Women and Exile
On other blog - here.
Endless Beginnings...
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 deten
Comments
In solidarity and with love.
Thank you. A man sent me an email today and said " wombs, nests, homes... and men are too fucked up to understand anything."
That kind of gave me an inkling of hope. Finally one man who understands.
Did you notice that the American wankers did not comment?!
Bless you and yours.
In solidarity, with you, with all Iraqi women and women worldwide, who always have to pay the greatest price.
Maybe, dear Little Deer :-), because at the sight/thought of the very prime sources of Life being drained and parched into as many sterile little deserts there is no knowledge to parade nor lectures to impart nor poems to declaim nor theories to expound nor serenades to sing nor criticism to exercise, nothing, absolutely nothing, blank space, no reaction of the mind or the heart that can be adequately rendered in words.
I will try something, for Love's sake...
UPROOTEDNESS is the unveiled, stark naked, and terrible, NAME of both Layla's individual and Iraq's collective tragedy, the mentally and emotionally insufferable reality of a devastating, though God willing only temporary, triumph of the destructiveness, the Beast, or better still the Chaos in Man over everything good, beautiful, sacred, dear, warm, sense-giving, orderly, harmonious, secure, lasting, that can hope to be achieved in this already so fragile earthly "exile" of ours.
I remain stubbornly convinced, though, that it all WILL NOT end up this way, for the simple and wonderful reason that...it just CAN NOT end up this way.
Never mind what the OUTDATED scriptures which the modern-age Pharisees and Crusaders shield themselves behind say about Eve the "sinner" and Babylon the "Grand Prostitute".
God holds BOTH us women wombs of Life AND our beloved Iraq womb of civilization in the HIGHEST GLORY, and will sooner destroy the whole creation than allow the two "masterpieces" of all times to be lost.
I am with you, dearest Iraqi sister, wherever you were, are and will be, I follow you in sympathetic kindred spirit.
Regards.
Everything will be back to normal, and you will go back to your beautiful country and beloved home- Inshallah. Iraq is too big, too ancient and too genuine not to come back.
Your home is a part of yourself. So long as this part of you is still there, which I can clearly see, no laser guided bombs, no killers, no rockets, no drillers no neutron bombs, no nothing could ever take that part away from you.
I have always believed home is where the heart is. I am lucky, and have both.
I have moved many times, but that is very different to being displaced. It is only within the last few years I have become very attached to my home. My heart is there too, if my heart were not there, would I feel differently?
My thoughts are with your Grandmothers and Aunts, also my Grandmothers and Aunts, the last of whom died in December.
Why does life have to be so damn hard? Why is it the woman that has to hold things together? Our grief is held inside, clamped tight, only to come out occasionally.
Most men do not understand, but occasionally you find one that is special. I found one of those. He says that a home without me, is not a home.
You stay fierce, strong and proud of who you are. I know you will never forget your roots, just as I cannot.
Stay safe.
But then we all know Nature is a Mother only to animals, and a fairy-tale Bad Stepmother to us.
We've got to make do with invisible, or virtual, "shells"...haven't we, Layla ? ;-)
Bless you, your memories and your dreams.
If the latter, do you have any memories of the invasion, the fall of Baghdad and the following early times of occupation you directly experienced, that you would like to share ?
Thank you and keep up the good work.
You write so beautifully and so eloquently and Iraq needs people who are inclined like you are. Did you ever think of starting a blog?
If not , please do...You are much needed.
Am happy for your that you have not known displacement or exile even though you have experienced other heart breaking things...
99% of the Iraqi women in exile, have experienced what you have experienced PLUS displacement, exile and losing husbands and home.
Do you think anyone care a fig for them? The answer is sadly no.
What I said to Nakhla is true for you too. We need more Iraqi women like yourselves and Nakhla to speak out...And am sure you both will do a GREAT JOB.
I agree with you. Women ultimately the highest price. However that does not seem to matter to our "valiant" men. After all, we have been asked to "wait". Wait for colonialism to be done away with, wait for wars to finish, wait for occupations to be dealt with...and yet we are still here and our situation is 100000 times worse than we started out with.
Got no invisible shell, can I borrow yours? :-)
I thought you didn't even want comments on your other blog to begin with? You wanted to keep it "pure".
I guess your ego is showing again.
But Layla, year after year after year just goes on and on and on, going on 5 years now!!!
Many women HAVE TO get income by any means possible or have to brave the elements to go outside and try to brave the elements, but all I see Layla doing is blogging year after year after year.
Maybe it is her income.
Some women have to work in Iraq or some have to go to another country and do what it takes to get by. Layl though is comfortable. She has a home, electricity, an internet,a computer, food and water, time to socialize.
It seems she wants to cozy up and try to make it look lke she is suffering the way many Iraqi women TRULY are but she isn't.
She can take a taxi around, meet friends at the bar and get snacks & drinks and come home and tell everybody HOW HARD she has it. Yeah right.
She doesnt know what suffering is. Shes never been beating, tortured, raped..any of it. Shes a phony. A fraud that tries to put herself alongside others that truly are suffering, that truly are forced to make decisios becasue they truly have no other recourse.
Then she tries to schmoose up to Islam yet she com=ndemns to much of it at the same time.
Solidarity? yeah right. Think of solidarity while your having your cocktails at the bar and other women truly are in life or death situations.
what a schmuck
Youre just a talking head and setting on the sidelines to boot. Loser.
You lost. ha
OH...MY POOR SWEET IRAQ IS GONE boo-hoo-hoo
get over it and move on infadel..old woman
you are indeed a very stupid person. I can't help you with your retardness nor with your drinking problem nor with your reading and comprehension skills...You are an idiot not worth dignifying with any further replies.