penpals in iraq
a family in baghdad hold a joint blog ("mother: Faiza, sons: Raed, Khaled and Majid writing down their diaries. Father: Azzam is not interested") listen to the war through the ears of a mother:
our neighbour rang us in the late night, be careful and don’t go out, he said.
"they are holding RPGs in the nearby Husainyya (Shia mosque) and waiting for Americans to come, they want to burn them"
i couldn't sleep yesterday's night... feeling nervous and waiting for explosions...
the oldest son raed delivers it through and through from the war front, he drops things on the political tip, tripping us up and dropping his perspective on what's going on (often drastically different than what we hear on the news, his slams bremer, bush, and speaks on the real deal on the rise of assadr, the political and religious leader of millions in iraq dismissed as an "outlaw" by us intelligence.) watch how raed drops the bomb:
Most of the people that I know (including myself) were against this war... and still are...
Why? Because we are Baathists and Saddamists? Because we are masochists who enjoyed living in the horrible life under the Iraqi government?
NO.
It was because we understood that the modifying must come from INSIDE... even if it took decades or centuries.
I know that I can't come to Texas and tell people what to do...
Or to London... or to Madrid...
Not because I don't have enough ideas... it is because my ideas will be OUT OF CONTEXT.
his brothers khalid and majid have their own blogs too - thoughts from teenagers backpacking through a city under siege.
interesting trivia note: raed is the titular person in salaam pax's heartbreaking blog dear raed, probably the most well known and most widely talked about iraqi blog out there. i'm still a neophyte when it comes to iraqi blogs - not well versed in them by any means - but this is some crazy captivating reading. other iraqi blogs that i just found are river's baghdad burning and zeyad's healing iraq. listen to a city crumble under the breaths of our daughters, from zeyad's blog:
Sorry for the depressing note. It seems like everything is back under control, at least from what I can see in my neighbourhood. There is an eerie silence outside, only dogs barking. Until about an hour ago, it sounded like a battlefield, and we had flashbacks of last April. I don't know what happened, but there were large plumes of smoke from the direction of Adhamiya and Kadhimiya. I wanted to take some pictures but my father and uncle both said they would shoot me on the spot if I tried, they were afraid the Apaches would mistake us for troublemakers and fire at us. I'm dreading tomorrow.