From Arab Woman Blues. As a commenter on her blog writes, “but I have come to the realization that you are the only one, that I know of, that brings the true pain of this situation to us.”
Endless Beginnings…
Thursday, June 21, 2007
For God’s sake, tell me where to begin?
I was set out to write about Father’s day and the thousands of fatherless Iraqi children.The thousands of killed fathers, the thousands of fathers trying desperately hard to feed their families, daily putting their lives at great risk, in a country gripped by demonic violence. The exiled fathers, selling scraps in Amman and Damascus, bearing the brunt of daily insults. Or the unemployed fathers, feeling torn inside watching their kids go hungry. Or maybe the head bent down father, slouched posture, hiding scars beneath a worn out shirt. The father that has been imprisoned, humiliated, tortured and sodomized, unable to look his children in the eyes…
Or maybe I should write about sexual torture and sodomy instead…
The further horrors emerging from Abu Ghraib and the Taguba report…
More reports of “abuse”. And I am sure Abu Ghraib is not over. I am certain that more Abu Ghraibs are taking place in Iraq, in those shadowy detention centers…
Abu Ghraib.
An American brave boy caught with his pants down, sodomizing an Iraqi female detainee. I cannot stomach the scene and will prepare a longer post on that, to expurgate your filth… Torn rectums and feces come to mind.
Wait, I think I will write about feces instead…
An orphanage in Baghdad. 24 young boys founds laying naked in their own pool of excrements, starved, covered with feces and flies, hands tied to bare metal beds.
With the “liberation”, the main orphanage of Baghdad was bombed. Of course no one spoke of that one. Hundreds of children took to the streets and were trafficked in, traded in.
UNICEF wrote a brief report on it but then it disappeared from their website.
Trading in dollars for each child’s head, like in a slave market, exported to neighboring Gulf countries as…only Allah knows as what…
Heads and more heads…Perhaps I need to write about rolling heads…
A leaked autopsy report from the Iraqi ministry of Health (what an oxymoron that title is) states that Barzan Al-Tikriti’s head was very slowly slit with a sharp instrument whilst his body showed bruises from kicks. They slowly severed his head, very slowly and kicked his jolting body at the same time, in another pool of blood…
Severed…Wait, maybe I should write about forced circumcision in Basrah. A public castration. Another bloody scene.
Mahdi Militiamen (remember Mahdi, your darling drill boy?)rounded up a group of Sabaeans. Sabaeans are one of the oldest “ethnic” groups in Iraq, converting them by force. At gun and drill point, they agreed to embrace the Mahdi creed.
An old Sabaean of 70 years, with a beard reaching his belly, was circumcised.
Bloody severed foreskin.
Did I say blood? Which reminds me of Othman’s blood clot, stuck in his leg…
“Layla I need some blood thinner, I need aspirin – Help me for God’s sake”.
Othman cannot leave the house, cannot get to a pharmacy, cannot see a doctor. Snipers, checkpoints, fear…”They are burying me alive at home”…he says.
Buried alive at home…Yes this is what I will be writing about.
Alia was driving her car with Auntie Sameera to get some gasoline.
Suddenly, her car was riddled with bullets. They were lucky.
A man in black walks up to her.
– What have you done? You nearly killed all of us.
– Why did you not stop?
– I did not see you. There is no uniform, no checkpoint, no nothing.
– I waved.
– I did not see you. I am sorry.
– I do not want your apology. I want you to go home and stay there. I never want to see your face in this neighborhood again. You are to stay at home where you belong.
Home, a home…any home…I think I will write about that instead.
Marwan is a Palestinian Iraqi. This is how he defines himself.
“I do not know where my family is. They are stranded somewhere in the desert, between Syria and Iraq. Layla, I already lost 4 of them in Baladiyat. I regret Saddam so much…”
Ah regrets and nostalgia…Maybe I need to write about this instead.
Salman, an Iraqi shia. An staunch anti-Saddam says to me.
“There is no end to this dark tunnel, Layla. Give us back a strong government, with an iron fist. I would pay anything to have that back…”
Did I hear pay ? Pay, paychecks…
Now check this one out.
I mentioned in one of my posts that a junior member of parliament in the Green Zone brothel makes 30’000 dollars a month plus fringe benefits. Now do you want to know how much the matron makes? No joke here.
Jalal Talabani makes 1 million dollars A MONTH plus fringe benefits. This heavy hooker has pocketed in 2 years, 24 million dollars! Whilst the majority of the Iraqis don’t have a piece of bread…
Bread…That reminds me of Nadia’s husband. After being sacked from his job as an accountant, he took up the job of a baker. I just learned that he has typhoid.
Raging fevers in raging Iraq…
So kindly tell me, where would you like me to start? Pick and choose.
Fatherless day, orphans in feces, sodomy Americana, blood pools, home burials, severed heads, public castrations, erring homelessness, regrets and nostalgia or how to make a million bucks per month in Iraq? Or maybe I need to stop here and put out this fever?
So when you decide, let me know. But do remember there is no end in sight…
Now, If you don’t mind, I would like to go and crawl into some corner, take up a foetal position and vanish…Vanish from these endless beginnings, vanish from my own powerlessness, vanish far away….
THE END.
