The Luckiest Man Alive

I have long been following Barak Obama’s news, having had the hope he would become the president of United States. Even though I’m a non-American I believe studying Obama means studying how the world’s superpower is going to be led. I have been reading dozens of articles about him since I have gotten to be familiar with his name when I first came to the States in 2006. I even remember writing a story for my “Journalism and Politics” class about his decision of announcing his presidential candidacy for 2008. I have also watched TV programs and listened to interviews with and about him on the radio. These have all hooked me up to support him for a better America and hopefully a better world.

However, studying Obama politically is not enough. I felt I needed to study his personal life as well. Thus, and three days after he was elected to be the president, I headed to the nearest bookstore in downtown Washington DC where I go to work and bought his infamous memoir Dreams from My Father. I wanted to see why millions of people around the world, including me, fell in love with this man’s character.

The book sat on my bookcase for a few weeks because I was reading another book I needed to finish, a habit I don’t think I will change. I can’t read a new book unless I finish the one I have in hands. Some of my friends read three books at a time. Anyways, I started reading it recently and lived with Barak Obama the person, his life from childhood to adulthood and marriage.

Legendary Toni Morisson called Obama “a writer in my high esteem” and the book “quite extraordinary.” Indeed, it is an extraordinary account of life. Even though I loved Obama’s political accomplishments, I have never expected him to be such a great writer. His literary style chilled my entire spine with details portrayed with emotions and metaphors not any writer can master.

Every time I read about one of the characters in Obama’s life I feel I got to know him or her. His grandparents, mother, sisters and brothers. I loved how he talked about his sister Kenyan sister, Auma. She reminded me of my sister and how greatly she loves me and cares about me. The brother-sister relationship between the two of them was greatly discussed in the book, despite the fact that they lived oceans away.

As for his achievements, I should no longer be surprised that this man has become the president of the US. His will and strength when he was young and when he started off as a community organizer made me respect him a lot more. He did what no one in the African American Chicago community was able to do. Above all, he believed in what he was doing. He believed it was a good cause that needed to be addressed and dealt with, not ignored.

Throughout the book, Obama was brave enough to talk about what he was really going through as an American with African roots, what his father meant to him, how his relatives lived when Obama Sr. was alive and after his death, his brothers and sisters solidarity in hard times, and how after all of that he was awarded with his wife Michelle and how at the wedding he felt “the luckiest man alive.”

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

The World Through the Eyes of a Solo Reporter

I usually write my reviews about books after I finish reading them, but this time I wanted to share my opinion with you before finishing it.

This time the book is about conflict all over the world: In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars by solo journalist, Kevin Sites. Which one of us doesn’t remember the U.S. soldier’s image shooting an unarmed insurgent in a mosque in Fallujah during the 2004 Fallujah battle? It was Kevin Sites who shot that controversial footage.

I bought the book from Borders bookstore a few days ago after leafing through its pages. I have heard a lot about Sites, but never had the chance to read his reports. Along with the book, came the DVD documentary “A World of Conflict,” a must-see film that I watched last night.

We all know that our world is turning upside down with violence somewhere and economy collapse somewhere else. It is indeed a world of conflict which sometimes drives me to the question of whether the science-fiction movies we see about the destruction of earth would become true some day.

Watching the world’s conflicts, Sites came up with an idea, a one that led to an important project: covering twenty wars in one year.

Sites’ first chapter of the book and the introductory part of the documentary was about the Fallujah mosque shooting and his time in Iraq. He describes how he was labeled as a traitor by those who don’t accept facts and who do not want to admit that war is ugly and that crimes happen from both fighting parties. The insurgent who was shot might deserve what had happened to him, but the way he was killed was, of course, against the ethics of fighting in war zones. It’s sad to see that those who sent Sites threatening letters and text messages do not understand that he was just doing his job and had not expressed in no way ever his own, personal opinion regarding what happened. He let the world judge and it did.

I see Sites as a good example of balanced, sincere and extremely honest journalism. His words and the video footages he took in the countries he covered had an imprint of humanity. Throughout his travels as a solo journalist in conflict zones, the sense of humanity in his dispatches and reports was strongly evident, having it covered away from politics. There was a scream of horror that he wanted to let the rest of the world hear.

There were stories from Afghanistan, Nepal, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Congo, and other places in the world. Sites was successful in detailing in a summarized way what the cause of violence was and how it took its toll on the human beings there. The things that blew me up the most were the stories from the Congo, Lebanon and Afghanistan. In the documentary he interviews a woman called Marie (not her name, as he mentions in the book). She was raped several times in front of her husband by militiamen who killed her children before her eyes and then mutilated her husband’s body after killing him. The worst part was asking her to chew his cut flesh. “They use rape as a weapon of war,” she told Sites. “They have guns, but this is worse than the guns.” The entire interview in the documentary brought tears to my eyes.

His coverage of the Israel-Lebanon war in the summer of 2006 was noteworthy. He was there when Israel shelled entire buildings with civilians in them. The image of the woman weeping after their loved ones died and the image of the children covered with blood is unforgettable.

Reading the book now after watching the documentary makes me picture all those who were interviewed. Reading the words and comparing them to the people’s faces makes my heart ache. So much violence out there, so many wars, and so much pain and sorrow in the hearts and minds of people. Like Sites, I believe this violence aims to kill civilization and most importantly humanity. The worst part of all, in my opinion, is that there are people out there benefiting from all of this, encouraging more and more violence and causing the deaths and the suffering of millions of people across our cursed planet.

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

In modern Islam, Shiites Revived and Sunnis did not like that!

A few days ago, I finished reading a very interesting book about the Middle East and more specifically about the Shiite Muslims. The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr is a must-read for all those who have no idea what the terms ‘Shiite’ and ‘Sunni’ mean. I actually recommend it more for those who are interested in knowing why there is a difference in the two terms and why was all this fuss called ‘sectarian war in Iraq.’
Although I knew many things mentioned in the book, I still found that there were things I did not really know. Nasr narrates, analyzes and discusses them in details.

I have a friend in Philly who is a Shiite Muslim from Saudi Arabia’s infamous Qatif city. We have always sat and discussed issues that concern our region, religion, and our lives as they are related to these things. One day, I was completely upset and mad at what I had discovered in our religion. The discussion we both had led to realizing that it’s not the problem was not in the religion itself more than the practitioners of Islam themselves who used certain things and interpreted them the way they wanted them to mean. The goal is to make others believe them, and nothing other using certain things from the religion to make them believe in was better than that. During that discussion, I told my friend about my memories of Islam in Iraq. I remember leaning back on the plastic chair, saying “Our religion was simple. The war made it gross.”

Indeed, it was as simple as knowing the basic things in the Quran, knowing your prophet is Mohammed and your God is Allah and that there were other prophets whom God chose to deliver his messages. Yes, there were Sunni and Shiite differences, but among the people (at least those in Baghdad whom I was one of) it was not something we really cared about. During those years, books about religion were rarely found. The secular Baathist regime made sure people in my generation do not understand or know what the real history behind the two sects was. My family did tell me that the Shiites were victimized throughout history, especially during the Abbasid Empire era, but they never really went into details about it nor they stressed on making me or my sister insist on knowing it because it was not a big deal then.

The internet revolution and the flow of the books and the articles about the real history between the two sects appeared on surface in the aftermath of the US.-led invasion of Iraq, letting me and many others in my generation be able to read and learn about that grim and gruesome history of wars and struggle to get power.

One of these books is the Shia Revival. The book opened my eyes to many things that I did not before the war. I knew it all started when Prophet Mohammed died but did not know other details, including the fight between Iran and Saddam was a Shiite-Sunni fight. I know understand why the Arab countries supported Saddam against the “Evil Persians” and why Iran went on for eight years to fight Saddam. The goal was who would dominate? The Sunnis who wanted the Arab World always be Sunni or the Shiites, represented by Iran then, who wanted to spread their faith to a larger crowd in the Arab World?

Addressing the West in his book, Nasr relates the Shiite rituals to those of the other religions. This was something that I did not really know. Nasr also talks about Saudi Arabia’s Wahabism a lot. It is widely connected to the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites these days. It goes way back to the days when the Wahabis invaded the holy city of Karbala where Imam Hussein is buried and slaughtered the Shiites there, believing that they were infidels and tomb worshipers. He also writes about the Lebanon Shiites and how they emerged as a fighting and strong force in the region, making even Sunnis follow them in their fight against Israel which was occupying their land for decades. Then, came the Iran-Iraq war and the whole struggle of keeping the Shiites away from domination. There is also a long, detailed and very interesting chapter about Khomeini and his role in Shiism, followed by an interestingly-analyzed chapter about the new Iraq which he called it ‘The first Shiite Arab state,’ a term that I’ve never heard before and a one that is so true.

Overall, the book shows that the struggle is not religious more than political. Peoples from both sects were caught in the middle of this conflict. They were used and brain-washed over the decades to create differences.

Anyways, it is a wonderful book and a good source that I strongly recommend to readers interested in learning about political Islam.

The other book I’m sunk in its waters now is Robin Wright’s Dreams and Shadows: the future of the Middle East.

Blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

Richard Engel’s "War Journal"

More and more frequently since I have started reading books about the Middle East and Iraq I have begun to see how Iraq has been shaped and changed. For the last five years, I read several books. Before those five years, I poured most of my attention on literature, avoiding anything that has to do with politics, especially Saddam’s in order to survive. The books I read were mostly written by journalists who spent quite a long time in Iraq before, during and after the invasion. In this thread, I would like to reflect my opinion about a book I have just finished reading. “War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq” by the newly-promoted NBC reporter Richard Engel.

After reading Shadid’s “Night Draws Near,” Chandrasekaran’s “Emperial Life in the Emerald City,” and Packer’s “The Assassin’s Gate” I thought no other journalist than those three could write about Iraq the way they did. But after reading Engel’s I discovered I was wrong.

The book is a must read for every American or non-American who wants to know what went wrong and what happened as a result of that.

One of my graduation presents was a Borders Bookstore gift card. Instead of buying something that might be forgotten pretty soon, I decided to buy a book. When I went to Borders, I found many interesting titles attracting my attention like a desperate child grabbing his father’s sleeves to buy him candy. On the shelf of the ‘Memoirs and Biographies’ sat ‘War Journal,’ shining with a crystal clear picture of Richard Engel. The young American reporter was standing in what I believe the area facing al-Hamra hotel where his NBC’s office was located, the same place where a truck suicide bomber destroyed part of the hotel and the collapsed the surrounding apartment buildings. Because I stood on that particular spot before and after it was destroyed, my eyes couldn’t resist gazing at the picture. I wasn’t looking at Engel, more than on the destroyed building and the three children playing behind him among the rubble and the concrete barriers that were smartly hidden by the photographer.

In the photo, Engels eyes gave me several impressions. I am kind of a mind a look ‘reader.’ I judge on people when I see how they react to something through their look. You can lie or do a certain gesture, but your eyes can never lie. Engels’ eyes gave me two impressions: one of a ‘cocky’ reporter who stayed long enough to understand what Iraq and Iraqis are really like in the war. The other was that of someone fatigued, stressed out, and kind of sad.

I let my fingers leaf through the pages of the book until my eyes impeded, catching something that summed up what I and many other Iraqi bloggers had been talking about regarding the elections in Iraq. “Millions [of Iraqis] did in fact turn out,” Engel wrote. “but they weren’t embracing democracy. They were just following orders…” he added. That very statement made decide to buy the book, even though it cost more than the value of the gift card.

I was curious to know why he gave such a statement that most pro-war Americans would slam him for!

The book’s title made me buy it too in order to see his own perspective and how he felt as a reporter and a human being in covering the war. After all, I was one. But my case was kind of different. I was watching the war as an Iraqi and a journalist. I saw my country destroyed in front of my eyes.

Engel’s first two chapters were not emotional as you would expect in reading a journal or a memoir. It was more like analytical statements in a history book, not in a journal. But when I moved on in reading the rest of the book I found out that the flow of the events and the way they are described in connection to his own feeling was more interesting than I expected it to be. I think the first ‘boring’ chapters were actually preparing me, the reader, to see how things happened. Eventually, I understood why it appeared to be so. I might be wrong, but I think there was a reason.

The book starts with the scene where he was covering Saddam’s capture like a rat in a hole. I bet I don’t need to describe how that happened, because if you don’t know how it happened, we have a problem. The chapter was detailed, well backgrounded and to the point, but it had no emotion. But the moment you leap to the third chapter, things start to move a little more interesting. Engel connects his work life, including his bureau and staff members with what was happening around them in the to be war-torn Baghdad.

We all know sequence of the events that happened since the invasion, I hope. Engel makes sure you DO know. He does that by a very clear timeline sequence of one event that led to the other like a chain reaction. He starts it with the fact that the Sunnis discovering they were no longer the men-in-power and how in contrary to that Shiites WERE in fact the ones to be in charge. He writes about it in extensive details starting from the Governing Council ending with the consequences of the “Iranian-monitored” and “American-backed” elections.

Engel continues writing by mentioning that how the Sunnis became frustrated, knowing that the Shiites were going to win in the elections because they were the majority. So they decided to boycott and turn to insurgency where bloodthirsty al-Qaeda was waiting for a chance to impose its terror power in Iraq. Who else other than the Shiite “infidels” deserves to be attacked the most? As a result, Shiite militiamen did not stand still and started attacking back. In the middle innocent people died from both sects died, of course.

Engel did an amazing job in describing one of the scariest nightmares Iraq had ever gone through. Ibrahim Jaafari, the “elected” Prime Minister of Iraq. He compared him to his competitor at the time, Ayad Allawi, who was liked by many Iraqis for his strong personality. By nature, we Iraqis do not like sissies, soft spoken, and delicate leaders. Jaafari was that kind of a ‘leader.’ The best part written about Jaafari was that when a Kurdish politician told Engel, “You can’t get answers from him. All he does is he talks philosophy.” Engel wrote, “Iraq didn’t need a philosopher. It needed a leader.” I totally agree.

When you keep reading, you could definitely tell how things were declining from bad to worse to the worst. Engel does it in a very clear and simple way, unlike many books that were written about Iraq. He does it like a story, unlike his first chapters. His tone of writing changes that sometimes I feel that he actually wrote those exact words in a notebook. He mentioned that he kept a video journal. So that might be it.

By 2006, Engels tone could be barely recognized the same. He writes in details how he didn’t care less when he saw dead, rotten and burned bodies and destroyed buildings. I read that part and remembered how I had the exact same feeling when I was there working for the Washington Post. But I left in mid 2006 and came to the U.S. to pursue a Master’s degree. I had nightmares. I jumped every time I heard thunder or ambulance sirens. It took me two years to heal, that’s if I am healed. But the other day I was in Washington DC and something happened that made reconsider knowing myself, my old self. One evening when I was coming back from the Metro station to my friends place, I happened to witness something terrible. I was with a friend of mine when I heard people screaming and gathering to see what happened on the first floor of the station. I peered and saw a young athletic man in blue shirt and brown pants lying on the floor bleeding from his head while he was motionless. There was a young blond woman weeping and screaming next to him while other people were calling for ambulance. I saw the man lying on his back (his head was facing the ceiling), but he seemed he was still alive since his abdomen was moving up and down.. When I saw the man the first time, I didn’t have the “normal” feeling I had in Baghdad two years ago. This time, I felt really normal. I was shocked like everybody in the station. I had this horrible feeling of a man dying in front of me. If I were in Iraq, I would have moved on and might not even think about for more than a minute, but that incident haunted me. It was a sad incident but it made me realize that I am finally “recovered.” I have my senses back. I felt like a normal person again. It was such a strange feeling I never expected.

I wonder how long it’s going to take Engel to “recover.” War is always ugly. It affects the core of your soul, no matter how strong you are.

The best time to read is when you travel, I believe. I went to Washington D.C. again, volunteering to help The List Project and Upwardly Global with their career summit they held for Iraqi professionals who were resettled in the United States recently after receiving death threats back home. I took the cheap, 15-dollar Chinatown bus to get there. On the way, I was still reading the book and was in the final chapters of it. Engels tone became even sadder. He recalled and described stories that no human being could ever endure seeing. Stories that not even people would watch in horror movies. The collapse, the control of the outlaws, the segregation, the displacement and the monstrous way of killing people. He talked about orphans, his own employees’ self destruction, and mostly HIS own destruction: his divorce.

At the end Engel meets with his country’s ill-famed president. He shoots his words and facts in the best interview with Bush I have ever read. Bush admits to Engel that the war was more like a personal decision than a long-range strategy for the Middle East. “I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were,” Bush tells Engel. “but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act.”

As a result to that action, more than 4 million Iraqis became refugees, hundreds of thousands died, more than 4,000 American soldiers lost their lives in vague-aimed war and hatred against the American nation increased because of that ‘war on terror.’ But who cares? The president didn’t for sure. He had to act!

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

Two Books and A Movie

In the last two weeks I read two very interesting books. Before the end of the last semester I decided to go back to reading some fiction after reading a dozen of fascinating non-fiction books for two of my classes.

The first book on the top of my list to read during the winter break was Khaled Hosseini’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. As a huge fan of this Afghani American writer, I knew the second book would be as good as the first one, or even better. Indeed, it was a second masterpiece. The Kite Runner which fascinated millions of people does not have the high timbre the new one does.

In this book Hosseini writes about the most victimized sex in Afghanistan. Women. A fascinating story of two women whose lives were influenced by the country’s strict traditions and the inhumane actions carried out by the Taliban regime in 1990s until the US-led invasion in 2001. I didn’t read the book as fast as I read the Kite Runner. I think it was too much for me to do so. The pain, the horror and the abuse the characters went through left me crippled and unable to comprehend how much savagery Afghani women had endured. I had to read it interruptedly in order to digest what happened to these characters. Yet, the end of the book left me with a huge smile on my face, a smile of content.

In order to break the tension of reading such a story, I surfed the internet for something different. I finally found a book called Tales from Old Baghdad by Khalid al-Kashtini, one of Iraq’s and Arab’s famous authors and columnists. I heard of al-Kashtini a while ago when Omar told me about his satirical columns in the al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, a London-based Saudi newspaper. Since I started reading these uproarious columns, I became more attached to his writings. So I ordered the book and a week later it came by mail. Like most of the times, I like to read my books at the coffee shop in Borders. My friend would pick me up at a certain time in the morning and we would go there to read, chat and enjoy sipping tea or coffee.

Kashtini’s book is a fast read. Like most of his columns, it’s sarcastic and very funny. What is amazing about it is that the English version which I am reading is very well translated from Arabic. Kashtini’s first words in the dedication page were also very encouraging for me to read the whole book: “To the people of Iraq who have nothing to laugh about. Perhaps this story may put a momentary smile on their faces.” Indeed, Iraqis don’t really have anything to laugh about, yet the tales he narrated left a permanent smile on my face instead of a momentary one. It was not even a smile rather than a laughter that recur every time I recall some of the incidents he narrated.

The narrative of the book is very strong, yet it’s about the simple and beautiful life Iraqis enjoyed back in the 1940s and 1950s. The Shanasheel, Rashid Street, Bab al-Mudham, Istikan Chai, Manqala, Arak, Hasna, Benzene Khana, the prayers, even the Kalachiya, etc… it is all lurid and bona fide. It is about family bonds, children and grandmothers, honesty and respect. It’s about good deeds that seem absent from our lives these days. It’s fascinating how such life existed in Iraq. Nothing destroyed it but the successive wars and the abusive power of tyrannical regimes and then the occupation. Reading this book, one never misses the innocence of the time and how it embraced Iraqis all together. Now we live in another world, another time. A time when the country and its people became victims to these tyrants, terrorists and occupation.

The ease that accompanied me after reading the book vanished when I saw a movie I wish I didn’t see. Redacted is one of the American controversial movies that expose an issue very sensitive among Americans. It definitely breaks a taboo that is widely shocking for the American audience as well as Iraqis. It is a drama based on the Mahmudiyah killings, the gang-rape, murder, and burning of Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in March 2006 by U.S. soldiers who also killed her parents and younger sister. Although I was very disturbed by how perfectly the rape incident was performed in the movie, I take a bow to the cast who did a fantastic job in revealing a crime that is not even recognized by wide variety of Americans, at least the ones I came across. Although the girl’s honor and life will not be back, yet this film is a good reminder and a proof that will remain in history along with all what al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army did against innocent people of wounded Iraq.

The video below contains the rape scene in the movie. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

Palestine

The last time I read a comic book was when I was in middle school in Iraq. The books I read were all about Superman and Batman (translated into Arabic) and some like Juha or Sindbad of the Arabian Nights which were series in children magazines like Majalati and al-Mizmar. Previously, comic books for me were more like an entertainment tool for kids and teenagers only. Yet, today I discovered that it’s more serious than how I expected it to be.

One of my classes is called “Rhetorical Theory of Place.” In this course, we read different kinds of books that deal with the philosophy of the term “place” and how this theory could be applied into writing. One of the books suggested by the professor was called “Palestine.”

“Palestine” is a graphic non-fiction novel written and drawn by Joe Sacco about his experiences in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in December 1991 and January 1992. Sacco gives a portrayal which emphasizes the history and plight of the Palestinian people, as a group and as individuals.

The novel is no easy to read. Though it’s a comic book, it has a lot of details that could not be easily digested by people who’ve never experienced displacement and suffering. Sacco’s main goal in the book is to confront a reality unfamiliar to his American audience. Throughout the book, he declares that his main visit to the Palestinian territories is to focus on how people live there in such harsh conditions under the occupation. He was even asked by an Israeli woman that he should “be seeing [their] side of the story too.” He comments, “And what can I say? I say I’ve heard nothing but the Israeli side most all my life, that it’d take a whole other trip to see Israel, that I’d like to meet Israelis, but that wasn’t why I was here…”

Sacco’s drawings were amazingly alive. They make you picture the whole thing as if you were there. The smallest details were carefully and accurately written and drawn. He included a detailed, quoted historical background, supported by flashbacks narrated by him and his real characters through the conversations which he was part of.

I myself enjoyed the book very much. Although most of the incidents took place in the Palestinian territories, Sacco gives us a good picture of the Israeli part as well. The question of peace is of course presented. The story is full of amazing details and events. If you haven’t read it yet, go read it. It’s worth reading. If you already did, I would love to share my opinion with you on the comments section.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

A Book from a Friend

A few months ago, my friend and classmate Sarah gave me a book she considered “awesome”. Being overwhelmed by the bulky books I had to read for my studies, I put Sarah’s book in the bookcase hoping that one day I find the right time to read it. That day came three days ago when I decided to spend the Easter break reading it.

The book Sarah gave me is called The Kite Runner, a stunning novel written by Kahled Hosseini, an Afghan–American novelist and physician. I took the book from the bookcase and hesitated for a minute. Do I want to read something that makes me feel sadder than I am now? Hmm?! Finally, I made up my mind. What the hell, I said. It wouldn’t be worse than what is happening to my family now. But I was wrong.

The Kite Runner follows a story of a young boy, Amir who faces the challenges that confront him on the path to manhood. Living in Afghanistan in the 1960s, Amir enjoys a life of privilege that is shaped by his brotherly friendship with Hassan, his servant’s son. Amir is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Hassan, the son of his father’s Hazara servant. The story is set against a flashback of chaotic events, from the fall of the monarchy in Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, the mass exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the Taliban regime.

As I was reading the story, I could see how things in Iraq are going as bad as what happened in Afghanistan where people lived in peace for a long time before Russia invaded their country, followed by Taliban regime taking over not only the entire country, but the lives of the innocent people. In one scene [no spoilers], Amir goes back to Afghanistan after spending a long time in the United States. His mind flies back with a series of flashbacks about how Kabul used to be beautiful and how now it’s nothing but a spot of poverty and dust created by the worst totalitarian regime the country had ever witnessed. Amir’s words are stuck in my mind even though I already thought about them when I bid Baghdad the last farewell. With both eyes wet, I recall looking from the airplane window thinking what this war might do more to hurt Baghdad? By the time I was there, Baghdad was almost dead. Today, it’s officially dead. I looked and wondered about how the extremists are doing what they started in Afghanistan. Maybe they were better there because they have Sunnis only. Baghdad is being destroyed by Sunni and Shiite extremists. One of the characters mentions that Afghani people were happy when the Taliban men came after they liberated the country from the Russians. But these Afghanis were let down when these same liberators turned against them and destroyed most, if not all, aspects of life. I looked back to the elections and how people in my country were happy and optimistic in going to the polling centers voting for their new leaders. I stopped reading for a minute and thought how these same voters were let down by those whom they voted for.

Although the story is fictional, it was derived from real stories and incidents with specific setting. There were so many details and incredible description of how people there went through all these years. Lives of Afghani individuals were well written and described in a way that the reader finishes the book without questions of who’s who.

So, if you are interested in reading such kinds of books, I really advise you to read it and enjoy the beauty of Hosseini’s writing style and talent in molding historical events with fiction.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

Treasure of Baghdad’s Diary

A new thought came to my mind while I was reading Anthony Shadid‘s book, Night Draws Near. “why don’t I start writing my diary on the blog?” I wondered. Finally I decided. It will reflect how life looks like for a young man like me in a country torn between politics and violence.

After watching an interesting episode of Alhoor Alain late last night, I woke up tired and sleepy this morning. My telephone alarm rang at 7 a.m. “Shit,” I said. “I want to sleep.”

I didn’t have a breakfast because I was fasting and I went out to take a taxi to go to work. Usually, I go to Palestine Street where I meet a colleague of mine whom I go with. I have to go there because no taxi drivers take me to the place where I work since it’s far and “dangerous”.

“Be careful, don’t go use the National Theater road,” another colleague told me by telephone. “A car bomb exploded there. Police cordoned the area,” he said.

I told my colleague and we used another road which made us reach the office within one hour while it takes us 30 minutes maximum. While he was driving, a convoy of interior ministry commandos horrified the people in the street by shooting in the air to separate the vehicles to avoid any possible attack. Using the back of his rifle, one of the commandos broke the side mirror of one car driving. “How scary this is!” my colleague said. “We are starting our day with this incident.”

These days, my mood is not like it used to be. My best friends who are also reporters are not present. My muse, J1., is doing a story in another place and the other dear friend, J2., is leaving the country tomorrow and I might not be able to see her for along time. What compensates me is the presence of my dearest male friend, O., whom I consider a brother since I don’t have brothers.

I have friends on the internet as well whom I trust and share knowledge and friendship at the same time. The closest ones are G. from India, Z. from N.Z., and H. from Iraq. Sometimes I feel I bother them with my daily complains about the situation but they are so understandable. I feel so comfortable when I talk to them.

I feel them and I feel they are sitting next to me.

Thinking the whole day of the situation in the country makes me really tired. I am trying not to make this affect my life but I don’t know till when this will continue. I am worried about my parents and my sister’s family more than myself. Few days ago, a huge attack occurred against the Sheraton and Palestine hotels where many western journalists live and work.

“We have to leave,” said my mother while we were watching the news. “This country is being destroyed and we cannot endure such life here,” she added. “Where can we go?” wondered my father who seemed didn’t like the idea. “We can rent the house and go live in Amman for some time at least,” she replied.

It’s getting very hard for them and for me as well to endure such a difficult life while they used to live normal life from the fifties to the end of the seventies. They endured life in three consequent wars that turned the developed country into a backwards one controlled by failure government and foreign terrorists.

Today, I went to Adhamiya, the Sunni neighborhood, to do some reporting. The streets were so crowded. A traffic policeman left his position at an intersection in central Adhamiya which made the people stuck and refuse to move as each one wants to go first. There was no traffic lights because there was no electricity, as usual. I finished reporting and went back to the office.

The way to Adhamiya used to be very clean, but not any more. Because of the lack of the services in Baghdad, people started throwing their garbage in the streets. I hate this and I wish the people should cooperate with the municipality to restore the clean Baghdad

Before Iftar, J2., who is leaving tomorrow, came to spend her last day in Baghdad with us. We all had Iftar and then she went to her apartment to pack her luggage. She came back an hour and half later. O. was gone by that time as one of his best friends arrived from Dubai. He hasn’t seen him for years. We sat down and talked for along time. We talked about her, me, my stories, her stories and about Baghdad itself.

“My house is in Egypt, but my heart is here,” she said. We talked about Anthony Shadid’s book, Night Draws Near, and the amazing way he describes Iraqis and Iraq before and during the war. “His words make me feel the situation again although I am Iraqi and I went through all the periods mentioned in the book,” I said. There was apart I loved in the first chapter of the book. It’s about the feeling of one of the most famous sculptor, Maohammed Ghani. “Baghdad …. is the heart of the Arab civilization. Baghdad was the capital of religion and power. It was the capital of Arabs, the golden age of Islam. Arab poetry was Iraqi poetry…. Baghdad is still Baghdad.” Shadid quoted Ghani in his book. “It made my tear fall when I read this part,” I told J2. “I cannot wait to finish reading it and read J1’s book,” I continued.

Hugging her, I told J2., “I’ll miss you a lot.”
“I know, I’ll miss you a lot too,” she said. Then I left back home and the time was 9:30 p.m. which is a dangerous time to leave in Baghdad.