ihath

A Palestinian, a French and a German were summoned to meet God. God told them that they could each ask him one question that he would answer. The German went in to meet god and came out crying. The others asked him why he was crying. The German said he asked God about when will the German race rule the earth, and god told me the answer. I am crying because it will not be in my life time. The French went in and he came out crying. When asked about it he said that he had asked god about when will the French rule the earth. God told him the answer. I am sad because it won’t be in my life time. Finally the Palestinian went in and came out with a puzzled look on his face. The French and German wanted to know what happened. The Palestinian told them that that he said the following to God. I do not want to know when the Palestinians will rule the earth I just want to know when we will have our own country and live on our own not under military occupation. The German and French where curios, “so what did god say?”. The Palestinian man replied “God started to cry and he told me that it won’t be in his life time”.

The above was told to me as a joke 14 years ago. Only I didn’t laugh. Instead I averted my eyes and started to look at the floor for something to focus my eyes on. I noticed my black leather sandals that I was wearing. They had big bulky heals as was fashionable at the time. I started to wiggle my foot around, first side ways and then tip my toes up and down. Pretending my shoes were the most fascinating things in the world. Anything to distract me from the conversation that was going on. After a while my shoes did seem fascinating. They seemed like the most interesting thing in the world. How come I never noticed my shoes before?

I read the news, to find out that the state of Israel had fired rockets into a demonstration killing mostly children. Bush says he find this troubling but not troubling enough to halt or even curtail the 6 billion of aid sent to Israel every year that enables the aggression in the first place. And then people wonder why is there terrorism? Why are Palestinian people so angry? I get emails asking why don’t the Palestinians fight for their rights in peaceful and rational ways.

I wish to take every Palestinian to east hastings street in Vancouver. So
that they could see the native Indian junkies, the native Indian drug
dealers, the homeless and the native Indian prostitutes. This is what peace looks like
when the terms are dictated by your oppressor. In Vancouver we don't call
these people terrorists, we just call them scum bags, we call them pathetic
losers. Vancouver is a peaceful city, but that peace came at a price. Once
in a while when we get all self righteous and we want to feel superior we
throw these people a quarter, in return we expect a grateful smile and a
pleasant thank you to bring closure to a feel good venture.

You may call us terrorists, you may tell us that we should resist the occupation in peaceful ways, you may tell us that the terrorism is killing innocent civilians. And you are right. Yes! if we were a truly enlightened group of people then yes, we would accept our harsh fate, we would watch the occupier kill our children and we would say, may god forgive you. We would pray day and night hoping that god would deliver us from this hardship. We would sit around hoping that the messiah would come and help to liberate us. Unfortunately, we are not enlightened. We are just average people born in
desperate times. Perhaps we don't believe in God as much as we proclaim we do. Jesus would agree with you he too would say take a peaceful and a rational path. He would tell us to love our enemy the way we love ourselves. but then Jesus would come and reside with us, hold our hand and share in our misery. Buddha would agree with Jesus too, he too would say revenge will destroy you in the end. He would tell us that peace comes from the inside, but then Buddha would not preach from a distance, he would come and show us how it is done. Unfortunately, there are no enlightened ones living among us, only Hammas, only Hammas will reside among us, hold our hands and share in our fate. We can't afford to be picky at this point. You may say what you like about the Palestinians. We have many social problems, most of them have nothing to do with Israel. Among us lives the idiot, the stupid, the lame, the selfish and the ignorant. But then some of us are smart, funny, warm, loving and sophisticated. You may call us terrorists and we understand, we forgive you because you haven't tasted the bitterness of living under occupation. We do not seek to be enlightened, we do not seek peace. Our goals are much more modest. We seek two things and two things only. We seek dignity, and that we have already achieved and we seek survival - all bets are off on that one.

We did not choose to live in Israel; Israel chose to live on top of us. History will say that the fathers of Israel chose the wrong indigenous population to oppress. Nobody will dare throw us that self righteous quarter for we are too scary. We are terrorists.

Unfortunately, my black leather sandals with the bulky heals have long been worn out. I finally had to throw them away. But luckily I have my pretty platform shoes. I bought them last year for 100 dollars. I normally would not spend so much money on shoes or any clothing article. But I was particularly depressed on that day. Somehow when I am depressed I don’t think about the hungry children in Africa and I have a higher propensity for buying things I wouldn’t buy normally. So I bought myself brown platform sandels with butterflies embroidered into the side of the heal. They look very girly. Completely out of character for me. But today I am glad I bought them , because I desperately need to wear them. I always get so many comments and compliments when I wear those shoes.

14 years ago, I was walking around in downtown Vancouver on a beautiful sunny summer day. Right on Robson street there was about 10 Hari Krishna followers. They were wearing pink robes. They had a drum and some of them had cymbals that made a sharp sound. They were dancing around looking very happy and chanting “Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna, Hari , Hari, Hari Krishna”. What a bunch of losers, I thought to myself. Why don’t they get a real job instead of wasting their days chanting all day long. Like that is going to make a difference. I know absolutely nothing about the Hari Krishna religion. But all the followers seem to have that happy enlightened look on their face, as in a bit light in the head. Maybe each Hari Krishna gets a lobotomy upon joining.

About one month later, I was sitting in coffee shop drinking a cup of coffee. I had taken a much needed coffee break from work. I was staring at my coffee feeling all sorry for myself. I was working long hours for months now. I had worked on every single weekend for months. The bugs in the software I was working on seemed to pile up. As our dead line approached the work only seemed to increase and it seemed highly unlikely that the dead line would be met. I was so stressed out about it I couldn’t even think straight. I was only 21 years old. I hadn’t learned the lesson that in a tough situation I should do what I can and not worry about the rest. I hadn’t learned the lesson that there is life after “the project” nor did I realize yet that every hardship happens for a reason. I was young and foolish. As I was sitting there feeling sorry for myself, along came the Hari Krishna crowd. Chanting, happy, like they had no care in the world. I stared at them sitting in my miserable state and wondered who the loser was. The stressed out computer geek that is miserable or the happy bunch that are enjoying a beautiful summer day. For a second I fantasized I would get up and join them. Simply walk away from all my troubles and spend the rest of my day chanting, singing and dancing. What a wonderful way to spend a sunny afternoon in Vancouver. The thought seemed more appealing as I thought about it. The thought of running away from my problems. I gulped down the rest of my coffee and went back to the office. Nah! I better fix a few more bugs.

Damn! I was this close to reaching enlightenment and I missed it.

Vancouver is a very new age city. Yoga studios are on every street corner and people like to use words like karma, enlightenment, good energy, zen, universal, harmony and feeling good on the inside. These are the kind of people that like to wear crystals, peace symbols and burn candles. I suppose it is all very harmless. As for me, when life becomes too painful and I need a distraction, I go for the shoe approach. I suppose that is pretty harmless as well. As in, pretty useless.

“My name is Ba’ath” said my class mate at Kuwait University. I wanted to laugh. Ha ha ha ha. That woman must have a great sense of humor. She is Iraqi and when I asked her what her name is, she replied by saying Ba’ath. Ha ha ha ha, Iraqi people are so funny. Luckily one second before I was about to burst out laughing I looked at her face. She looked dead serious. Oh my god! her name is Ba’ath. I better not laugh. If I am seen as making fun of the word Ba’ath I might get into serious trouble. I hid my face in my hands and pretended I was reading from a book laid out in front of me, on the desk. I was trying to hide the bizarre contortion forming on my face as one part of me wanted to laugh and the other was painfully trying to wipe any hint of a smile off my face. Her name was Ba’ath, no joke. No need to ask about the politics of her parents. That must be the ugliest name given to a woman I had ever heard of. Even uglier than the name the woman that frequents my gym in Vancouver gave to her daughter. My gym mate called her daughter “Equity”, I wanted to laugh too, instead I nodded my head. Even though I won’t get beheaded for making fun of somebody’s name in Vancouver; I thought it would be rude to laugh anyway. But Ba’ath is by far the ugliest name given to a woman. Ba’ath is the name of the ruling party in Iraq before the fall of Saddam. It also means resurrection. Why would somebody call his daughter resurrection? The birth of a new baby makes me think of life, hope, future, it does not inspire the thought of ghosts or zombies resurrected from the dead. If I am dead, why would I want to be resurrected any way? Considering the fact that we live in a world were an unarmed and tied young man gets his head severed in the name of religion, why would anybody want to come back once they left? I certainly don’t. No resurrection for me, thank you.

The images of the slaying of Nick Burg made me remember the year I realized that I was living in a rotten world. I was 14 and studying in a Kuwaiti high school. That year was marked by three events that made me realize that I was living in a horrible and scary world. First of, I read
Roots

translated to Arabic. It was the first grown up book I had read. Everything I had read before that had happy endings and the good guys won. All the grown ups were talking about Roots the T.V. series but my parents would not allow me to watch it. They felt it was too harsh for my age. But when I decided to buy the book because I was curios to find out what the buzz was all about, my dad didn’t say anything. My dad is an avid reader and he always encouraged me to read. The tale of Kunta Kinte captured into slavery and transported from his native Africa to America is haunting. I almost felt I was in the slave ship watching the wretched conditions the slaves were enduring at the first taste of their enslavement. I would read and cry, I was depressed for a whole week but I couldn’t put the book down. The story was so compelling. My mom kept saying, stop reading that book, it is upsetting you. Although the story is a work of fiction, it based on a reality that did exist. How could any human being subject another human being to such injustice? I kept asking myself. How could anybody be so cruel? The knowledge that everything in the story actually happened made me sad. Ay night, before going to sleep I would fantasize that I was able to travel back in time and rescue Kunta Kinte and transport him back to his native town in Africa.

The second event happened while I was at the library. I was reading a book on the second world war. Half way through there was a picture of some of the atrocities committed by the Natzis during that time. There was a picture of a pile of dead bodies, piled up in a pyramid. That picture shocked me. The dead people looked like average people no different from me. I had to close down the book and leave the library right away. I felt nauseated, I felt I was about to faint. To me war conjured up images of heroic actions by heroic men and women. That image made me realize the flip side of the war. The death of thousands and millions of average people at the hands of other average people. The picture from that book kept haunting me. I kept wondering what sort of a world I was living in. But all this had happened in a different time in different lands. Surely I was safe in Kuwait. Everybody around me looked like they were not inclined to inflict pain on others.

One day in my high school, the vice principle summoned me to her office. This was a big deal, to be summoned to the vice principle’s office. In her office she handed me a notebook and asked me to write down the name, address and phone number of each student in my class room. We need that information in cases of emergency, she said. I took the notebook and did as I was instructed. Few days later I handed back the notebook proclaiming “mission accomplished”. I had asked every single student in my class to write down their name, number and address in the note book. She opened it and glanced at it casually. Very good! then she handed it back to me. Now, on top of each page I want you write down the name of one these girls. Allow several pages per girl. I want you to write down everything you know about that girl and then I want you write down what that girl talks about, things she tells her friends, her interests, her thoughts, what are her parents doing and so on. I was being asked to spy on my class mates. I took the notebook and stuffed it my school bag. This was a dilemma. On one hand, I didn’t want to spy on my class mates. On the other hand, In Kuwait you never said no to a teacher, this wasn’t just the teacher, this was the vice principle. The whole culture at the school was that of obedience, you simply weren’t allowed to disobey. At home, my father noticed that I looked disturbed at the dinner table. When I told him the story, he brilliantly gave me the solution to my dilemma. He told me to tell the vice principle that my dad forbade me from spying on my classmates. While disobeying a teacher was considered an aberration, disobeying your parents is an even worse offense in Arabic culture. “If she gives you any trouble about it, tell her that your dad will come and speak to her”, my dad instructed me. The next day, I walked into the vice principles office, I apologized very meekly and handed the notebook back. I told her that my father told me that I am not allowed to do this. She simply nodded with her head, said that is fine and gestured that I should leave the office. I left her office with huge sense of relief. I felt like a rock has been lifted of my chest. I was so grateful for my dad, having rescued me from this terrible situation. But then new thoughts entered my head, why was the school spying on the students in it? Are there other spies? Will this notebook be handed to somebody else who might agree? Is there something sinister or dangerous going on in the school? Why did she pick me? Is it because I was popular and I had many friends and had good relationships through out the school? or was it because there is something in my character that would indicate a willingness to be a spy? Is it because I was the class clown? I felt a sense of guilt for having collected the names, phone numbers and addresses in the first place. I never talked about it with anybody. I felt a sense of shame for having marginally participated in something sinister which I didn’t understand. I was worried that if I told anybody that I would then be accused of being a spy or that suspicions would circle around me among my class mates. That year the high walls surrounding the school seemed more like prison walls. I kept waiting for the school to build watch towers around the school perimeter and place watch guards and snipers in them. I felt my school was a prison. There was a sense of danger in the air, only it was mysterious and you never knew where it might come from. Everything seemed strange and new. Everything was same but different.

Ba’ath was a whinny young woman. She whined all the time. The course material was too hard, the professor was not explaining things properly. She had a constant frown on her face. She would tell me all the time how things were better in Iraq. She was unhappy living in Kuwait and wanted to go back to Iraq. Ba’ath was never excited by anything, she was always mildly unsatisfied with something or another. She told me she didn’t like to eat in restaurants because she didn’t know how to use a fork and a knife properly and always felt embarrassed when she ate in restaurants because of it. Seems like a silly thing to worry about, but Ba’ath worried about it each time we went to cafeteria. Ba’ath wasn’t very intelligent, but she got by in her class work, barely getting a passing mark. She didn’t look like a dead zombie as her name would indicate, she looked about average. On the day I met her, I went home and told my dad about it. I told him that I met an Iraqi girl in class, I told him her name and then I started to laugh. My dad looked very alarmed, “You didn’t laugh in her face? did you?”. “No dad, I wanted to but then I managed to stop in time.” My dad shakes his head, “You must be careful, are you sure you did not laugh, at her name not even a little bit”. “No dad I did not laugh, I swear, I did not laugh”. “You must be careful, promise me you will be careful”. “I promise dad, I will be careful”.

My condolences to the family of Nick Burg, we live in a horrible world. There must be a fresh batch of zombies resurrected from the dead, roaming the earth. It is hard to believe that a living and breathing person would commit such an act.

If I hear one more American say that they are sorry about the pictures of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, I will gag.

A year ago, each time you said you were Iraqi, people would transpose the head of Saddam over yours in their imagination’s Photoshop abilities. Nowadays, each time you say you are Iraqi people imagine you standing there with a bare bottom. I don’t know which one is more humiliating, the Saddam head transplant or walking around in public with a bare bottom? When I was a University student I had a recurrent nightmare. I am doing one of my final exams. The professor hands me the exam papers. I look at all the questions and I can’t answer them, not even one. I start sweating. I look down at the dripping sweat to realize that I am completely naked. I am sitting in the classroom 100% naked. In my hurry to get to my exam on time, I forgot to get dressed. I start debating with myself if I should run out to the dormitories and get dressed and rush back to finish my exam, or whether I should just sit there and do my exam and hope that nobody will notice that I am naked. At that point, I would usually wake up to great relieve. I am in my room, I am fully dressed in my comfy pajamas and it is only 4 am in the morning. 3 more hours of sleep. I frequently would assure myself that the nightmare could never happen because I always went to bed in very modest pajamas, so even if by some miracle I forgot to change one morning I would show up to the exam in my pajamas and fuzzy slippers, which is much less embarrassing than showing up naked. So the nightmare could never become a reality. Another reoccurring nightmare of my youth is of me running in a field. The sun is shining into my eyes. I look behind me, Saddam in chasing me with a machine gun in his hand. I run as fast as I can. I look for a ditch or a cave to hide in. Eventually I fall. I am lying on the ground waiting for the bullets to penetrate my body. In most cases I would wake up at that point to the great relieve of discovering that it was just dream. I would touch my stomach and chest to assure myself that there are no bullet holes in my body. On few occasions the dream would continue, I get sprayed with bullets and then I just lay there on the ground. Finally there is no fear …. an eerie sense of quiet. I sleep through the nightmare and remember it the next day. I haven’t had either nightmares in many years. But lately I keep thinking about those horrible pictures of torment we saw from the prison of Abu Ghraib. I keep thinking about it, I can’t push it out of my mind. I am worried the nightmares will come back. Only this time I will be running in the field naked with a hood over my head, Saddam, Bush and a US marines are chasing after me and after I get shot I stay alive, the agony continues. My two nightmares become a single unified mother of all enduring freedom nightmare.

I used to dream of Iraq without Saddam and without the rule of Ba’ath regime. It was a rosey and hopeful dream. Now I have to imagine Iraq without Ba’ath coming back to power, Without religious clerics taking hold of the government, without a civil war, without the control and influence of Iran, without the interference of Qaeda and other crazies out to destroy the world, without the American occupation, without psycopaths that make grotesque porno movies using us as loyal subjects, without capitalists that will sell our kidneys on eBay and without a genocide. To tell you the truth, I am having a hard time visualizing it all in my head. On Friday I was sitting on the couch after dinner, with a big frown on my face. My husband asked me: why the doom and gloom? You look like a woman that has just berried her husband. I told him that I just realized that things will be a mess in Iraq for many generations to come and there is nothing I can do about it. Last week I had hope that things will get sorted out in my life time. I am mourning the loss of the beautiful dream I held in my imagination for such a long time.

We heard Rumsfield and Bush say that they are sorry about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Isn’t democracy and free media great? We never got to hear that Saddam was sorry about all the things he did to the Iraqi people and we never will, I suspect. Just imagine Saddam coming on TV saying: Sorry about the mass graves, sorry about the wars, sorry about the mess, sorry I am such a dork, sorry that I exist. Naaah! it will never happen. Would it make a difference? So is this what democracy and free media is about? You get to hear a powerful man say he is sorry once in a while. Well I am not very impressed. Some of you are all so excited that Bush might lose the next election. You get to vote for the party of the rich versus the party of the even richer. You can have your morally corrupt corporately sponsored president A, versus morally corrupt corporately sponsored president B. People keep telling me that Clinton would have never invaded Iraq. True, but he was perfectly happy to starve the Iraqi people with the sanctions forever and bomb them only on occasion. May I remind you that your hero John F. Kennedy did not withdraw out of Vietnam and did little more than give lip service to the civil rights movement. We never heard that anybody was sorry about American war crimes in Vietname, 3 milion killed. We never heard that anybody was sorry about America's war crimes all over the world. So you can get all excited about your democracy and how great it is. You can be impressed with the Presidents apology.

People tell me they are sorry when they accidentally step on my toe. People tell me they are sorry when they are late for a meeting. Once in a while I hear a sorry from my husband. He wants to avoid a fight so he will say he is sorry even though he doesn’t mean it.

The time for being sorry has long past. It is time for you to get mad. Start getting angry.

Did you see how excited that American chick got over seeing an Iraqi man in the nude? You would think she never saw a naked man before. But I have to remind myself that this woman grew up in America and not in the middle east. In the middle east “no sex before marriage” is big. Unmarried women learn to live with, ehm! certain frustrations. But I mean this woman grew up in a country where a woman can change partners every two weeks, pornography is available on every street corner and willing men are a dime a dozen. Makes you suspect that men in America must be deficient in certain areas. But we shouldn’t generalize like that. Just because this women has been disappointed in the particular men she had dated in the U.S. we shouldn’t assume that all men in the U.S. come short. After all, I am sure if you counted all the men this women has dated back home I am sure you wouldn’t come up with more than 1% of the male population of the US. So we shouldn’t generalize about all American men. I still don’t fully understand the source of her excitement, perhaps she caught a case of
jungle fever.

I wish to give this woman (Lynndie England) some advice on attracting men in Iraq. That hood, chains and stuff does not turn Iraqi guys on. We are talking about a country where for 35 years the government has spent millions on sponsoring regular S&M parties. Any citizen that felt in the mood would be visited by especially trained, Saddam approved, hairy and mustached dominatrix queen. The person would proceed to receive specialized and individual handling that would sometimes last years. People told me the service was to die for. Honey! you can’t compete with that. You might think you are a kinky American but in Iraq you come across as a tame pet. So, my advice to you is to compete on the basis of your strengths and not attempt to compete in areas of your weakness. Next time you would like to get the attention of an Iraqi man, I suggest you use a different approach. I recommend you cook him a nice meal, put on some makeup, wear a nice dress and leave the hood and chains back home. I guarantee you will have a higher rate of success. I know that some of you might be worried about the poor Iraqi people now that Saddam is gone you might think the population must be missing the state sponsored S&M parties, but please don’t panic. Now that the coalition forces are placing former Ba’ath generals in positions of power I am sure that the fun and games will be back in full swing in no time. Did you see how happy people in Falluja were upon return of the Iraqi general? Now you know why. Its party time.

All this talk of love is making me teary eyed and kinda emotional. I think I need to balance all this mushy happy ending, Hollywood style stuff with something more grounded and real life. It must be the negative grumpy Slavic side of me. Everybody keeps saying that they are disgusted by the pictures of American army people torturing Iraqi prisoners, even the American President said that he is disgusted with the pictures. I don’t know, I think he sounded a little insincere when he said the words, he didn’t look very disgusted to me. Especially because he was standing next to our prime minister Paul Martin while saying it. It would have looked much more authentic if he had vomited in front of the cameras, that would have added a nice authentic touch. Imagine the headlines, “President vomited live on TV to register his disgust”. I think that would have more bang. We don’t want apologies, show us some vomit please. Like the time, Bush the father vomited on the Japanese prime minister during his visit to Japan in 1992, now that was high impact visual clue that he was disgusted with something. Just saying I am disgusted doesn’t cut it. Bush the son! you missed your opportunity to vomit on the Canadian prime minister, you even had a good excuse for doing so. What is wrong with you?

If this is how the male prisoners are treated, can you imagine the love that the Iraqi female prisoners receive? I am trying very hard not to think about that so that I won’t get sentimental again and start crying. I don't look pretty when that happens. To all Americans, upset over the pictures. Don’t Panic! Let the good times roll. There will be plenty of vomiting opportunities in the future. Sooner or later all those war veterans will be coming home and I am certain that they will be happy to share the love they learned and practiced in Iraq with the rest of the American people, as war veterans frequently do upon safe return home.