Sadness, Happiness on Same Day

It’s been a few weeks since I talked to my family by phone. I’ve been wrestling with classes, work, and preparation to move to a new place near the university. As I was having breakfast this morning, I recharged my Yahoo Voice account and punched my father’s cell phone number on the screen. It was such a relief to hear his voice. I almost felt home. We chatted for a little while about his health situation. As usual, it’s been more difficult to get to the hospital day after day. He stopped going to the Kadhimiya hospital after the Sarrafiya Bridge was blown up since it was the only possible bridge for people to safely go to the other side of the river after insurgents took over downtown Adhamiya and made it almost impossible for people to use the A’ema Bridge to get to Kadhimiya neighborhood. Luckily, one of my neighbors is a nurse at the Physiotherapy hospital which is about 15 minutes drive from my home. She told him that they have the medical equipments which he needs. He told her he went there at first but they told him that they didn’t have them. No one knows why they did that!

Then the shock came like thunder from his voice, like a door slammed in a quiet place or rocket falling on a house filled with civilians. “Your uncle J was kidnapped and was released a few days ago after paying a $10,000 ransom.” I was absolutely shocked. What? Kidnapped? I felt the pain in my heart. I thought about all the people who had heart aches at that moment. I felt like someone stabbed me with a needle in the middle of my heart. It hurt. It really hurt.

I asked him about what happened and he told me that after my aunt the journalist was threatened and both of them left the house in September 2006, my uncle went every now and then to check on the house to see if it was taken by the insurgents or not. Last Wednesday, he went in the afternoon and decided to spend the night there after it got dark. Watering the plants and taking the important stuff they wanted took most of his time which flew without him noticing it was almost 5 in the afternoon. He stayed there and the insurgents broke into the house and kidnapped him with the complete absence of police and army in Dora neighborhood which is completely lawless like many other neighborhoods in Baghdad. My poor aunt broke down when she heard the news. My other aunts, who are also displaced and currently live together, took her to the hospital the next morning after trying to calm her down all night after she received a call from one of the kidnappers who threatened to kill him in 48 hours if they don’t pay the ransom. My father said the doctor told them they almost lost her if they hadn’t brought her in the first hours of the morning. She was entirely wrecked.

My father passed the phone to my mother who seemed more desperate than the last time I talked to her. I tried to cheer her up but in vain. I told her how I miss her and how I missed her a lot last night when I went to South Street enjoying the beautiful sight of shops and restaurants which once upon a time we had in Karradah and Mansour. I told her how I wanted her to see all the cosmetics and women’s wear stores which was her favorite in pre-war Baghdad. “We have no appetite for anything anymore, B,” her voice hissed to my ears. The words came tired, shaky and desperate. Too desperate. “Habibi, live your life and don’t think too much about us. We want you to be happy and alive. Go enjoy your youth and never let this news disturb you. At least one of the 22 million is safe now and that’s what I care about.”

The voice chat lasted for about 30 minutes when I lost them using the last cent I have in my voice chat fund. I was left with thoughts that hit my head and almost crippled every activity I planned to do for the weekend. I flipped through yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer and remembered the Philadelphia Book Festival which ironically I was planning to go to, but the news made me forget it. I grabbed my cigarette packet and burned one cigarette in my throat and lungs and thought of the festival. I was hesitant to go, but I didn’t want to miss such event which reminds me with all the happy times I spent buying and reading books since I was a child until I graduated from college the year the war started. I checked the bus schedule online, put on my brown shorts and Polo dark blue T-shirt and locked the door as I held the baseball hat I bought in New York City and my bag, which I eventually let it settle on my shoulder.

The bus drive was long. The highway was madly crowded making the cars drive very slowly. However, there was a benefit out of this. I took the chance to read three chapters from “A Long Way Gone”, a book I started reading after I finished the “Kite Runner”. The other thing was seeing a huge balloon hovering over the Philadelphia Zoo with people on it. I stared at it for a few minutes and flew back to my childhood days when I used to dream of being on of these balloons and travel around the world like the cartoon characters I watched and the ones I read about in “Eighty Days Around the World”.

The weather was awesome. It was 75 F, a perfect day for festivals. Center City was filled with people and tourists heading to towards the Free Library area where the festival was held. I arrived there at noon sharp. It was a perfect time since it just started an hour earlier. As I stepped in, I let out a huge sigh of relief. One of my biggest amusements is being among people with their families and children since it always makes me feel that humanity is still alive and that there is still a chance to live normally sooner or later. Thousands of people of different ages, backgrounds and interests filled the area. Some put out chairs to enjoy the open air, kids and adults were jumping and singing on the streets, puppets dancing and mingling with the crowds. And most importantly, books booths settled along the sidewalks of 19th and 20th Streets. Books were lined next to each other and some were one above the other in piles, some were signed, some were newly published, others were free and most of them were on huge discounts attracting the book-lovers to the white-tented booths like a piece of magnet pulling every close piece of metal. The most beautiful thing I found there was the energy that filled the air, the smile on every face of an adult or a child. Every body was enjoying the food, music, and most importantly buying the books.

As I made my way to the book booths, I couldn’t but recall my beautiful memories of al-Mutannabi Street where every day in it was a festival. I looked at the books and the booksellers and remembered how happy the booksellers in al-Mutannabi Street used to be welcoming the book fans. As I flipped through the pages of books I was interested in, I smelled them. Smelled my fantasy and old days. Smelled the books my hands once touched in Baghdad.

Time flew so quickly that I found it was 2:30 p.m. when I remembered that I have to go back home finish my story which will be workshoped next week. I left with my heart having a kind of relief that I haven’t had for a long time. Being among books and book fans meant a lot to me. It meant Baghdad, al-Mutannabi Street, my father’s huge bookcase, my college days, my beautiful memories of my beloved city which I terribly miss and pray for every single day, if not every single second in my life.

*Festival Photos are on my Photoblog, Random Images.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

A Look

There are so many stories behind this Iraqi woman's look.

© Eros Hoagland for The New York Times

New Generation Traumatized

When my sister and I were talking the other day about my niece, she broke my heart on something she told me, which chilled my entire spine and let my tears loose. My niece has started crying when she wakes up in the morning.

A few weeks ago, my sister heard my niece crying in her room a few minutes after her father went to work. She ran quickly to her room seeing her weeping in her bed. She held her and tried to comfort her but she didn’t stop. She went crying more as my sister held her. She took her to the living room and brought her all her favorite dolls and toys but she didn’t stop. She didn’t even touch them. She played a Sesame Street DVD for her but she didn’t look at it. She kept crying. Desperate, my sister took her outside to the backyard. As her feet stepped on the garden’s grass, she started jumping and running here and there with her tears drying gradually on her delicate cheeks. “She was depressed,” my sister told me. “She wanted to be outside the house. We barely go out these days.”

My heart sank thinking about how my 17-months old niece felt imprisoned in her house. She is one of the hundreds of thousands of children imprisoned in their houses, unable to enjoy their childhood. The last time my sister said they went to an amusement park and zoo was last month where she said they took the risk for the sake of this little girl. She told me how she was absolutely happy to see the animals at the zoo as she was jumping, carrying her red and purple balloons. She said they can’t go frequently there because one car bomb or a suicide bomber would be enough to turn their life into a tragedy.

Now my worries do not only include fear of death for my family, but also the trauma that this war is going to leave on this little girl. USA Today published a very good article about how 70 percent of Iraqi children are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which ironically, I don’t believe it’s a “post” disorder since they are still going through the same horror every single day.

Many Iraqi children have to pass dead bodies on the street as they walk to school in the morning, according to a separate report last week by the International Red Cross. Others have seen relatives killed or have been injured in mortar or bomb attacks. © USA Today

What will happen to her in the future? How is she going to deal with her childhood deprivation in the future? What kind of a child she is going to be being deprived of even enjoying the slide on the weekend? What kind of child she is going to be being imprisoned inside her house all day unable to be among children in her age? What will she say when she grows up and talks about her childhood? So many questions are in my mind but there is no answer to any one of them.

And as usual, the elected Iraqi government has no solutions for anything. Their recklessness to this situation has become as damaging as what the insurgents and militias are doing against the people of this country. Every time someone asks them about something, they use the phrase “security situation”.

The Iraqi government is aware of the problem but largely unequipped to address
it, said Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman. "Until we have proper security
in Baghdad, there's not much we can do to help these children," Al-Dabbagh said
in Washington. © USA Today

I don’t know when this security situation is going to be improved. Maybe when there will be no more Iraqis in Iraq!

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

Manhattaning

The last time I went had been to New York City was in December 2005 when I did some volunteer work for the Committee to Protect Journalists. It was quite an experience, working with the CPJ and spending more than a week in Manhattan.

The chance came again to go to New York City with my international friends at my university where we organized a group trip before the end of the semester. People at the International Programs wanted the trip to be to Washington DC but almost everybody wanted to go to NYC and so we did.

We wanted to see the Statue of Liberty first, but we were stunned to see dozens people waiting in a long time which if we joined, we might have spent the entire day there. So, we forget about it and decided to take some pictures for the Statue from far away and then continued the trip in the city.

A few days ago, some of my American friends and one of my Polish friends suggested we go to Sahara East, one of the most famous Hookah bars in NYC. I searched online last night and found out that it came out on the top of the lists of the Hookah Bars in the United States. So I printed out the map to make sure we find its exact place, and so we did.

Sahara East is a wonderful Egyptian Hookah bar marked by its unique Egyptian celebration tents and traditional Egyptian lamps hanged in the middle of the tent which makes you feel nothing but being in one of the cafés in Cairo. Of course, we ordered hookah. This time, we didn’t order the “two apples flavor”. Instead, we had the strawberry one. My friend Adam is officially addicted to smoking Hookah [only flavored tobacco] especially after we hanged out several times smoking it in my apartment. My lovely family at work in Baghdad gave me a wonderful and fancy Hookah as a present the night before I left Baghdad.

As we smoked, we ordered some Arabic Egyptian black and lemon tea which was perfect for the day since it was chilly and mostly cloudy.

Long story short, we spent most of the time after the Hookah bar walking enjoying the beauty of Manhattan. We went to Union Square, Ground Zero, Empire State building area, and of course, Time Square which was our last stop where we were picked up and driven back to Philadelphia.

It was an amazing trip. I had so much fun with my international friends, especially Adam and Jan from Poland whom I consider now two of my best friends. The trip came on the right time where I needed a break from work, my graduate studies, the bad news from home and the worry about my loved ones which haunted me since my feet stepped on the American land.

I posted my photos on my photoblog, Random Images. I hope you enjoy them.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

What Else?

All the way to work, I kept thinking about how did the people who were on al-Sarrafiya bridge feel when they found their bodies riddled with shrapnel. I put myself in their shoes and imagined how the whole thing happened. Driving, going to work or school, thinking of death while driving and then Boom! Everything is gone, the bridge and themselves. Images of people’s bodies falling in the Tigris haunted me. What were these poor people saying to themselves in the distance between the river and the destroyed bridge as they were falling?

It’s killing me to see my beautiful Baghdad dying like this. These bloodthirsty new Talibans who came to Iraq are demolishing every aspect of life. They are doing exactly what they did in Afghanistan. The people became powerless. They don’t know what to do. On one hand, they have to deal with their sectarian and corrupted government and on the other they have to find a way to defeat these criminals.

When is this madness going to stop? Oh Baghdad, my heart breaks for you with every brick falling, with every blood dropping, with every tear flowing, with every Iraqi dying.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

A Book from a Friend

A few months ago, my friend and classmate Sarah gave me a book she considered “awesome”. Being overwhelmed by the bulky books I had to read for my studies, I put Sarah’s book in the bookcase hoping that one day I find the right time to read it. That day came three days ago when I decided to spend the Easter break reading it.

The book Sarah gave me is called The Kite Runner, a stunning novel written by Kahled Hosseini, an Afghan–American novelist and physician. I took the book from the bookcase and hesitated for a minute. Do I want to read something that makes me feel sadder than I am now? Hmm?! Finally, I made up my mind. What the hell, I said. It wouldn’t be worse than what is happening to my family now. But I was wrong.

The Kite Runner follows a story of a young boy, Amir who faces the challenges that confront him on the path to manhood. Living in Afghanistan in the 1960s, Amir enjoys a life of privilege that is shaped by his brotherly friendship with Hassan, his servant's son. Amir is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Hassan, the son of his father's Hazara servant. The story is set against a flashback of chaotic events, from the fall of the monarchy in Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, the mass exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the Taliban regime.

As I was reading the story, I could see how things in Iraq are going as bad as what happened in Afghanistan where people lived in peace for a long time before Russia invaded their country, followed by Taliban regime taking over not only the entire country, but the lives of the innocent people. In one scene [no spoilers], Amir goes back to Afghanistan after spending a long time in the United States. His mind flies back with a series of flashbacks about how Kabul used to be beautiful and how now it’s nothing but a spot of poverty and dust created by the worst totalitarian regime the country had ever witnessed. Amir’s words are stuck in my mind even though I already thought about them when I bid Baghdad the last farewell. With both eyes wet, I recall looking from the airplane window thinking what this war might do more to hurt Baghdad? By the time I was there, Baghdad was almost dead. Today, it’s officially dead. I looked and wondered about how the extremists are doing what they started in Afghanistan. Maybe they were better there because they have Sunnis only. Baghdad is being destroyed by Sunni and Shiite extremists. One of the characters mentions that Afghani people were happy when the Taliban men came after they liberated the country from the Russians. But these Afghanis were let down when these same liberators turned against them and destroyed most, if not all, aspects of life. I looked back to the elections and how people in my country were happy and optimistic in going to the polling centers voting for their new leaders. I stopped reading for a minute and thought how these same voters were let down by those whom they voted for.

Although the story is fictional, it was derived from real stories and incidents with specific setting. There were so many details and incredible description of how people there went through all these years. Lives of Afghani individuals were well written and described in a way that the reader finishes the book without questions of who’s who.

So, if you are interested in reading such kinds of books, I really advise you to read it and enjoy the beauty of Hosseini’s writing style and talent in molding historical events with fiction.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

Tears

It is very hard to see your mother crying. Really crying. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine you being far away unable to wipe her tears? Unable to compensate her? Make her happy? I couldn’t even see her tears. I heard her crying in the phone. She was speaking and speaking and then burst into tears. Tears that became the only companion of her after I left. I tried to calm her down, but can a crippled voice do that? Was it really helpful? My voice thousands of miles away? Was it really able to wipe at least one tear from the tear streams that flowed down her cheeks like the Tigris and the Euphrates?

When my father was abroad, I was there for her. I was the stick she could lean on. I was the smile that she always wanted. I was the shelter that secured her. Today, I left her and my father by themselves imprisoned in the house. She missed everything. She lost everything. She lost her precious life. She is deprived from seeing her granddaughter. She can’t take my father to the hospital. She felt humiliated because there was no one there to take care of them. No one. No fucken one. Everyone said no. Everyone said, “We can’t. We’re afraid.” Everyone prefer seeing him crippled, disabled but to take him to the hospital. Even those whom he helped his entire life turned their faces.

She told me she didn’t want to say it but she couldn’t resist my voice. I am her son. She wanted to unload all the sorrow kept her heart. I was the only one to listen. No one would listen. Is that fair? Is that how life should be? Is that how humanity should become? Did it really reach that extent? Have we really lost everything?

But why does she have to suffer? Why? I mean isn’t it enough? Weren’t all these years of wars and sanctions enough? Weren’t all the times she cried enough? Is it really fair that she and my father have to suffer in this age? Is it fair that I left them alone? Am I a bad son? Shouldn’t I be with them now? Why am I being selfish? Studies? Master’s? shit? But what about my parents? Am I happy now? Am I satisfied now? Am I grateful? Am I?

Where is Fatima al-Zahra? Where is Virgin Mary? Where is Mother Terrissa? Where is Mohammed? Where is Jesus? Where is Allah from all of this? Where are the human beings? Where are the pure hearts? Vaporized? Dead?

Zainab

© Sawtuha – Iraqi Women Activists’ Forum

You Both Suck

©Reuters

OK. That’s it. I reached the extent that I really want to throw up. Every day I say I am not going to read the news in the morning but eventually I do, of course to make sure my family survived another day. But when news like McCain saying “there are a lot of good news” top the headlines, it makes me not only want to throw up but to have this feeling of absolute disgust and anger for the rest of the day or maybe for the rest of my life.

When do these freaken republicans stop spitting their poison? When are they going to stop using the war and the Iraqis’ blood for their own propaganda? McCain visiting Baghdad?!! To do what? Hello!!! Why is he visiting now? Of course, because of the presidential elections. Isn’t that a shameful act? I mean if Americans believe in his crap, we don’t.

“You read every day about suicide bombings, kidnappings, rocket attacks and other terrible acts. What we don't read about and what is new is a lot of the good news -- the drop in the murders in Baghdad, the establishment of security outposts throughout the city ... the deployment of additional Iraqi brigades to Baghdad," McCain said. ©Reuters

Oh yeah, good news? What good news? My father might need a surgery in his spinal cord if the physiotherapy doesn’t work soon. Does McCain know that because of the war, the hospital of Physiotherapy is not functioning as it should be? Does McCain know that the only hospital that has the equipments and professional doctors is in Kadhimiya hospital, which is at the other side of lawless Baghdad? Does he know if my father doesn’t do the therapy, he might become a disabled person? Does he know how hard and almost impossible for him to go to the hospital? Does he know that my father cannot trust Iraqi forces checkpoints because they might be militias or insurgents? Does he know that my 17-months-old niece wakes up in the morning crying because she is imprisoned in the house all day? Does he read the news like this or this or this? I guess he doesn’t because he visited Shorja Market! My ass. He was accompanied by dozens of armed bodyguards and US troops. If he really thinks that there is a progress, why did he have to go out like this?

Disgusting Republican.

Democrats, wait. Don’t be so happy. You also suck. I am not a huge fan of US troops but I do believe that the withdrawal you are calling for is a big mistake. Of course, it is. Do you think invading a country and leaving it destroyed is something that history will be praising you for? Don’t you think that what your country did is very important to fix? But that’s just me thinking like this. You also proved you are no better than the Republicans. You proved how selfish you are. You didn’t even discuss the issue of the people of a country your country destroyed with tanks and stupid no-future plans.

And finally, it’s our fault that we had this feeling of trust and confidence in you. Alas! I really thought you are the leaders of the world. But it seems that you guys pay Hollywood hell of money to keep your ass covered. You beautify your image through movies which you use as propaganda to tell the world you are the “Jesus” of earth. Even Jesus has lost hope in you.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com