[amc] [Fwd: Re: Essay On Coming Iraq War]

From: "M.J. Mc Evoy" <chewy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <menno.talk.issues@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,<menno.org.peace.d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 11:15:42 -0600 (CST)
This was sent to me by my wife.
I think it is relevant.

Shalom,
Micheal

-------- Original Message --------

On 17 Mar 2003 10:31:36 GMT, in alt.mothers you wrote:

>Sarah Goodyear is a well-known editor and writer in New York City who's
>also a new mother concerned about the looming Iraq war.  In response,
>she is allowing the free use, reproduction, and publication for all of
>the following essay:
>
>A Mother's Thoughts
>
>by Sarah Goodyear
>(http://homepage.mac.com/sarahgoodyear/Personal1.html)
>
>My son turns one year old on March 18th. I'm going to bake a carrot
>cake, and decorate it with a bunny drawn in icing.
>
>Somewhere in Baghdad, there is another woman who will be marking her
>child's first birthday that day. I doubt that she will be baking a cake,
>or wrapping presents, in the days leading up to this milestone. Because
>she must know, as do I, that March 18th is likely to have another
>meaning this year. It could well be the first day of the American war on
>her nation. The first day of a military action the Bush administration
>has chosen to call Shock and Awe. It sounds to me like a video game I
>would not allow my son to play, when he gets older.
>
>So my counterpart in Baghdad, whether she supports Saddam Hussein or is
>eager for his overthrow, whether she dreams of coming to America or
>would gladly see us wiped off the map, will be preparing for March 18th
>in another way. I can see her in my mind's eye, going about her business
>as calmly as she can. Her son on her hip or clinging to her skirts--at
>this age, they still don't want to be out of arms for long--she will be
>gathering together what food she can find. She will be buying candles,
>or kerosene for lamps. Electricity is spotty in Iraq anyway, and power
>plants will be among the first targets. The 1,000-pound Tomahawk
>missiles will surely come screaming in at night. They always do. She
>knows that from the last time.
>
>Perhaps this Iraqi mother--let's call her Salma--will be leaving her
>home for the countryside and the hope of safety, locking the front door
>in what she knows is a futile gesture against the forces that are about
>to be unleashed on her city. Wondering if she will ever see the inside
>of that place again, ever again return to those familiar objects, cook a
>meal in her kitchen, welcome her husband into their bed. She will have
>to leave some of the baby's things behind, but she will be careful to
>bring the toy he likes best.
>
>Or perhaps she has nowhere else to go, and she is planning where she
>will sit with her child when the bombs start falling in the dark. How
>she will comfort him.
>
>*****
>
>I am planning my cake. Unlike most of the people in Iraq, I have access
>to more food than I need. There is no reason for me to stint on sugar,
>except that I don't want Nathaniel to develop too much of a taste for
>it. No reason for me to leave nuts out of the recipe, except that I am
>worried about an allergic reaction. No reason for me to cut a smaller
>slice for myself, except that I, like so many American women, am trying
>to lose a little weight.
>
>In Iraq, for many years women have had to worry about how to get enough
>calories, rather than how to cut them. While I was making trips to the
>Ben & Jerry's down the street every night of my pregnancy, while I was
>joking that my son was being made out of the steak I consumed two or
>three times a week at a local restaurant, while I was taking my
>expensive prenatal vitamins, I imagine that Salma was trying to find
>enough to eat.
>
>Since the United Nations voted in 2000 to remove the cap on oil sales
>for Iraq's oil-for-food program, the government food ration has
>increased, from 1,090 calories per day in 1991 to 2,215 calories a day.
>And yet for a pregnant woman that is not enough. Salma's husband and
>other members of her family likely urged her to take some of their
>share, for the baby's sake. It may have been difficult for her to
>accept; she knew her husband needed his strength in his search for work.
>He has been unemployed now for months, his university degree no good in
>a shriveled economy.
>
>Maybe Salma managed to get enough to eat, so her baby was born healthy,
>like mine. I like to think so. It would not be something she would take
>for granted. In 1998, 24 percent of Iraqi babies were born underweight;
>that was a major contributing factor to an infant mortality rate that
>soared in the 1990s. Between 1995 and 1999, 105 of every 1,000 children
>in Iraq died before their fifth birthday.
>
>Things have improved, but hunger is still a reality for the children of
>Iraq. In Baghdad, where Salma lives, a child's chances are better than
>in rural areas. If she is educated, as I am, her son's hope for decent
>nutrition is better still. And yet her education will not be able to
>protect her son from her nation's polluted and contaminated water
>supply.
>
>Who is to blame? One could point a finger at the United States and other
>western nations that have imposed strict sanctions on Iraq since the
>1991 Gulf War. Or one could blame Saddam Hussein, for running the
>brutal, war-seeking dictatorship that prompted those sanctions.
>
>But when you're trying to feed a child, or protect a child from falling
>bombs, blame is beside the point. Blame will not help a one-year-old
>child understand why there is not bread for his supper. It will not help
>him sleep in the middle of a missile attack. It will not give him
>parents who are not afraid.
>
>****
>
>I, too, am afraid of the day the bombs start falling, even though I do
>not let this stop me from planning my cake. I live in New York City. We
>have been told--as if we needed to be told--that we will be on the front
>lines of any war against Iraq. That we can expect terrorist attacks. My
>situation is the same as Salma's. Whether I like this president or not
>(I don't), whether I believe in this war or not (I don't), I will be in
>the line of fire. True, terrorists openly target people like me, while
>our military says it will do its best to avoid killing people like
>Salma. I doubt that offers her much comfort, and it will offer none at
>all for her baby.
>
>The other night, I was out of the house without Nathaniel. My partner
>had kindly offered me the opportunity to go eat in a local restaurant
>with a book and myself alone, and I took it. I was walking home, a few
>doors down from my house, when I heard an explosion. I felt a puff of
>air on my face--a percussion wave. I started running to the place where
>my baby was. On either side of me, windows flew open and my neighbors
>poked their heads into the night. "I think it's OK," I yelled up to
>them. "It sounded big but small, if you know what I mean."
>
>I was right. On the street up ahead, a manhole cover had blown off, a
>routine hazard of spring, when underground wiring is corroded by melting
>snow and salt. No one was hurt. Big but small.
>
>My neighbors knew what I meant because so many of us had heard what
>big--really big--sounds like. I was sitting at my dining-room table
>drinking tea when I heard it. It sounded like a dump truck going over a
>big pothole, except that it didn't. I looked at the clock, because I
>knew something bad had happened, and for some reason I wanted to know
>what time it was. My clock said 9:01. It was the second plane hitting. I
>still don't know why I didn't hear the first.
>
>That day, three months pregnant, I went to the top floor of my house and
>stood outside the room that was to be my son's nursery and I saw the
>towers burning. I had so much looked forward to showing him those
>towers, the promise of them, from his bedroom window. Now, when he is
>old enough, I will have to explain their memory instead.
>
>I have often thought that Nathaniel protected me that day. If I hadn't
>been pregnant, I would have rushed down to the promenade on the Brooklyn
>waterfront. I would have seen the collapse in person. I am glad I did
>not see that.
>
>Now that he is outside of me, it is I who must protect him. I must
>create a safe space for him wherever he is and whatever is happening.
>This is something Salma and I are both worrying about how to do, every
>day. My chances look better than hers.
>
>*****
>
>Long before the government issued us an advisory about plastic sheeting
>and duct tape, I was thinking about my basement. It is spacious and dry.
>It could be quite comfortable, in a pinch, and easily sealed off. But
>every time I think of sitting down there with Nathaniel, I remember
>another story I read.
>
>It was about a Kurdish woman who was in a village gassed by Iraqi troops
>in 1988. She went with her two-year-old child into a basement to escape
>the poison in the air. She took him to her breast, thinking that he
>would be safer if he were nursing. It is an instinct all nursing mothers
>can understand. What comes from our breasts is good and nourishing and
>meant especially for our babies. They are almost inevitably comforted by
>it, and we are comforted too.
>
>What that nursing Kurdish mother didn't know was that the gas Hussein's
>troops were using was heavier than air. It sank. It filled the basement
>where she had her baby at her bosom. The child died first; then she
>died, still holding him to her, still holding him tight.
>
>I am wary of basements. Perhaps Salma is, too.
>
>I wish I could talk to her--the real woman behind my imaginary
>construct. I wish our children could sit on a rug fighting over toys
>together. I wish I could tell her how terrible I feel in my helplessness
>to stop this war. We would understand one another, I am sure of it, even
>if not completely. We both live in the world of women.
>
>I used to not believe in this world. I used to be adamant in my belief
>that women and men were essentially the same. That has changed. The
>change began when I was pregnant. When I went into labor, it deepened. I
>looked around me at all the other people who weren't in labor and I
>thought, the only people I am truly connected to at this moment of pain
>and fear and animal determination are other women who are trying to
>bring their babies into the world safely.
>
>And right now, as I wait for this war to begin, as I get ready to bake
>my son's birthday cake, I feel that perhaps I am only truly connected to
>other women who are trying to keep their children in this world safely.
>Women like Salma.
>
>The only problem is, Salma and I cannot live in the world of women
>without also living in the world of men. Some would call it the real
>world. I'm not so sure.
>


-------
Austin Mennonite Church,  (512) 926-3121  www.mennochurch.org
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[amc] [Fwd: Re: Essay On Coming Iraq War]

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