leave the area immediately while the third one, a Shiite, was kept a hostage until he was killed. His friends received a call at night telling them he is killed. He left a widow and two infants.

Although I am a Shiite but I live in a neighborhood part of Adhamiyah. I spent all my teenage and college time with my friends there. I have great and nice memories I usually share with my friends in that area. But now, I fear even passing by it. I am a Shiite and my father’s name is a Shiite. If the insurgents discover that, they may kill me like my neighbor. The last times I went their to visit a friend, I did not carry any ID.

The western restive part of Iraq continues to be out of control. 15 Iraqi young athletes were kidnapped while driving to neighboring Jordan, police and Olympic Committee officials said. The 15 taekwondo athletes, hopeful to join the Olympics game one day, were heading to Jordan after a long month of training in Baghdad for a previous championship. Dressed in Training shoes and Tracksuits, the athletes went in two groups joyfully.

The kidnapping of the Korean martial art players took place last Monday on a road between the restless hostile cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, one of the most violent areas of Iraq where insurgents carry out armed operations against Iraqi and US forces. The athletes, in two GMC vehicles, were stopped by a group of armed men who forced the drivers to take the back seat letting them drive to an unknown area.

“They were on vacation,” said Jamal Abdul Karim, the head of the Iraqi Taekwondo Union of. “They weren’t going to Jordan in an official activity or championship. They were going just to have fun altogether,” Abdul Karim said.

The fifteen athletes were all in their twenties. Five of them were members of the Iraqi national team of Taekwondo, including a 27-year-old player who won the Bronze medal in the Asian championship of Taekwondo in Thailand couple of weeks ago.

"We are negotiating with the kidnappers through a mediator. They asked for a $100,000 ransom," said Abdul Karim from behind his desk at the national Olympic committee headquarters in Baghdad. “We haven’t slept since Monday,” he said as he looked deeply moved and about to shed a tear. “They are like our sons.”

Most of athletes were residents of Sadr City, a Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad whose residents are loyal to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Armed men always cut off the road to Jordan robbing travelers. Abdul Karim said that he and some other athletes were robbed several times as they went to Jordan. “But this time, it was different,” he said.

By the time Abdul Karim was saying that they were contacting the mediator to ensure their release, he received a phone call. After he hanged up, he said, “The ransom was delivered. We are waiting for their release now.” Few hours later, Abdul Karim said that the armed men told them the hostages will be released either today or tomorrow.

Although the players were not on an official mission, Abdul Karim and his colleagues at the Taekwondo union decided to pay the ransom to get their colleagues released. “All the staff and I decided not to get our salaries for one year. Instead, we volunteered it to pay the ransom to free our sons,” he said.

A group of athletes, friends and colleague of the 15 hostages, were gathering outside the Union chief’s office chatting about how they spent their time training and working together. Haider Yousif, the taekwondo national team coach looked sad and moved by the incident. “We feel miserable. We’ve been crying for them for three days,” Yousif said with eyes gazing on the floor.

Yousif who met with the families of the hostages early this morning, said they came pleading to do something. “We told them we will never let them down. We’ll do everything to get them released,” he said. Sorrowful Parents and relatives gathered, some were crying and some were strong enough to control their feelings as they were talking to the officials and colleagues of the hostages. “Their mothers’ pain was far more than anyone else. I could see that in their eyes,” Yousif said. Some of the hostages were from other provinces in Iraq. The family of one player, kept calling from Amara in southern Iraq to see if their son has been released or not. “They will come all the way from Amara to Baghdad,” he added.

Taekwondo players from different provinces joined the sad company of families and colleagues this morning. “They came from Basra, Ramadi, and other provinces and said they would do anything to get their colleagues released,” he said.

Yousif recalled how one of the hostages, Wisam Oraibi, won the Bronze medal in Thailand and how he won a previous Bronze medal in the Taekwondo Championship of the Islamic Nation that was held in Saudi Arabia few months ago.

“Not only us, all Iraqis sympathize with these players,” Yousif said.

The New York Times and the Washington Post published two stories of how daily life looks like in Baghdad. Today’s story of the New York Times was a clear picture of how middle-class and educated people started leaving and thinking seriously to leave the country due to the daily violence.

Now, on the brink of a new, permanent government, Iraqis are expressing the darkest view of their future in three years. "We're like sheep at a slaughter farm," said a businessman, who is arranging a move to Jordan. "We are just waiting for our time."

In a story published in the Washington Post, a resident described how armed men tried to break into a nearby mosque.

"God is great!" cried a man he took to be the imam of one of the mosques of the neighborhood, the urgency and fear in his voice coming loud and clear over the electronic sound system. "God is great!"
The imam's cry was the alarm recognized in all neighborhoods -- Sunni or Shiite -- across Baghdad. The mosque was under attack.

BLACK

“BLACK”! Is it a mere color? In the world, people ride black cars, use black laptops, write in black ink, put on black shoes, etc… But in Baghdad, this word means something else. “Black” hovers over the city. Whatever we see becomes black even if it is red.

Starting from the black funeral banners that decorate almost every street, to the black smoke of explosions that rock the city’s morning like fireworks everyday, and the black shrapnel that pave the roads, “black” became an everyday scene.

The latest violence that rocked the capital left many houses damaged, and mostly with family members wounded or dead. But what is worse is the daily discovery of the dead bodies dumped in the garbage or in the Tigris. This horrible phenomenon left a grave ordeal over the houses of the Iraqi people. The scene of women wearing “black” mourning the loss of a son, a relative, or a friend becomes as black as how life looks like in Iraq. Just today, Iraqi police retrieved the bodies of 11 people, nine of them beheaded, including a 10-year-old boy, in Suwayra, south of Baghdad.

Finding these bodies became an everyday show. Most of the victims are young men in their twenties. Who kidnapped them and who killed them? No one knows for sure. Everyone says something different than the other. Eventually, the lives of the people became so cheap to be even condemned by government officials who are responsible for maintaining security in the country.

Car bombs left the Baghdad looks like a woman with cuts on face, arm and whole body, bleeding asking for help but no one is listening. Her beloved ones are dying one after the other. Like other women, she decided to wear black to mourn herself and the others. She lost everything. She lost her beauty that once was a center of gravity to anyone who wants to have fun.

Every morning, I go to a nearby neighborhood waiting for a colleague of mine to take me to where we work. I do this to escape the notion that someone may discover what I do and where I work. Yesterday, as I was waiting near the intersection for my colleague to pick me up, a man on a motorcycle passed by and yelled at a police man at a nearby police checkpoint. I hold my breath for a second and said “God! I hope he does not blow up himself.” And he did not. It appeared that he was a friend of the policeman and tried to joke with him in this silly way. However, the same policeman along with his other colleagues was killed by a car bomb exploded thirty minutes after I left with my college to work. It exploded exactly where I was standing!

This morning, I took the same route and stood in the same spot waiting for the same colleague. The street was covered with shattered glass of broken windows and shrapnel of the burned and destroyed cars. Buildings, including a famous restaurant, turned out to be rubble. People at the non-functional shabby traffic lights post were gazing in pain. An old man shook his head in despair, a woman put her hand on her mouth in shock looking at the destroyed restaurant and other people were walking carefully on in the street in case a shrapnel or a piece of glass cut their feet. The spot where the car exploded was “black” and the whole street looked black. The everyday street yellow-uniformed cleaners did not show up. They maybe either killed in the explosion or afraid to come in case another explosion crops up as another police checkpoint replaced the one that was attacked.

Despite the pain and the daily death threats, life goes on in Iraq. But, Iraqis are not the same ones a year, two years, or three years ago. They became sad, desperate, tired of being tired, hopeless and full of pain. My friends, who all are in their twenties, and I always try to amuse ourselves but unlike the way we used to. These days, the ghost of kidnappings and killings haunted our minds. We don’t feel comfortable even when we visit each other. Wherever we go, we don’t carry any identification, even the work ones. We don’t trust anyone in the streets. Just in Baghdad, the health ministry announced that 122 young men under the name of “Omar” were killed, most of them is believed were killed intentionally by Shiite militias.

We are not even sure that the men at the checkpoints are policemen or not. Yesterday, the bodies of two journalists working for al-Nahrain TV station were found shot dead in Baghdad. The channel officials said the slain journalists were stopped at a police checkpoint. As usual, the interior ministry denies that and said these men did not belong to them. My guess is that it is either they know that these men belong to them and then lied or they don’t know which is the worst. Armed men move freely in the capital while the ministry does not know. What a disaster.

Summer has begun and all its problems started. It’s been a week now since the one-hour a day of electricity disappeared. Owners of the local generators of the neighborhoods stopped supplying us with power. Their excuse is they are short of diesel to run the generators. We were left helpless enduring a day of 100 F degrees. The worst part is at night. No Iraqi, except the ones inside the green zone, sleeps well at night. Even our nights are “black”…

As a young man, I can endure many things these days as I used to since I was born, but watching my parents’ ordeal is something else. I cannot endure the fact that they are depressed and desperate. Few days ago, my father was so sad. He said he feels he is in a prison, a big prison, called Iraq. My mother, who sometimes feels scared when someone slams the door, was scared few days ago when a car bomb exploded at the corner of the street where we live shattering the glass of the windows. She, my father, aunt, and two cousins were just about to have lunch. They said the house was full of dust blows due to the effect of the blast. The next day another car bomb exploded at the entrance of a famous market near our house. The market was one of my mother’s favorite. It was the last thing she expects to be targeted. One day I told them not to go there anymore. I regretted that as I saw the sad look on their faces. “What can we do? It’s the last place left,” my father said. I had no words to say. I just don’t want to lose them.