stark ranting

I ran across the most accessible (and sobering) account of life inside Iraq I've read to date. A blogger named Abu Khaleel shares his viewpoint on the ongoing suffering in an extremely honest and thoughtful way. These words for his son resonate with brutally raw emotion.

Goodbye my boy.

May the Goddesses of Safety, Happiness and Good Fortune blow gently in your sails.

I hope you forget all your agony and your lost childhood, leave the pain behind, make new dreams and forge ahead in a world of hope and achievement.

In another post he provided an English translation of another Iraqi blogger's feeling of desperation.

Shalash’s new essay has a different flavor. There is nothing funny or sarcastic about it. It is entitled “A Desperate Letter!” the essay is written in long paragraphs! I have taken the liberty to segment it and tried my best to retain the original flavor but I cannot do that with the style.

"We have had enough. The fearsome nights are stifling us and we now have come to hate the Fall [of Baghdad]; we hate Liberation; we hate Sunnis; we hate Shiites; we hate turbans and sidaras [Baghdadi head gear – a reference to Adnan al-Dulaimi a ‘Sunni’ politician]; we hate Jihad and Jihadists, resistance and resistors; we hate concrete; we hate streets and sidewalks; we hate the Ministries; we hate Establishments; we hate news channels and news and communiqués; we hate the Parliament that has now become a venue for swearing-in ceremonies and nothing else; we hate songs; we hate commercials; we hate newspapers; we hate cars and car-depots; we hate conferences; we hate ‘surprise visits’; we hate neighboring countries; we hate the ‘multinational forces; we hate the night; we hate the day; we hate Summer; we hate the sun that sends hell; we hate sleep; we hate water and electricity; we hate petrol and corruption and theft; we hate sectarianism; we hate sectarian ‘allocations’; we hate Reconciliation; we hate the government of national unity; we hate committees and Commissions of Integrity, Trash, Rehabilitation and Silliness; we hate [political] parties and organizations; we hate assemblies, demonstrations, banners and chants; we hate laughter; we hate crying; we hate work; we hate study; we hate each other. And we hate ourselves. But (and this is our problem) we still love something that was called Iraq. Will you save what is left of this Iraq?"

What have they done to this country? Is this what they mean when they say “Freedom is messy”?

And yet… I still have hope. It is people like Shalash al-Iraqi who, despite all their suffering, have not lost their humanity and have not lost their compass… that give me that hope.