What It's Like In Occupied Iraq From An Iraqi Woman's Perspective

An Arab Woman Blues

There are subjects I find ways to avoid or not dwell on for too long...I don't think am a terribly courageous woman for doing so. But then, these subjects are so painful for me that if tackled, leave me totally depleted, enraged like some animal gone wild in a metal cage, or terribly hopeless...Hopelessness not to be understood as in "I want to kill myself now" kind of hopelessness, but a hopelessness that is best translated as loss of Faith.

Again loss of faith not in a strictly religious/metaphysical sense, but loss of Faith in the broadest of terms...Can be summed up as loss of Faith in humanity, in human kind.

Not to be underestimated at all. Dark stuff is made of a lost humanity. The darkest moments of an Occupation...These darkest moments can be found everywhere in Iraq.

In the smelly rotten prisons. In the torture wounds of the detainees. In the snatched childhoods. Under the rubbles of a bombed home. In the morgue underneath the putrid stench of Death. In the wails at the overfilled cemeteries. In the destroyed ancient statues and a weeping History. In a river that stood still. And in a lone Palm tree thirsty for some water...But above all, these darkest moments are found in the silence of Women. The women who have been silenced and the women who fear it. The women who witnessed it and the women who dare not break it...
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