Curfew Thoughts

Its my fourth day in the office. Since last Tuesday, I came here to the office and I didn’t go home because of the curfew and I have to stay this night and the whole day of tomorrow. Although life here in the office is better than all Iraqis people (im talking about regular people not the politicians) we have permanent electricity power, air-conditioned rooms and some other nice things but yet, I don’t really feel well. I miss my family and to be frank, I miss my son Haidar. I miss his sweet smile and I miss his sweet lovely hands when he moves them all over my face every time I hold him as if he say “we are you dad? I don’t see you much. By the way, he just started crawling few days ago and I filmed his first steps. I was talking to my wife today when she told me to talk to him. I refused because my sweet 10 months baby will keep looking for me as he used to do every time when he hears my voice. I don’t know how to say it but honestly sometimes I feel that I had committed a great mistake when I got married and had a child because its never a normal life that we live in Iraq. I always think about tomorrow and my son’s future and always the same question comes to my mind (what would the situation look like when he is 10 or 20? Is it possible that things go well to the extent that my son can enjoy his adolescence? And the most important question for me is (Will I be with him or he no?)

Comments

[Laura]

Dear Kuraman: Thank you for your note. I share your hope that we will one day have a world that is at peace. Many years ago I have the great luck to serve as the sign language interpreter at a speech by Daniel Berrigan. Father Berrigan is a Catholic priest, a poet and an advocate for peace and social justice. I vividly remember his message: that to create peace, we must find ways to love others, not demonize them. It is not easy to love people who do things we don't like, or even do things that are wrong. But to search in our own hearts for compassion, for acceptance of others as people even when we cannot accept the wrongs they do--this is essential (as I remember him saying), in order to create peace.

So, of course, this compassion always begins from us. We can't wait for others to do what we haven't at least started to do. I took that lesson away almost 30 years ago. I'm still working on it/with it.

[Kumaran]

Laura,

I do agree that not all muslims are bad. Personally I know a lot of good muslims. But, they keep quiet when non-muslim minorities are treated badly by the few bad apples in their community. That makes me think that there is something wrong with the philosophy of Islam.

May be one day we will have a beautiful world where religions melt away and real peace prevail.

[Laura]

Kumaran: Speaking as someone nominally raised as a Christian, I can say without prejudice that Christianity has not been a religion of peace, either--not in the distant past, nor nowadays.

Human beings can be hateful and can hide behind all sorts of reasons to justify their hate.

Most Muslims are not haters and are not killers. As Gandhi observed: "humanity is an ocean. If a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." Please don't lump a few bad drops with the ocean of humanity, which includes so many loving people, of all faiths and beliefs.

[Kumaran]

Today, while having my evening walk, I was contemplating this issue - so many innocents died, iraq has plunged into a vortex of violence and counter-violence.Should, I , as a hindu, feel pity, sympathy for these people or should I feel that it is the 'karma coming down on muslims for their gory past and present atrocities against non-muslim minorities in muslim lands'?

Millions have been butchered mercilessly since Islam was invented by the 'great' prophet of muslims... Children have been snatched away from parents, women raped, non-beleivers tortured... It is not only history, if it is just history, I will overlook these, but this is an active philosophy/belief of over a billion muslims... we feel the pain of muslims, but they never try to understand the pains of non-muslims and try to justify their barbarisms as God's wish.

In these 14 centuries, since mohammed 'found' islam, neither the muslims nor the non-muslims have experienced peace in this world.

[Earthmom]

My friend, I love you and I'm sorry that you cannot be with your baby and your wife. I sent you my own son, who is just twenty, to help you and your countrymen. I'm so afraid that in my desire to help you, I have done more harm than good. I gave away my car so that I would not contribute to the oil-greed that infects America. I've ridden my bicycle now a mile for every American soldier that has died in this conflict. My children ride with me and it is my intention to remind them every single day that we are at war. So many here are numb dumb and blind to your situation. What else can I do, friend? I gave up my car, I gave you my son, I give you my tears and my prayers. I beg you to tell me, what can I do to help YOU? God bless you and your family.

[Susan]

I follow the news on Iraq closely, and blog it at Iraq Today blog (before that Today in Iraq - which has been around since June 2003).

I have no trouble believing that a million Iraqis are now dead. I would say it is at least a million, most likely much more.

It is genocide.

http://warnewstoday.blogspot.com

[Rebecca del Rio]

I'm not at all sure this will be of any comfort, Friend, but all loving, caring parents wonder, at times, if bringing their children into this mad world is the right thing.

I'm sad to see a debate about the number of dead. As Laura so eloquently put it, "We cannot be reminded too many times that the occupation and the damage it has wrought is happening to real people..."
No number of dead civilians is acceptable.

[Laura]

Other scholarly sources support the Lancet study. The following commentary will link you to an article by the Chronicle of Higher Education (and raises points re: views of the report inside and outside U.S. I think it's important to note that the ways the data were gathered were consistent with date collection methods in Bosnia and other war zones.
www.commondreams.org/views05/0127-23.htm

[Tony]

Laura, I can see from your post that you must be a caring and sincere person,so I feel compelled to share this information with you:
The justforeignpolicy.org estimate, which is admitted by the authors to be "unscientific", is based upon the second Lancet study and data extrapolated from Iraq Body Count. Interestingly, Iraq Body Count (who put the maximum civilian deaths today at under 76,000)harshly criticizes the Lancet study here: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php

I sincerely believe that the magnitude of the situation in Iraq is serious enough, without stretching the numbers.

[Laura]

Dear Tony and others:

Here is one source about the estimated 1 million Iraqi dead:

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/index.html

[Tony]

Laura, I have not seen the 1 million estimate. Will you please tell me where I may find a source for that information?

[ljm]

I know how much you miss your family and son. So many people are separated from their families, because of this war. If only people there could be as they were on the win of the Iraq soccer team and celebrate life together rather than killing each other. Except for the foreign suicide car bomb fanatics, Iraqs showed the world they can all get along. As for the politicians, I've noticed Al Maliki looks like he's put on weight when I saw him on TV for his trip to Iran.

You got married and have your son. Life is what it is. No regrets, ok?

[Susan]

I would like to echo what Laura said.

[Laura]

Thank you for this post. I hope and pray that your family--and all Iraqi families--remain safe and strong. We cannot be reminded too many times that the occupation and the damage it has wrought is happening to real people--to people who, like anyone else, love their families and want their children to thrive in peace. May the feelings we hold for our own children fuel our passion to stop the desecration of this country and to halt before it can happen any invasion of other lands.

It is estimated that 1 million Iraqi people have died since the invasion in 2003--most of them women and children. Wives, mothers and little ones. Beloveds, what are we doing? What are we doing for peace?

Today in my home town, the local newspaper printed an article about two women over the age of 100. This is the birthday wish of a 106 year old, a refugee from the Holocaust: "I hope the world will get wise someday, and we will have peace."

Let us begin today, to be wiser. For Haidar, for Hanna, for Kheldoun, for 106 year old Elsie. For all of us.