[lit-ideas] Baghdad
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, THEORIA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 20:47:05 EDT
_Baghdad Burning_ (http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/)
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Atrocities...
It promises to be a long summer. We're almost at the mid-way point, but it
feels like the days are just crawling by. It's a combination of the heat, the
flies, the hours upon hours of no electricity and the corpses which keep
appearing everywhere.
The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the
killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad
militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and
even
in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID
cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were
driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media
is
playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the
number is nearer 60.
The horrific thing about the killings is that the area had been cut off for
nearly two weeks by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last
week, a car bomb was set off in front of a 'Sunni' mosque people in the area
visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of a Shia
husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting
and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure why the Americans
and the Ministry of Interior didn't respond immediately. They just sat by, on
the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre happen.
At nearly 2 pm, we received some terrible news. We lost a good friend in the
killings. T. was a 26-year-old civil engineer who worked with a group of
friends in a consultancy bureau in Jadriya. The last time I saw him was a week
ago. He had stopped by the house to tell us his sister was engaged and he'd
brought along with him pictures of latest project he was working on- a
half-collapsed school building outside of Baghdad.
He usually left the house at 7 am to avoid the morning traffic jams and the
heat. Yesterday, he decided to stay at home because he'd promised his mother
he would bring Abu Kamal by the house to fix the generator which had suddenly
died on them the night before. His parents say that T. was making his way
out of the area on foot when the attack occurred and he got two bullets to the
head. His brother could only identify him by the blood-stained t-shirt he was
wearing.
People are staying in their homes in the area and no one dares enter it so
the wakes for the people who were massacred haven't begun yet. I haven't seen
his family yet and I'm not sure I have the courage or the energy to give
condolences. I feel like I've given the traditional words of condolences a
thousand times these last few months, "Baqiya ib hayatkumâ Akhir il ahzanâ"
or
"May this be the last of your sorrows." Except they are empty words because
even
as we say them, we know that in today's Iraq any sorrow- no matter how great-
will not be the last.
There was also an attack yesterday on Ghazaliya though we haven't heard what
the casualties are. People are saying it's Sadr's militia, the Mahdi army,
behind the killings. The news the world hears about Iraq and the situation in
the country itself are wholly different. People are being driven out of their
homes and areas by force and killed in the streets, and the Americans,
Iranians and the Puppets talk of national conferences and progress.
It's like Baghdad is no longer one city, it's a dozen different smaller
cities each infected with its own form of violence. It's gotten so that I
dread
sleeping because the morning always brings so much bad news. The television
shows the images and the radio stations broadcast it. The newspapers show
images of corpses and angry words jump out at you from their pages, "civil
warâ
deathâ killingâ bombingâ rapeâ"
Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest-
it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was
neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last.
The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her
whole
immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in
Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing
whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of
towns
like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naivetà of Americans
who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is
ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped
the
country, why not the people?
_In the news they're estimating her age to be around 24, but Iraqis from the
area say she was only 14._
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060711/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_rape_case_19)
Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your
14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths
and
then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally,
her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American
heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your troops
have made you proud today. I don't believe the troops should be tried in
American courts. I believe they should be handed over to the people in the
area and
only then will justice be properly served. And our ass of a PM, Nouri
Al-Maliki, is requesting an 'independent investigation', ensconced safely in
his
American guarded compound because it wasn't his daughter or sister who was
raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands
of
furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.
It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once
had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities
in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and
killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't
bring
myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they
make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife
or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care
because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder
just
how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go
home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?
Why don't the Americans just go home? They've done enough damage and we hear
talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run', but the
fact is that they aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get?
People are being killed in the streets and in their own homes- what's being
done about it? Nothing. It's convenient for them- Iraqis can kill each other
and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed- unless they want to join in with
murder and rape.
Buses, planes and taxis leaving the country for Syria and Jordan are booked
solid until the end of the summer. People are picking up and leaving en masse
and most of them are planning to remain outside of the country. Life here
has become unbearable because it's no longer a 'life' like people live abroad.
It's simply a matter of survival, making it from one day to the next in one
piece and coping with the loss of loved ones and friends- friends like T.
It's difficult to believe T. is really goneâ I was checking my email today
and I saw three unopened emails from him in my inbox. For one wild,
heart-stopping moment I thought he was alive. T. was alive and it was all some
horrific
mistake! I let myself ride the wave of giddy disbelief for a few precious
seconds before I came crashing down as my eyes caught the date on the emails-
he had sent them the night before he was killed. One email was a collection of
jokes, the other was an assortment of cat pictures, and the third was a poem
in Arabic about Iraq under American occupation. He had highlighted a few
lines describing the beauty of Baghdad in spite of the warâ And while I
always
thought Baghdad was one of the more marvelous cities in the world, I'm finding
it very difficult this moment to see any beauty in a city stained with the
blood of T. and so many other innocentsâ
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