The View from Baghdad

Since I've become a regular at Sunshine's site, her blog roll led me right to the home of another subversive Iraqi blogger, Mohammed. Grimly entitled, Last-Of-Iraqis, Mohammed's profile is enough to cause your heart to break:

I'm a 25 years old dentist [and] I live in Iraq (Baghdad). I was born and raised here but unfortunately I'm thinking that the Iraqis are going to [become] extinct. [S]o I made this blog wishing that I can make a difference or even share my grief with the whole world and give them an idea about what's happening here from the point of view of a civilian living in the war zone. [N]ot from the politicians nor people who get their benefits from the conditions.

After reading a few of Mohammed's blog entries, I was both moved by his raw candor and horrified as I could sense his deep anguish as he detailed the rapid disintegration of his country. In "Deterioration," Mohammed writes:

The most painful feeling you can have is when you see your neighborhood on the verge of destruction, the deepest sorrow is when you watch the place where you lived all your life and where you dreamed to live being raped by criminals!

I am honestly at a loss for words.

Living in the comfort of a Canadian, middle-class bubble, I watch the news at my own leisure and casually surf through the channels as Canada and America's version of the war appear as ubiquitously as those groovy I-Pod commercials. If I get sick of watching the men and women in combat shooting their M16s or rocket-propelled grenades, or seeing the catastrophic aftermath of yet another suicide bomber, my own trigger finger can just as easily allow me to escape to a world of CSI and American Idol....

But for Mohammed, their is NO escape. All he has to do is drive down his block to be confronted by the bullets and bombshells firsthand. Imagine, even just for a moment, that this is your life:

I was driving my car in my neighborhood streets while listening to the radio...I reached the side street and I saw the most horrible thing a man can see, there was a car(Kia minivan) escaping and two men shooting at us from it, half of their body was out of the window and they were shooting at us (me and the neighbors) and there were two men on the sidewalk, drowned in their blood, I wanted to follow them but then I remembered I don't have a gun or any weapon what will I do?

What would any of us do if faced with such unbelievable terror?

Meanwhile, CNN or MSNBC or FOX wave their euphemistic wands and let us know that "US-led forces continue to battle a determined insurgency" or when " U.S., Turkish Military Officials Try for Better Communications Following Weekend Bombing in Iraq." Remember the time when Bush insisted, "that to step back from Baghdad would have disastrous consequences in America"?? It's good to know that the war machine is just as strong at home as it is abroad....

While the American primaries are underway and each of the potential candidates spin their platforms on Iraq like it was Charlotte's Web, let me leave you with Mohammed's New Year's wish for 2008:

[A]s a new year begins, I wish peace will get back to the streets of Baghdad and Iraq in general, i wish that Iraqis could live like the rest of the world do, I wish that fanatics, terrorists, insurgents.....etc. call them whatever you want disappear, I just wish they disappear, I wish that anyone who wants to harm any human being disappear from the face of the earth, I wish the violence and the hatred in Iraq will go and be from the past....

My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family, Mohammed.

Iraq--Seen Through the Eyes of Sunshine

Behind the cloud of the rhetoric surrounding terrorism, suicide bombers, Al Qaeda, and the imminent "democratization" of Iraq, lie the countless of mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, and grandparents trying to carry on despite this deadly chaos. For this reason, I'm going to explore this issue from the best vantage point there is: through the eyes of an Iraqi....

A few days ago, a good friend of mine had turned my attention to this blog--Days of My Life--and boy, was I ever grateful! Initially, I figured it was just another one of your average-run-of-the-mill-blogs that reads like a diary, or how-to-make-$$-manual, or marketing tool...you get the point.

So I click on the link and what I find almost brings me to tears:

Days of My Life--"Talk about daily life of a teenage girl in Iraq, and days of suffer and success. My nickname will be Sunshine...."

As I read Sunshine's profile, I am left with the sense that she is well beyond her years. At just 15 years-old, this Iraqi teen aspires to be an engineer or pharmacist. And despite living right smack in the centre of American-Iraqi crossfire, she describes how "optimism is my strategy always...."

Each of Sunshine's posts, seemingly unbeknownst to her, provide a powerful commentary on the trivial nature of war and religious segregation. While eerily reminiscent of the young Anne Frank, Sunshine's youthful idealism and candid fear dramatically collide with the values detonating the mortars right outside her window.

In "Excellent Eid (part 1)," this Iraqi teen documents her road trip to Baghdad, where relatives are hosting a celebration of Eid ul-Fitr. As American troops ubiquitously line the streets of her journey, Sunshine exclaims: "Thank god we didn’t sleep in the street, when the US vehicles drive we have to stop aside, or drive 100 meters away, slowly with the lights on, if we drive nearby they point with lazer on our car or shoot!"

Once Sunshine and her family finally arrive, she enthusiastically revels in her surroundings as a delicious feast awaits all of the loved ones sharing this special occasion. And throughout her entire story, Sunshine's bright introspection never ceases to amaze me. When speaking to a family friend (referred to as "A") about the fractured relations between the Shiites and Sunnis, the teen is taken by his powerful insights. She shares this valuable lesson with us all:

'[T]he religion should gather us, not separate us, if the religion separate it’s people then I don’t want to belong to any, but I am sure this thing is made by the government, they want to see the Iraqis separated, but anyway it’s not going to happen.' I loved what he said and wrote it at once...well I celebrated Eid for 8 days, with the Sunnis, Shiites, and Christians....