Growing up under occupation

Friday, January 28, 2005
Can you help me to shout?

I was thinking last night when I went to sleep: did the American soldiers come to Iraq to give us our freedoms, which we need?

I ask myself this question and got the answer: NO! Why? I will give you a simple example.

I don't put my real name on this blog because I'm not allowed to have a free opinion in this life. I can't tell the truth until I am sure that no one knows who I am.

I want the American soldiers to get out of Iraq as soon as possible. If they settle down in Iraq they will kill us. Probably they won't kill us with their bullets but they kill our hearts more and more with their behavior.

Today, the Mosul news announced that they would tell us the election lists soon. The election will be on Sunday and they still haven't announced the lists? What happened to the world?

There will be a curfew from tomorrow until next Tuesday. Iraqi people should not walk in the street and go out and see their country, this country that they built with their hands. Can you help me to shout?

I told you before about the water in Baghdad--that there was none in the days that we were there. But I didn't tell you about the water we were drinking when it finally came out of the tap. I studied in school that water doesn't have a color, odor, or taste. From my tap, I discovered I was wrong. So was I drinking water or something else?

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Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Is this school or what?

Good morning. Would you like to go to my school? Come with me. Yallah (Let's go)!!!

Stand on this brick to reach my school. If you are afraid, there is another way. Use this but be careful not to fall in the pond. Oh, you reached the swamp. Sorry--IT'S MY SCHOOL.

This view you can see from the window of my classroom.

Can you believe that I am going to this school every day? And I breathe this polluted air with my friends? Is this school or what??

God knows what microbe I just breathed in. Surely I am sick now and I don't know it. Help us!! I don't know how but we need your help. So hellllllllllllllllllllllp us if you can.

Yours,
The suffering girl (Hadiya)

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Saturday, May 28, 2005
Days Come, Days Go

Yesterday we left our house for the first time this week. We went to visit my uncle, who we had not seen for a month. After that we went to buy dinner. We went to three shops and all of them were closed. At the end, we bought Lahmacun--it's something like pizza but it's not pizza. This is the first time we went out. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? There were not many cars in the street.

Talking about electricity in my last post, I forgot to say that we didn't have electricity in Saddam's time too. Baghdad was the only place to have electricity 24 hours but that changed after the war began. All the cities became equal now because all of them don't have electricity most of the day.

When I was a little girl, I once asked my mother if there is any country where there is electricity all the day? I couldn't imagine that! How could they have electricity all the time when we only had four to seven hours of it? And many days, we didn't have any electricity at all. Sometimes when I remember things like that from when I was a kid, I feel sorry for myself.

Today I saw a TV program called Yallah Shabab. They were in the U.S. at one of the big universities in California. They asked the people there about the Iraq war and what they thought about Islam and did they want to learn Arabic? One of the girls answered really nice. She said, "I don't like sending our sons to fight your sons and daughters." The point is this war is between our governments and not the peoples so we shouldn't hate each other. In the end, we are all from Adam. So I want to say that I don't hate U.S. people.

My friend David posts nice pictures that he took when he went to the zoo. I wrote him a letter and said I had never gone to a zoo. He replied that he never went to a zoo until he was 25 so I had 10 years to catch up. BUT you don't see, my friend--Iraq has no zoos. Yes, we have some small places where they'll post a cartoon and write the word "Zoo." People who visit there say there are only dogs, cats, a horse, a donkey, a camel, and a bear there--animals that we can see on our way to school. What a strange country I live in!!!

Before the war, if anyone wanted ice cream and it was 12 o'clock at night, we would get in the car and go buy the ice cream. Every Friday, we went out of our home and had dinner outside. And every Thursday, we would visit all my aunts and uncles--we called this day "the meeting day." The wedding parties would start at night while now there are only two options: not do the wedding party or have it between four and seven in the afternoon.

Sometimes, I just want to be a kid again and live in the days before the war began, but it's just a dream. I hope I will live to spend times nicer and more beautiful than these days.

Yours, Hadiya

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Friday, July 1, 2005
OH GOD

I have written many posts but I don't have the courage to publish them. I haven't gone out of the house in nine days so I have no new news.

"Day after day, the situation is getting better." That's what a high-ranking military man said. But the reality shows the opposite.

Let me remember what Najma said to me the other day: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak out and remove all doubt."

If it is getting better, than why don't we have water and oil while we live in a country of oil and we have two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates?

We are in the third year of the war. Three years and the war does not end. So when you want to help the Iraqi people, don't send your cousins and sons to Iraq to fight because they fight us, not for us.

Did you forget the WMDs?
Did you forget what happened in Abu Ghraib?
Did you forget what humanity means?
Did you forget what humans need?

Don't bother. I also forgot something.
I forgot what peace looks like.
What the street looks like.
What the sky in the night looks like.
What my relatives look like.

Sometimes I just think that if you could see what my eyes see, if you could hear what my ears hear, you would be able to understand what I mean.

Some words from the world.

Did you read what Khalid (my fellow Iraqi blogger) wrote in his blog? "I am pro God. I am pro life. I am pro humanity. I am pro truth. And when the American government chooses to be against all that, then damn it! I am anti-American government."

And at the end, I want to share with you this joke.

Are you pessimistic?
Do you feel sad, poor, and disturbed?
Congratulations! You are 100% Iraqi!

Another joke.
Who is an Iraqi?
An Iraqi is a human who lives in the world, is hated by the countries in the world, wronged by the media in the world, disturbed in his thoughts about the world, exploited by the governments of the world, and sad in his life in the world.

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Friday, Feb 24, 2006
Without comment

I am sad and I don't know why. It's not because I can't find a reason to feel like I do, but because I don't know which reasons have covered my life with all this pain. Every second makes me weaker. With all the pressures in the school, with all the bombs, I don't know what to do? What to say??? I don't like sitting here in this place watching the people killing each other, cheating each other, and fighting each other.

I can swear that this war has changed my life 180 degrees. I am 16 years old. I should be living the happiest part of my life. I should be a crazy girl doing foolish and stupid things, but I am not. I am talking like someone who is 35. I feel I am nothing. I do nothing in my life and I am going to do nothing.

My friend's brother is very ill. Nine days ago, he woke up and he couldn't see anything. Now he is blind and cannot speak. He has a headache all the time. He gets worse and worse each day. The doctors don't know what happened to him. They gave him drugs but his body didn't respond. In Iraq, there is no hope of survival. My friend's family is trying to get out of the country. Maybe they will find an answer to his state in some other country.

Have you ever wanted to disappear?
Have you ever wanted to scream?
Have you ever felt that you are being led by something outside yourself? Well, I am.

The electricity is better now. It comes on for about 12 hours. But the generator crashed so we still have to live 12 hours each day without electricity. I've lived 20 hours and even 24 without it, but I am sick of it. If that's all that America can give the Iraqi people--12 hours of electricity--why did they come here?

In the morning, I study on the roof of our house. The sun's light is a good friend to me these days. Najma and me were studying on the roof yesterday and there were many helicopters flying in the air around our house. Najma hopes that they will shoot us so that we will not have to study because then we will be in heaven playing. That's what she said yesterday. But in Iraq, no dream will come true, thank God.

Look! Can you hear the sound of the helicopters? It seems that they hear us talking about them.

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Friday, May 26, 2006
Food!!

Maybe we don't have electricity, peace, and freedom, but we certainly have food. Maybe we can't drive, walk, and do the simple, normal things, but we can eat.

The donuts I cook are some of the best donuts ever...but the cheesecake I cook is the worst cheesecake ever.

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Thursday October 4, 2007
Excuses

ANOTHER DISASTER!

The first of October was the first day of university after the summer holidays. Najma, my sister, was so eager to start her second year of college. What can I say? She is so weird!

My sister and my mother went to Mosul University. If my sister's lessons ended early, they planned that she should come to my mother's college and they would return home together. If not, Najma should wait near her college for my dad.

Although Najma is not a good listening girl, she followed the instructions perfectly.

About 1 p.m., a bomb car exploded where Najma and my dad had agreed to meet. I was in the house counting the walls in each room and guess what? There are four walls in each room, not more, not less.

I didn't hear the explosion but I heard my cell phone ringing. It was my dad calling me.

Alo, where are you?
Dad, this is Hadiya. Is there any place I could be except home?
I thought I called your mother. Hang up the phone!
O.K., O.K., but it's not my fault, is it?

What I thought was that my mother hadn't met my dad in the usual place they planned to meet (as usual). But the truth was that my father was calling my mother because he saw a bomb car and a fire in the place he was supposed to meet Najma so he called my mother to see if my sister had arrived at her college and survived.

Did she die or did she not? That is the question.

Well, yes, she finished her lessons early and went to my mother's college. There is where she heard the car bomb's explosion. There is where my mother sat shocked because she was so close to losing a daughter. And there is where Najma found a new reason not to do housework.

"I was going to die today and you want me to wash the dishes?"

So they met my dad and they ran back home before the police closed off the street.

And later, while I was studying the theory that says "all rooms have but one ceiling," my cell phone rang again. It was my mom and she said, "We are going to see your cousin. A bomb car exploded near the university and he was injured."

Suddenly, without any warning, my tears fell down and I asked in a shaking voice, "How is he?" My mother assured me that he was O.K. But they hadn't seen him yet. He had driven his own car home and gone to his house.

Later, my cousin told them the whole story. He was shopping in front of the university, buying watermelon, when a car in the next street exploded. The sound was so loud that my cousin couldn't believe he could still hear.

After the explosion, he said he found himself lying on the ground far away from where he had been standing. He said there was money and watermelons everywhere. His clothes had been torn and he had injuries in his legs.

The situation was very confusing. There were six injured people (four of them were students) and one dead man (a teacher in the university). This is the information I heard on the news. But of course there were more injured people that were not counted--the news cannot cover everything.

My cousin left that place and drove his car to his house before his mother and wife heard the news. He left his money and the watermelon he bought on the ground as a sign. The sign says:

Here is where a man was lying...
Here is where a man left his belonging stuff
And took his soul to his child and family,
A soul, which is maybe a reason of the life of this man.

In the end, I couldn't improve on the theory that "the room has but one ceiling."

---

Monday, October 22, 2007
Or not

Are we crazy or are we not?

A couple of days ago, Najma's friend said she was coming to our house the next day. Najma was planning to make a sweet for her but she didn't have time to cook it during the day. About 1 a.m., while I was working on the computer, I saw a light in the kitchen. My sister had surely lost her mind cooking sweets after midnight, I thought.

A minute later, she came and asked me to help her which is something I am always ready to do, especially if it's cooking. So there we were both in the kitchen cooking and laughing and trying not to make noise so we wouldn't be caught by my grandma or my mom, who would definitely tell everyone that we were up all night cooking sweets. My aunt-in-law would spread the word and we would be the major subject in the latest gossip. Meanwhile, we were enjoying ourselves and wondering if we were crazy or not.

In the middle of all of this, the electricity went off.

So now we were cooking in the dark and laughing and we were sure that we were crazy. The dark didn't stop us from making the sweets. Thanks Allah that we didn't get caught but there certainly must have been a shocked look on my mother's face when she opened the refrigerator the next morning and saw our sweets.

Is there a curfew or is there not?

The next day, Najma's friend came to our house but she only stayed for a quarter of an hour because her brother called and said a policeman had told him that there was a curfew. Minutes later, her father came to take her home and she went without even tasting the sweets that we were up all night cooking.

An hour later, the curfew ended.

Are we chickens or are we not?

One fact is that there are no cars in the street after 7 p.m. Another fact says that Iraqi people go to sleep around 10 p.m.. The question is when do chickens go to sleep, before or after 10 p.m.?

In my case and in Najma's case and in the case of every young Iraqi, we won't go to bed before 11 p.m. because we are...I don't know. But in our parents' case, oh yeah, they do go to bed early. My mom was talking with her brother in the United Arab Emirates on the computer and he said it was only 9 p.m. and he was going out to eat ice cream. Mom told him that she was fighting to stay awake until 10 p.m.. He didn't believe that and asked her, "Are you chickens?"

So really, are we chickens?

Is this a life or is this not?

I can't forget that during Saddam's time, we went out to eat ice cream every night after midnight. Oh, I want the old days to come back. I want to see the moon and the sky in the afternoon. I want to see that hope is coming soon. I want to see life like a movie cartoon and not like a scary movie night.

I want to be a normal girl living a normal life. Not this girl who is sitting in front of the computer, writing a diary and trying to be such a funny, lovely girl. I want to take off Hadiya's nickname and I want to throw out all her bad memories and I want to clean her heart of pain. And I want just to be myself and just to talk for myself and just to hear my voice and just to be who I am.

I just want to be...

To be someone else.

P.S. I wonder if it is me who wrote this blog or was it she? Or not?

Yours,
Me, Myself, not I