Coincidence?!

95 Policewomen Graduated in Karbala

Rahim Alhaj Nominated for 2008 Grammy Award

Rahim Alhaj Nominated for 2008 Grammy Award

Best Traditional World Music Album
When The Soul Is Settled: Music Of Iraq, Rahim Alhaj with Souhail Kaspar,

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

Rahim Alhaj, virtuoso oud performer and composer has been nominated for a Grammy Award for his Smithsonian Folkways recording, When The Soul is Settled, Music of Iraq recorded with master percussionist Shouhail Kaspar.

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Mohammed Walks Again

There is no doubt that the war has left America with a bad image, especially among Iraqis who were the most affected by the atrocities of war. Forgetting about the horror of war and those who caused it is not an easy task. Forgiving is even harder. Yet, living in the U.S. has showed me and many other Iraqis that Americans are not as barbarians as we imagined them to be. They don’t fly in warplanes and throw bombs. Instead they are very normal and hospitable, and when asked for help they are always ready.

In 2005, CNN featured one of the victims of the war. Mohammed, then 10-years-old, lost one of his legs when an explosion took place in the street where he was playing along with his friends and little cousin. The 6-year-old cousin couldn’t make it to survive. She died immediately after Mohammed saw her bleeding, screaming, and dying in front of him.

After he was featured on CNN, Elissa Montani, the founder of the Global Medical Relief fund, got in touch with the network to help Mohammed have a new leg that makes him walk again, and change his life. GMRF is an American New York-based non-profit organization is committed to bring hope and help to children who are missing or have lost use of their limbs, have been severely burned, or are otherwise damaged due to the atrocities of war, natural disaster or illness.

When Mohammed and his mother landed in Philadelphia, they were very impressed. “[Americans] are not our enemies,” Mohammed’s mother said in the video posted below. Americans helped them instead of their fellow Arabs, she mentions.

Today, Mohammed is very happy. Finally and after two years of becoming a disabled child, hope found its way to his saddened little heart. He is not only happy, but also grateful.

Thank you GMRF and thanks to CNN that helped both be in touch.

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Find CNN's reporting about Mohammed's hope HERE and HERE.

Baghdad Mourns a Fallen Mullah

KNOW, O my friends, that there was once a Mullah who owned today’s news headlines, and who was highly valued in his castle in Baghdad. For years, the Mullah lived happily among his peers in his castle which hosted one of the biggest newspapers in the world. But the Mullah’s lifetime wasn’t that long; his majesty was assassinated this morning by a group of thugs entering his palace.

Mullah Hentish was shot dead this morning by the enemies of his empire. Blackpigs, the enemies of the most important creatures on earth, shot him dead as he barked at his enemy’s Mullahs.

Mullah Hentish was in a very bad mood that day because apparently his housemistress forgot to give him a shower or please him with one of the Monarchy’s female Mullah’s which resulted in his bad mood. He got very angry even at his fellow Mullahs as they were accompanied by their blackpigs. The Mullahs were annoyed and ordered their blackpigs to kill him on the spot. And so the glorious Mullah died in his wounds, bleeding, moaning for help. No one was fast enough to help him.

After the brutal assassination of the Mullah, the state of emergency was announced in all over the empire. A delegation of diplomats visited the scene and promised the housemistress of the castle to punish the blackpigs if found guilty.

Mourning hovered over Baghdad. The sounds of the Azan and the bells from mosques and churches entered through every window in the Baghdad’s houses, announcing the horrifying death of the Mullah. Baghdadis, who have never been sad before, locked up their shops, stopped celebrating Eid, and put on black clothes mourning their beloved Mullah’s death. Cries were heard, sad and heartbreaking: “Oh Mullah Hentish! Oh our savior! May God take revenge from your killers.”

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A Handful of Home Soil

I don’t even know where to start from. What can I say? Really? The sound effects? The characters? The feelings and the emotions? I was imprisoned, or to be specific, I was taken away. Yes, I was taken to a world I have never been to. But was it one world?(I am thinking as I am writing) I don’t really think so. They were three: a world of beautiful and normal life, a world with brutality and inhumanity and a world of peace after mayhem, a real mayhem not like the one I see here when people consider a snow storm mayhem.

I flew like the kite. I ran like the runner. I was like the kite runner, jumping and running on the hills and snow-covered buildings in Kabul. I felt the heartbeats of every child competing in the game. I jumped and cheered when the Ameer and Hassan’s kite won the competition. And I watered my eyes too with compassion, not only because of the horrible scenes in a fictious story, but because they were so real. They were so damn right. They were so horrifying and magnifying. I felt the stone the filthy bearded-man throwing at the woman coming out of the screen hitting my head, running blood allover my clothes. The sounds of the shootings and the fear of looking at the terrorizing rulers of Kabul reminded me with those I encountered. Same clothes, same religion, same filth and same power: those running Iraq with power of religious AK-47s, those whose beards hide a devil in every hair, those who have no mercy even for God Himself. Those who practice the vice and claim doing the virtue.

It has been months since I read the book before the movie came out, yet never forgot the details. Now the movie came out with more vividness of the brutality of life and its fake promises. One scene hit me the most. I didn’t remember reading it in the book. I might have, but not sure. The scene of running away from the Soviets who invaded Kabul. A terrible reminder, a stab, a stone, a beast tearing my healing chest. They ran away from the invaders like we did when my neighborhood fell. They took their bags and documents and left and so we did in reality. The look, the tears, the heartbeats of going to the unknown. The horror of the idea of the possibility of not being able to see home again. It all came in one image reminding me of that day: the sound of the roaring tanks, the image of the camouflage helmets and brown boots.

Ameer’s father didn’t forget the most important thing. He was not as stupid as I was. He was not as naive as I was. He knew it, all the way out of his country. He felt it. As he was leaving, he bent down quickly before the darkness of the oil tanker he was hiding in deprived him from his country’s light, and took a handful of his country's soil, hiding it in his small pocket watch after he kissed it. How lucky he was to do so. How smart he was.

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I am a Muslim

I got this interesting video from an American friend of mine.

I will come back with some interesting ideas after I finish my exams in a few days.

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Borders

It’s cold outside. Freezing. Snow has covered the city with its beautiful flakes. Yet, it’s never so cold for the Philadelphians. Their energy increases this time of the year despite the weather’s merciless coldness. In the streets, their colorful winter hats, coats, scarves and thick jackets are their rejection to the cold weather’s tyranny which infected even someone like me who comes from a warm country.

Not too far from Philadelphia lies Wynnewood, a small town filled with beautiful European-style houses, roads and stores. In its major shopping area, a huge bookstore resides. Recognized by its shiny white sign, Borders is considered an attraction point to book lovers and all those who adore knowledge.

Every now and then, my friends and I come to the bookstore’s coffee shop. With its brown walls festooned with pictures of coffee cups images and art portraits, the coffee shop attracts not only us, but many others like a honey jar attracting bees. It’s never boring. People chitchat, drink coffee, read books, do homework, listen to music, and read to their kids.

I fell in love with this place the first time I came in the summer. A friend of mine had classes in the summer and asked me if I could accompany him to Borders where he always studies when he feels bored studying at home. I didn’t reject the idea and never regretted it. I never stopped going since.

I am here sitting in this coffee shop, studying for my final exam week. My friends picked me up and we all went there to study. Once we got in, one might never miss the aroma of coffee, mixed with the smell of the brand new books.

With my headphones on, I am listening to some Arabic music on my laptop. The music hit me, the homesickness, the nostalgia. All I could think of is my friends and family. I wished they were here with me. And for the first time, I didn’t wish I was there with them. There is no such beautiful place to hang out in without fear anymore.

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The Ghosts of Taliban Hover Over Basra Women

It aches me to see one of Iraq’s most famous former cosmopolitan cities falling in the hands of the new Taliban of the era. I have written over and over about how Basra is suffering from the extreme Shiite militias strict rules, yet the city’s transformation is heading from bad to worse.

While women suffer in the date palms-rich city, politicians and government officials are playing a catch-22. Accusations have filled their mouths while actions have no place to be carried out.

After the Christian Science Monitor’s article, and the BBC latest story about how women are abused if found not adhering to strict Islamic rules by the Shiite militias, Reuters broke out a new story in which more than 40 Basra women were killed and tortured simply because they weren’t wearing Hijab. Their bodies were dumped in the full-of-frightened-people streets.

The Basra police chief provided Reuters with the number of the victims. "Some women were killed with their children," Major-General Abdul-Jalil Khalaf, told Reuters. "One with a six-year-old child, another with an 11-year-old."

Khalaf’s account came similar to what Um Zainab told the BBC last month about the situation in Basra. “Two days ago two women were killed in al-Makal district. All these incidents are recorded as 'killers unknown' and the bodies remain unidentified, because no-one dares collect them. People said the women had received a warning beforehand, and that the gunmen then came to their houses and killed them - one of them in front of her kids.” Um Zainab is a woman from Basra who has experienced fear on first hand experience. Like a lot of women in Iraq, she yearns for the secular days where women were free to wear Hijab or not. “I remember back in the 1970s our teachers used to wear miniskirts and have the latest hair-dos. These are terrible setbacks. We don't know what they want, or why they want to take us back 14 centuries.”

These criminal incidents have created a huge debate among people of Basra. Muqtada al-Sadr’s officials and leaders of the Mahdi army were the first to deny their involvement in these incidents. Salam al-Maliki, a Sadr official and a former transportation minister, known of his extreme loyalty to Muqtada al-Sadr and his extreme religious rules argued that the police chief should announce the names of the women found dead, al-Arabiya news reported yesterday. He accused the police of “exaggerating the numbers,” saying that his “[Sadr] movement is not responsible for that.” He added that their main goal is “not to kill women, but to stand in the face of occupation.”

Al-Maliki also said that there are women wearing “unsuitable” outfits in universities including Christian and Muslim women whom they don’t harass or “force to wear Hijab.” Um Zainab thinks the opposite. Her daughter, a college student, told her “that some men [on campus] are watching how women dress and ask them: 'Why are you wearing a skirt and a shirt?' One of her friends who doesn't wear a hijab received a letter threatening her.”

As a response to al-Maliki’s defense of his militia, the Basra police chief told al-Arabiya, “these crimes have not been reported because of the fear of retaliation by the killers.”

In the meantime, British parliamentary report said that British forces have failed to establish security in Basra, Voices of Iraq reported. "The city is dominated by militias and the police force contains (murderous) and (corrupt) elements", the Monday report added.

Stuck between accusations and no actions, women in Basra need urgent help. On this platform, I call on all humanitarian and women organizations to call for an immediate and urgent action to help women in Basra and Iraq in general from falling victims in the hands of the new Talibans. I lost hope in calling on the Iraqi politicians and the government because they are themselves religious extremists who call on imposing strict rules on men and women’s behavior allover the country.

Finally, I leave you with this report from Aljazeera International TV network. It sums up in pictures and interviews what I have already stated above.

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