ihath

I for one would like to devolve back into a monkey. Given how people have been behaving all over the world, the monkeys seem rather civilized. So I went and tried to join a monkey colony in Zimbabwe, I tried my best to fit in. But despite my best efforts to learn my ho ho ha ha and picking fleece off my brothers and sisters fur, the monkeys faced me with the hard truth and that is that I didn’t fit in. My monkey comrades were very gentle and sensitive in how they broke the news to me. They acknowledged my hard work and said they were impressed with how close I came to becoming one them. Several of the colony members told me that they never felt as close to human as they felt with me. However, a white woman hanging out with monkeys in Africa was causing both the media and the locals to notice the colony and the monkeys were afraid that soon the poachers would follow and that would be the end of their existence. But before we parted, the monkeys left with this single message to convey to the rest of the human race. "Please don't compare yourselves to the monkeys" they asked me to tell everybody. "It insults us when you call somebody a monkey, especially when most of you are not evolved enough for rudimentary basic existence of a monkey". I parted with the monkey colony with tears in my eyes, but then being determined tough Iraqi girl, I decide not to give up and I tried to join a donkey colony in Estonia instead. The donkeys didn't mind me hanging out with them but they were exhausted with my need to constantly express my feelings. It turns out the donkeys are practical animals and they waste no time on expressing things unless it pertains to their existence, like where to find food and how to procreate. So again very gently they asked to leave them and join another species more suitable to my obsessive desire to express myself. The chief donkey also asked me to tell the human race not to compare themselves to the donkeys since again most of us don't have what it takes to be a donkey. My attempts at joining a snake colony in Australia was short lived. The snakes mostly ignored me while I slithered around with them, but I found wiggling around on my tummy as my main form of movement unsuitable for my physical form.

As a child I always loved the show Tarzan, the man raised by monkeys that spends his days swinging from tree to tree, beating his chest and screaming his signature AhhhhAaaaaaahaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaahAAAAAAAA. However I learned that reality does not mimic the rosy American television shows. Maybe if I was raised by the monkeys from childhood things would have turned different. For better or worse I was raised by that mysterious group that is loosely called Humans. So I guess they are stuck with me and I am stuck with them.

My physiatrist says that I need to accept reality and come to terms with my human limitations. But I keep telling him that other people have managed to transform themselves to monsters, so why can't I be a monkey, is that so much to ask for. But those Canadian doctors just don't understand. They lack imagination and don't believe in miracles.

I miss the good old days, about two years ago. Every week we would phone family back in Baghdad and they would always complain about the electricity and water shortages. These days I dread the weekly phone call, because they stopped complaining. The electricity and water didn’t get better, but they just got used to it. Now they have much bigger things to worry about. They are afraid to go out of the house, they are afraid to stay in the house, they afraid for their lives everyday. The worse part is that they stopped complaining. There is just quiet desperation in their voices, they tell us without emotion about the people killed and places bombed and road blocks and other horrors, but they say it in a matter of fact, like it has become normal.

Recently, my husband became a big fan of the Indian movie director Deepa Mehta. Ok! try to forget everything you know about Indian movies, this is a serious movie director who makes movies about real life issues in India. Coincidently she has been living in Canada for the last 20 years. My husband keeps renting her movies which are very well made but painful to watch since they deal with real life issues and frequently don't have a happy ending. The most painful one was Earth. A movie about the breakup of Pakistan away from India. It focuses on a circle of friends, who are mixed (Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Parsi). In the course of the movie you see friends seeking each other's blood for revenge based on their race and not their individual actions. The few moderate ones who try hard to relate in human way and refuse to choose sides are labeled as traitors and end up paying the ultimate price.





I groaned in pain as I watched this movie. Mainly because I knew that I was watching the human dynamic of what is happening inside Iraq right now. I should take some comfort that we are not the only nation on earth to be facing this hardship, but still it is hard to bare.

So we all read about the study that estimates that the Iraqi death in the last three years is at 660,000. Some say that number is too high and others say it is too low. I don't know how accurate it is. What I do now is that every single day I hear on the news about more Iraqi people dieing, everyday there are bombs, deaths, assassinations and abductions. All I know from the contacts that I have with people inside Iraq that life has become hell and unbearable right now. So people are asking was the war worth it? Was it better than under Saddam or worse? It seems from people living inside Iraq that the situation today is worse, however it was pretty awful before as well. Compared to horrid situation in Iraq before it would have been so easy to create something at least marginally better, but only the geniuses at the white house could have messed thing up even worse than Saddam rule. The American administration and the American people must be held accountable for their own actions and their mistakes.

"I hated Iraqis" said American soldier, James Parker, when asked to explain why he raped a 14 year old Iraqi girl and killed her and her family while serving in Iraq.

"US out of Iraq" say the anti-war crowd. But not a single word about what would happen to the Iraqi population in the aftermath of complete troops withdrawal. Since non of the peaceniks are planning a move to Iraq, I suppose the consequences of what they advocate
on the local population doesn't matter as long as they prove that they were right and the US administration was wrong.

"We must stay the course in Iraq" is a frequent proclamation from the white house. Not a single acknowledgement that the "course" has been an absolute disaster creating the unimaginable "worse-that Saddam" life for the average Iraqi person actually living in
Iraq. I haven't heard a single word of accountability or a plan of some sort that would indicate that the people in the white house have the slightest concern of the daily loss of innocent Iraqi life.

Iraq is bleeding. A very rough ride is ahead of all those living in the country. Not a day goes by without news of deaths and atrocities. Left, right, democrats, republicans and psychopath American soldiers alike, nobody seems to consider the impact of their
actions on those living the reality. Is there a single person in the whole US that is willing to show leadership, leave ideology aside and put forwards a plan or a suggestion with the Iraqi citizen in mind?

However, let us not fool ourselves into this easy and comfortable US is the source of all evil. It is not the fault of the American army that Shea'a are killing Sunnis and Sunnis are killing Shea'a. At the end of the day it doesn't matter whose fault it is and trying to figure our what was better, before or after Saddam. Both are awful. Let us try to figure out what to do about it now. Here we are in this mess. The question we should be asking is "What can we do about it?". Is there any constructive action we can take as concerned citizens that does not entail loss of human life? If somebody has a suggestion, I would love to hear it.

From 786 to 1492, in Andalucía, Spain, there was a time when three cultures-- Islamic, Judaic and Christian--forged a relatively stable (though occasionally contentious) coexistence. Among the weeping fountains, breezy courtyards a long-running tolerance erupted profoundly rooted in the cultivation of the complexities, charms and challenges of contradictions. Through the interplay of all these cultures produced music so intensely beautiful that it takes my breath away and gives me goose bumps each time I hear it.

Flamenco.

We know it can be done, we know it can be achieved. This is not a dream but a reality.

Tolerence, Respect for human life, acceptance of the other
In our culture and history, been done once before, it can be done again.

We study how those managed to achieve it in Spain or we can study the behavior of the monkeys. Who resolve their conflicts in far more peaceful ways than we do.


One day the miracle will happen and we will no longer look at each other for terms to exclude each other from the tribe based on labels or characteristics. Ba'athist, Pro Occupation, Anti Freedom, Not a real Iraqi. But we will look at each other and see terms of inclusion.

Mokey wannabe ihath .... ho ho ho ha ha ha.

Once upon a time, not so long ago and not that far away, I had a blog that nobody read. It was just a private little blog where I poured my emotions into, bad spelling, nonsensical logic and disconnected thoughts were abound. I still remember the day I discovered that somebody linked to my blog. Oh! the excitement that I felt. The thought that somebody in a far away place read, understood and perhaps was even touched by something that I had written and felt it worthy to go through the trouble of placing a link to his blog. I was so happy, I felt validated, in-fact I liked the attention; I felt that I mattered somehow. It made me want to write more, put more juice into it, reach more people. There were more links, better links, more important links, even “oh my god” mentions in the press.
And then, and then and then everybody started to read my blog. And then people started to form opinions about my blog, some people even had several opinions about my blog, and then people would let me know what they thought of my blog.
There are those who are mad because I mentioned so and so in one of my posts and didn’t mention them. There are those who are mad because they got mentioned but not in the way that they want to be mentioned. There are those who start conversations with me by saying “this is not for your blog”. There are those who watch what they say around me because they know that I could blog about it and humiliate them in public.
Suddenly, it felt like it mattered what I thought, the way it never mattered before. Suddenly I had this power, a magical weapon, that I could unleash on a whim, I could intimidate people with. But with this power came restrictions.
My daugher’s teacher told me that she enjoys reading my blog. “Oh Nooooooooo!” I thought to myself when she said that. I now can’t write anything that might make me seem like a freak. I want my daughter’s teacher to think that we are “Normal”. I can’t write about the hysterical reaction I had when my husband decided to renovate the house.
My husband’s students at the university read my blog. Which means I can’t discuss anything too risqué, like sexuality, or funky behavior, because in academia my husband wants to look respectable.
I still remember the hysteria and panic I felt when a young man from my husband’s hometown of 20,000 sent me an email telling me how happy he was to find a blog mentioning this tiny little town outside of Nazareth. “Heavens help me”. I went through every single post I had ever written to make sure that I never mention my husband’s hometown or my in-laws in a negative manner. In a Palestinian village of 20,000 once one person gets a good piece of gossip in days everybody in the village is talking about it within the week. That day, as soon as I got home, I told my husband in the most dire tone of voice “I got an email from a man from your home town, his name is xxx, be prepared that your family might find out about my blog”. I spent many nights awake in bed thinking what my in-laws will say about the blog once they read it. They thought I was this nice sweet daughter in-law who always smiles and seems so positive.
Respectable, Normal, Sweet, my blog became after a while … and also boring. I looked though my last several posts and they are all so painfully dull. Where did the fire go, the honesty … all gone.

To blog or not not blog …. that is not my question. I feel pretty committed. To blog as if nobody reads my blog? That is the real question.

It aired morning of November 4th on a show named North By North West. You can here it here

Two weeks ago my mother dreamed that Saddam came into her living room and asked her to make him a cup of Turkish coffee. He looked tired and weary. He told her that he just wants to sit down and have some quiet for few minutes. "I just need to relax" Saddam told my mother in the dream. My mom looked around her kitchen in a frenzy, trying to think of what poison or chemical she could place in the coffee to kill the horrid creature that had entered her living room. Saddam looked straight into her eyes and told her "I know what you are thinking, but you should know that we will drink the coffee together". His voice sounded threatening but then it turned melancholy; with a deep sigh he continued "Anyway I don't have that long to live. I am afraid that my time is up, I just need to relax for a bit that is all and then I will leave." And so my mother decided to make him Turkish coffee without creative additions.

When Baghdad fell to the Americans I had a fantasy. It went something like this

Baghdad, 2010

Saddam Hussein is delivering morning newspapers in Al-Jumhriya district of Baghdad. He has chosen this job to avoid facing people. Very few people are out and about at 5:30 in the morning. There is too much angst directed at him, even though he is not the president anymore. There is a huge bronze statue of Saddam Hussein leftover from the old days. The statue is raising his hand looking sternly at the public. "What a hideous statue, I wish they would take it down already". Saddam thinks to himself. He touches the stack of newspapers in the heavy bag hanging off his shoulder. "I better get back to work. Plenty to do before breakfast".

Goodbye Iraq's butcher;
may you never grow in our dreams.
You were the farce that placed itself
where lives were torn apart.
You called out to our country,
and you tormented those already in pain.
Now you belong to hell,
and in shame we spell out your name.
And it seems to me you lived your life
like a candle in the wind:
fading with the sunset
when the rain set in.
And your footsteps we try to erase,
along Iraq’s bloody path;
your candle's burned out long before
your cowards ever will.
Greatness you've lost;
these empty days without your tyranny.
This torch we'll always carry
for our nation's golden child.
And even though we try,
the truth brings us to tears;
all our words cannot express
the nightmares you brought us through the years.
Goodbye Iraq's butcher,
from a country lost with or without you,
we won't miss your iron fist
not that you ever cared.