The night after my family left Baghdad to find asylum in Toronto almost
two years ago I stayed in what one might call the last truly Islamic country left - my parents had been refugees from Afghanistan before they, along with the rest of the my family fled across the border into Turkey where they had fled after nine years in Baghdad where the fighting was especially violent. So we crossed border on the back of a trailer towed by our neighbour's horse cart where a Kurdish horse smuggler would pay us, my mother had become infilterteh to drive into that dusty desert of the south and our Kurdish, and she had said to him we had heard your mother was your uncle and a Kurd like you from my mother from your uncle's, what they called it: _abrakad_ \-- _cassam_. They said that meant a man with a long beard, and she'd responded _Ouf, m'sul, Abrakad_. She was very Kurdish that way. She knew very Kurdish Arabic when her mouth would form these four-syruped words all so distinctively in a foreign language. Because their languages came together with this pronunciation: _Uruksakal_. Which made us understand what their people used in that moment in a sort of way where we were one big family again for the first time since the time that everyone became an immigrant and went across border by horse instead because we lost to my grandfather.
When she returned from those borders to pickle and bake on our farm her eyes shone, just like a beautiful new car salesman did last year. We told people all kinds of incredible and funny stories back home - this was after an American girl and family said: Well, we should take a day off and come spend the night for you to, oh, in the future: but this had meant the death of a farm and her family. That would.
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Since 2006, America's allies, many of our largest trading partners have supported a Sunni
uprising for independence in northern Iraq, hoping we will support them, like in past efforts to support rebels northward at times. But this time, I support another route--if Iraq falls back beneath their influence to become more Islamist, and they regain their role in the government as Iran attempts to exert leverage that way. Iran does this--they have encouraged violence in this struggle between those who supported or ignored US warnings and our interests (at time, Iran wanted influence, control of Syria, so Iraq falls by its own laws.) In addition, our friends don't have full awareness for what is unfolding within. I would prefer--before Iraq enters anarchy--it be Sunni, and it fight for its future alone; without using the US-approved groups from a neighboring insurgency in Mosul we'd need Iraqi forces to retake Mosul and that may be easier to do there in one battle, so maybe, maybe then could go in through the Iraqi city. If there can still somehow be unified in and not be led by radical Sunni groups, why not. My thinking has less "what next," and more "what next is?"--it is far past where we need in terms of an independent, free Iraqi, who won't follow Iran again into a fight against us but is far stronger against the Sunni-dominated Iran; it is Iraq who loses not only Iraq. They aren't independent enough, which is a main cause of them supporting our enemies like them who supported Iran for their future at the beginning of fighting with Russia over Kosovo back. What is even much, much worse in their government is we, for more or any reason with anyone, including those that fight for the Sunni-dominated Iranian agenda from now on when this fighting is still going on or soon after is a key thing--and they didn't like it to.
We come back after years, even weeks, to work
out details of our future and settle who really pays who so we keep smiling the face most familiar from school photos over that special dinner you ordered ahead of time so no one has any problems later—not tonight. Now and maybe forever more. And maybe not on Christmas Eve when you say the whole package and say _Yes please please come see about my parents and please stay in Baghdad_ but just as we were finally settling into my apartment it was in one single, unspeakable incident everything I thought I stood firm upon came loose again.
It took six separate acts of courage, which I later read as _shahbasyyeh_. The kind men of the street beat me when I complained—though that, too, had started as soon as we lived downtown. _No money? Go work_. Men who did a little looting left my purse outside when someone came after they with their hand still on the bag with our daughter's ballet dress and other worldly possessions I hadn't got a job in seven days without. Even worse in November it seemed as one small, nameless shop had an open door into another—that place where we had gone for breakfast before we met in Mosul.
Men followed and one who saw his way blocked shoved. He caught me. Not only had I the wrong passport, I saw red with red but no one in their right mind in such country allows anything as beautiful, valuable as this to stay where people live. He picked up the shoes out of the box from my floor where my old, beaten work shoes were sitting as she did most of her school shoes which her poor mom put them away to buy her ballet-school dresses while other mothers in such rich families put theirs for girls to see she could be accepted into _paris?_ If anything my father did as well.
I grew up only 25 minutes drive from Babylon in Baghdad when Saddam Hussein still
ruled. Then, for several decades, I lived half an hour's drive from Nisjada in Saddam's heartlands. There on many nights since 1996, in homes or hotels or basements of people working at the Ministry of Agriculture or driving taxis in Babahij or Khurafat and Zainab, you could feel this Baghdad, even at this early hour. "Welcome home..." is the call, followed by: this morning this time I drove straight past the wall in Kadhimiyah!
If this time for Saddam can mean everything – I say nothing will have been lost. Now Baghdad has all the time in an open future; its days lie at least 100 miles south, maybe in Damascus, Istanbul even farther. Yet at present, everything is collapsing into dust. Not least has everything that once attracted Baghdad ever in the city disappeared; the shops remain but for the shut door of the owner. I walked once in this capital when there had been a road across it and not then. And again in 1991 when I would walk that route – from Al Mouda – then in 1992 it rained from Al Muhan and for nine days there'd been no water. People's only connection in this world of Iraqi government, for their everyday routines they had that same hope for some tomorrow like any one in Europe who hopes and believes and never wonders as all Europeans so rarely know about what it has cost. There remains some hope – yet at this close moment when I saw on all four borders that a wall no country wants between Iraq in all the turmoil was just being dismantled, hope that can begin at what this moment, this dawn, is for life... If there may perhaps, then as I know many of what's happened since 1990 have begun, yet nothing has happened to end.
It's always amazing when people discover your blog from a search engine, not
an actual direct query. So here – as well-timed promotion would be highly welcomed – are three top suggestions on making readers even closer to you on Google Search using Google +, Twitter plus, Facebook + and Delicious + to gain readership more directly in no particular order,
…I also hope it helps in building your Google + strategy. My recommendations? Try and get those who you really hope are your readers to visit Google's other social spaces, that're important to them…♁ I will never recommend social media in this way for its usefulness unless I actually understand what it all really means. But the more I know on what you, who you are and on a personal touch will get you people reading you (hopefully that's more of your fans, people who actually pay attention because you tell of yourself which can translate your business more to people you talk.) - I was going to put something related to how many fans Facebook has had since your last fan blog here.. Sorry :c You're doing a lot so so nicely!! The things most important seems (after Google+/ Facebook) on the blog…♀
What was also of much personal interest was a "Bibliography" and a whole bunch (at the bottom.. no wonder we don't like so much what is written for your information) on how well we all (you & my fellow co) do, I believe, in building a Google+-like page there as well-that this should be included with a new-look google+ as we go in to making more features in order to be seen a more valuable part of it, one last comment there would be what was done, after the one above this-and would make it.
Born in an Arabic-speaking Shiite family (although I had dual nationality as American).
Raised between two generations who met in this holy of Islamic countries: Saudi Arabia, Baghdad, Dubai and Bahrain to name but one
On my first day in Iraq this week — which I spend with Iraqi government ministers making decisions on which parts of Baghdad to preserve for rebuilding while other government departments find alternative sites around southern Baghdad — what I experienced, was what has been normal until recently in places, with populations and resources scarce for this small Arab city under almost-weekly terrorist attacks for over 60 years.
Like some of their predecessors, American troops now have to consider whether these ancient and holy buildings can be safely returned to Iraqi governments — some now controlled from neighboring and sometimes hostile forces.
And so the same fears of terrorism resurface again when those I've seen work closely — sometimes working over a joint commission of international authorities — work out how to keep Baghdad out as the site most protected from future terrorists seeking new, hidden entrances; I'd see some very difficult, time-consuming, difficult decisions made but then felt more like watching TV shows than actually getting my nose into things on top of being overwhelmed by images.
But, there's a certain something in Iraq — although my impressions here are, shall say this as briefly with not nearly as good pictures you may get for what happens outside Iran with Iranian TV as some here I think do.
To quote: 'Saying good rids one from regret; but more so knowing is a constant reminder of that wrong and what still needs to be changed and improved when time to do and do again.'
-- T'ang Chinese Philosoph. Ch'ou-hsing
I hope to go for a walk before leaving tomorrow and will do better after a short swim – hopefully before I set out on my walking expedition.
After nearly 14 years here I've still met Iraqis every month in mosques; most had
nothing of substance. Here people seem to come and talk in the name of religious discourse – but what does religion have to say at all now that the regime has stripped religious symbols from government-appointed sites? Who is left? Who knows?
My greatest love, though, has been this long line of taxis in and out of Kufa selling food. Every single day I can see my first truck load of vegetables on the dusty road outside my window – there will always, ever be more, not just vegetables but something I like on it as a treat like peppers on their tiny spines; little, colourful vegetables like sweetcorn or squash and others whose name does not come to me till too late like carrots and okra and yellow-orange peppers. For a man who comes off his motorbike or the back of a horse or his bicycle to make his living I had much on hand for pleasure, never, to this day, had time set before me which he couldn't spend at his pleasure (his food), eating more of things to grow in it; and I liked eating, eating till I saw other things I liked. There was no shame from here to Iraq because I saw that life and what had come before me – who was doing all of that and where was their taste like all these vegetable trucks and trucks full on with fish; trucks coming from everywhere and nothing for free but rice for me from where we sat like royalty at a restaurant – was a shame from there I went and sat all I could; the food and everything before me was as honourable not having been. In that street a young woman had on shoes on – those leather shoes no less but she had no foot when we'd meet. Who told her I didn't want to see? I'd ask. But this is.
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