Who Am I?

I am the Iraqi child of Fallujah you exposed to cancer with your depleted uranium.

I am the Palestinian women whose olive tree you uprooted and kids you left starving.

I am the Afghan man who has only seen years of brutal Soviet war and now US occupation.

I am the Iraqi man you shot dead at a checkpoint because you felt like it.

I am the Palestinian family you forcibly removed from their home.

I am the widowed Afghan whose land you continue to occupy and children you continue kill.

I am the Iraqi women you raped in the name of liberation.

I am the prisoner you tortured at Abu Ghraib and Bagram in the name of democracy.

I am the civilian in Iraq you named ‘collateral damage’ and left to rot.

I am the Palestinian school child you prevented from getting to school with your apartheid roads forcing me to wait hours at a checkpoint and miss class.

I am the Afghan woman you so wish to liberate, except you can leave your liberation in the trash can where it belongs.

I am the Muslim man you accused of being a terrorist, water-boarded and locked up in Guantanamo without parole.

I am the victim of your so called war on terror.

I am the shadow that walks alone.

I am the one that haunts your dreams.

How can you go to sleep with the bloody image of me in the back of your mind?

I am Palestine. I am Iraq. I am Afghanistan.

Emptiness

I think I am finally ready to put my fingers to the keyboard and try put some words together whilst attempting to be coherent as possible. Maybe I’ll try making sense of the world somewhere along the line. I think the Middle Eastern uprisings have taken me out of the sluggish and depressed mood I’ve been in. But what really did it was what I stayed up watching last night; the protests in Iraq.

I have just spent 7 weeks in Iraq. I had hoped to blog quite often about what I saw and what I experienced but between the lack of electricity and my grandfather getting sick – blogging took a back seat. My reflections were reduced to late nights wrapped in blankets with a torchlight in one hand and a pen in the other.

My grandfather then passed away while I was there. May his soul rest in peace.  Allah yir7ama. I am sensitive and quite emotional so it was one of the hardest things for me to deal with. Of course I can be a rock at times when it is needed, but at other times I just break down and this was one of those times. You see, I am not an Iraqi that has lived through war; I am not an Iraqi that has lived through pain and suffering in Iraq.  I lived in the West; I was safe and sound while my family slept with guns under their pillows, while they tried to get on with their daily lives to the rhythm of war drums. Such experiences make you strong. Such experiences make you ruthless. Such experiences give you a heart of steel. My nerves will never be as tough as those who have lived in Iraq their entire life. I couldn’t accept the fact that hospitals refused to take him in, it was just not right. I had so much resentment towards the failure of a system we have in Iraq and whilst I would never question the will of God I still sometimes think about what would have happened if we actually had real hospitals and doctors in Iraq.

I was so depressed when i came home (although, i consider Baghdad home – but whatever).  I felt like there was no hope. I felt like I had all the hope ripped out of me. I felt so disgusted at what i saw. I hated thinking about what Iraq has become and what the Iraqi people have become. I am an idealist; I have crazy ideas and plans and have a utopia in mind for Iraq when I think 10 years down the line. However the more I visit and stay in Iraq, the more I become a realist… or maybe even a pessimist. I came to see things for how they really were. And I assure you, it was not fun. It was eye-opening yet heart breaking more than ever. My dreams fade that little bit more every time I think about what’s really going on in Iraq.

As soon as i came back it was head first into arguments with Iraqi’s who believe that Iraq is now liberated.  These arguments make me die a little on the inside each and every time. I just can’t believe I’m still having these same conversations with people. How is it at all possible for people to have such messed up opinions? These idiots live in the West; they live comfortable lives and try to forget the reality in Iraq on a daily basis. If it was so liberated why don’t they bloody move back there!? They have no idea what really happens in Iraq. They barely know what happened in the 2003 war let alone anything before that. Please go pick up a history book you apathetic Iraqis. I don’t even know why I bother sometime.  It is just a waste of time and energy.

I have many things to share and stories to tell about the experiences I have had in Iraq. I will post what I saw and heard accordingly in following posts. But first, the Iraqi protests…

First post... Hello blogging world!

So I’ve been meaning to start a blog for some time now and I’ve finally managed to find the time and brain space to do so. I have a lot of things to say, things most of which I simply cannot find a circle of people who are genuinely interested in or share similar thoughts, may it be political or apolitical. Hence, thought this would be something beneficial to start. I am yet to find a good handful of people who are on the same wavelength as me in this world, the few who already exist in my life I can count on one hand. Quite disheartening really, the apathy all around me almost makes me want to give up at times.

Why Tears of Tigris? The Tigris River was one of the greatest rivers, part of ancient Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates River. These rivers were character of a place now long gone – ‘The Cradle of Civilisation’.  All the ancient cities of Mesopotamia were built on the banks of this river and modern day Baghdad is an outcome of this.  Unfortunately this is the same river that flowed with blood during heightened violence in Iraq, a direct result of the illegal and inhumane US war and occupation of Iraq, turning the beautiful blue into a shocking red. But no matter what, it will still continue to hold huge importance in the region as it is part of an inerasable history, a history that imperialism has tried so hard to obliterate. So this is a tribute to the rivers beauty and to all the tears we have shed for lost loved ones caught in the middle of the greedy battle for land, power, money and resources, and to those whose blood has ultimately ended up in this river. This is a dedication to all of the faces in the sea of oppression.

As for who I am, well, it’s not really that important. I am your fellow comrade in humanity. All you really need to know is that I am an Iraqi Muslim woman, born in Iraq but denied the right to live there, however I was lucky enough to be given an opportunity to start a new life abroad. I suppose you will learn more about me as time progresses. As someone who was raised outside of Iraq my thoughts and opinions are of an insider that has not seen the atrocities up front but has lived through them and witnessed from the outside, ultimately adding to the Iraq narrative. I frequently visit family in the Middle East and it just so happens that I will be travelling back home very soon, another reason to start a blog, and so here I will share my experiences with you, whoever you may be. 

I hope that through my words people are able to learn a bit more about Iraqi’s and their suffering, even though I certainly cannot speak for all the Iraqi people.  I also hope this encourages you to want to take action. I implore you to go beyond tears, we should not only stand in solidarity with our fellow people but we must take action, even if the action is simply changing the mind of one person. We have not lost the battle for hearts and minds just yet. We owe it to our brothers and sisters in the struggle. I hope to incorporate stories of the fallen, the forgotten and the brave of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and other groups of oppressed people as ‘Tears of Tigris’ goes on.