An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...

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...

Many send me emails and leave comments insulting me. The typical classics, variations on the same theme go like this : "Bitch, hag, old cunt, fuck you, fuck your family, fuck Iraq, eat shit and die... You are a zionist, a mossad agent, a CIA agent, a sellout, a Baathist whore, an Arab whore, a cock sucking whore, a Wahabi whore, a Saddam whore..." ad infinitum. Then, there are threats : "We know who you are, we will get you, count your days, we will fuck you, you can no longer hide...etc..." None actually really move me. Only yesterday, I received yet another one which I found slightly interesting. It said: "You dirty whore, you miss Saddam. Fuck you"... Now I can relate to that one. No, it is not the fuck bit. We all know by now that men who repeat the word fuck too often, usually fail to deliver...Nor the whore bit, I find that rather over used... What resonated within was " You miss Saddam". That last bit touched me. As a matter of fact, I do ...

Never had I fathomed, not even in my remotest imagination, that a day will come when God's houses will be attacked and destroyed. The way they are today, in Iraq...Never. This was and remains the most unthinkable, unacceptable act to me and to countless others... This Red Line is now crossed...Crossed, transgressed, trespassed into blasphemy... In fact, this Red Line was first crossed when the American brave boys started blowing up minarets...The first in Fallujah. The Red Line was crossed when they desecrated the sacred places, ransacking them, setting them on fire, tearing, spitting and urinating on the Holy Book, painting crucifixes on the walls, stealing Mosques treasuries....And above all, killing people in them. Worshipers in prayers...Prostrated, curved, curbed upon themselves, bent, rounded up, wrapped upon themselves like in a cocoon, like an infant in an embryo... In instants of total surrender... Defenseless, vulnerable, fragile...at the Mercy...and killed... Yes, that d...

I remember reading a book some years back. I cannot remember the name of the author though. I did warn you that I am bad with names. But the exact title is well lodged in my mind: "Scream quietly or the neighbors will hear". The book was about female battering. You know what woman battering is don't you? It is basically when a man beats, strikes, punches, kicks, pounds...a woman and sometimes severly enough that she ends up in hospital and sometimes severly enough to bring about her death. It is interesting to note that the verb "to batter" is also used in cooking i.e to make a dough. The French have similar anologies between battering a woman and food. They would say he turned her into a "compote".(compote is cooked fruits). Ditto for Arabic expressions. They would say he broke her bones, they became like "soup"... Am sure other "cultures" have more analogies of the same sort. I will leave it to you to dig up some expressions that ...

I am in no mood to write anything today. I think the "blues" have caught up with me big time. My grandmother used to tell me, when you are feeling down, count your blessings and you will feel better... I search for the blessings...They are not to be found in Iraq. More pillaging and more destruction. More lost lives and lost loves... More broken hearts, more destroyed souls...Evaporated bodies, names that no longer exist, faces that one digs hard to remember... All gone in some whirlpool of black smoke made of gunpowder...Made of army uniforms, made of sectarian shouts, made of dancing over the dead... Iraq will never be a shia only state. And we have enough with one "chosen" people, we don't need another one. Let the sectarian "chosen" ones move next door. Let the mullahs bless them and let them stay there till death visits them and shrouds them in Qum carpets... Chomsky, your zionist spiritual father must be so proud now. The "shias are sooooooo...

This is what the thermometer read. To be more precise it read 48.5 C. And do not quibble with me over 1.5 degrees. One and half degrees more or less, it is too much. Scorching sun, suffocating heat, a dried out people... Not a drop of water. The Sunni areas are worst hit. No water and no electricity. Sadr City on the other hand has both. No water to wash, no water to cool, no water to cook, no water to clean, no water to drink... No Water. Simply no water. And it's too much. As I have mentioned time and time again in my previous posts, the ministries in charge of Water, Electricity, Works, Health...are in the hands of the sectarian Iranians. And I repeat what I have said before namely that this is a DELIBERATE policy on their part to engage in a genocide against Iraqis and Iraqi sunnis in particular. A genocide within a grander genocide conducted by the Zionists Americans. (On a side note but as important. Seems according to the Washington Post, the CIA produced in August 2002 a si...

I know you guys (and gals) make a big deal out of Friday nights. "Hey the weekend is here, thank God it's Friday" line, I have heard it once too many. Friday night and you go and get pissed drunk out of your brains or have some cozy tete a tete with your date, or invite some friends over for a party... While I have to sit here on a Friday night and report your own horrors back to you. Hope this will not spoil your "mood" though. I have lost yet another relative this week. He lives in Amil district. He has 4 kids and is in his 20's. He walked to his front door and the American air raids bombed his house. As a matter of fact they bombed a whole row of houses and around 20 men of his age died. Now as am typing this, the Mahdi Army of Muqtada Shit has encircled the Amil district and it is now under siege. His brother, early 20's was praying in the mosque. He was detained by the Americans who beat him up so bad they broke all his ribs. They finally released h...