Life in Baghdad

I very very quick update

Yes I left Iraq, and to know how others figured that out, check http://www.rosebaghdad.blogspot.com/

I was hoping to write a long post, but since I came to Dubai, I've been extremely busy and once I finish settling down, I plan to make a longer post, and there is a chance that it will be a last post since that I am neither in Baghdad, nor it is year 04 anymore.

Maybe I should start a new blog: Life in UAE, and the URL would be thoughts05

Salam
Ahmed from UAE

Iraq, me, and wars.

I've written this post months ago, but did not post it, then I updated it two weeks ago, but still did not post it. Today I finally decided to post it. There is one piece of information that should be added at the end of the post, but I will not say it now and leave it till the timing is right. So here is the post.

At the age of eight, the Iraq-Iran war started. It was 1980 and I was in my second year of school then. My parents and other old wise people told us (the children) that this war will last for a few days or a week or two at max. Life paused for the first few days waiting for the war to end before resuming. As eager to go on as it always is, life did not wait and resumed after only one week and the war took EIGHT LONG YEARS.

As those of you who are good at Math must have figured, I was 16 when the war ended in 1988. It was an unforgettable date (8/8/88) and that day was one of the happiest days of my life and of all Iraqis. We had two relatively peaceful years. I am saying relatively because during those two years, most men were either in the military service, or working for the military industry establishment and we were still recovering from a long tedious war.

At the age of 18, Iraq invaded Kuwait. It was 2-Aug-1990. Operation Desert Storm started on the 17^th of January 1991. I was preparing for my mid-year examination at the first year of college, and at the same time we were preparing for a war. I very vividly remember preparing a room in the house for a chemical attack and those were definitely not among my best memories. That was an even more horrifying war because most of the bombing was on Baghdad itself. The war took only a few weeks this time and electricity and basic services were restored within about 6 weeks. Life returned to almost normal, but the sanction began and the financial state of all Iraqis began to deteriorate very rapidly.

During that period, I was young (and single) and I did not worry much about things, and that made life much easier.

I was a 30 years married man, with an almost 2 year old daughter when the threats of the Iraq-Freedom war began. At that age and having a family to look after, I had everything to worry about. I used to browse the Internet (yes we did have internet before the war, but it was under a firm firewall and of course, censored) and read about the weapons and types of bombs that are to be used. There were talks about electromagnetic bombs, and many names of different kinds bombs that luckily I don’t now remember.

Worrying about a yet to come war, and its possible disastrous consequences is more difficult than actually going through the war.

There is an Iraqi saying that “The mother of a lost child cannot sleep, but the mother of a dead child can”. In other words, it is more difficult to worry about the unknown than to live it.

For many months we lived under distress thinking of the inevitable upcoming war. We did many preparations for the war. We bought food, water, drugs, and anything that one might think of that was enough for weeks.

The war finally started in March 2003, and the ex-regime officially ended in 9^th of April 2003. A very short war it was. Or at least that was what we thought.

The days just following the war were very difficult with COMPLETE absence of security and looters and criminals completely loose. Those days past by and for the first time in years we started having great hopes of a bright future.

Things were bad back then, no security, no electricity, no fuel, but there was hope.

- First there was J Gardner, things did not get better.

- Then there was Bremer. We hoped for things to get better but they did not.

- We were promised that with the formation of the Governing Council (GC) that things will get better, but again they did not.

The GC formed a government, but that again did not help as promised.

This time we waited with more hope for the Interim government, which did not help either.

Back in November 2003, we had only few hours of electricity a day, there was shortage of fuel, I was too afraid to use my car alone, and there were many attacks against the US army.

Now its March 2005. We have almost 8 hours of electricity a day, there is still a shortage of fuel, Again I am afraid to use my car alone, and now the attacks are targeting Iraqis more than they are targeting the US army.

Now we are promised that after the elections and the formation of the new government, things will get better. Will they?

We are told to be patient. We have been patient for 24 years, how more patient one can be?

I am seriously thinking of leaving my country, at least for a couple of years, till things start to get better. I am a different person than I was two years ago, I am trying to save what’s left from the humorous, optimistic man I once was. If you read one of my very first posts (sent as letters then) you’ll notice the difference.

A depressed Iraqi's reflections on some great quotes

There are many lovely quotes out there, but these are much more wiserthan to be considered ‘just lovely’. I’ve commented on some of them, but unfortunately not at one of my best moments.


“Years later, when I got to college, I learned about an important theory of psychology called Learned Helplessness, developed by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman. This theory, backed up by years of research, is that A GREAT DEAL OF DEPRESSION GROWS OUT OF A FEELING OF HELPLESSNESS: THE FEELING THAT YOU CANNOT CONTROL YOUR ENVIRONMENT.”

- Measuring how much it is impossible to change one’s environment in Iraq, can give you a hint of the ‘great deal of depression’ that is growing out for us Iraqis


Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Laurence J. Peter

- Well, I chose one, but unfortunately he did not even get a chair in the new national assembly, so the one I chose will not be blamed after all.


The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flights, but they, while their companion slept, were toiling upward in the night.

- I’ve spent many nights working and keeping myself awake just by reminding myself of this quote, but unfortunately now we have a curfew at night so we cannot go toiling upward in the night ;-)


Management is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work

- I am a technical manager, and I’ve tried to follow this advice, but in Iraq ‘it is impossible to make it possible’ for people to work.


“Architecture is the art of how to waste space.”
—Phillip Johnson

- I’ll send this to my brother :D


" A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits."
President R. M. Nixon

- I am on the verge of quitting, so if I leave this country to avoid quitting, what will this action be considered?


"We are going to do something terrible to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy" a top Soviet official addressing the Americans

- America: It is strange how much this statement is true, and how the US officials quickly managed to find a way around this.


"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Herman Goring at the Nuremberg Trials

- I worry that this is what the Americans, and our governments are really doing. I do hope this is not the case.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." Nietzsche

- America and any new Iraqi government, please be careful.
I do fear that when any new Iraqi government tries to follow up and catch terrorists or any of those whom it thinks are a source of threat, the government will reach a point where it will follow the same techniques that Saddam did in stopping those opposing him.


" Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstien

- I thank God that I have a little of both.


"Oil is too important to be left to the Arabs." Henry Kissinger

- Well, it has not been really left to the Arabs at any time. So don’t worry


"I touch the future. I teach." Christa McAuliffe, Arab-American Astronaut

- I do hope to touch the future sometime in the future.
In 1998 I taught a course of Advanced Engineering Mathematics, I paid more money to the parking man at the university parking than the university paid me! but I touched the future then, I was happy with that then, but also, I was broke then. It would help to gain some money while touching the future.


"Be the change that you want to see in the world." Gandhi

- Believe me, I am doing my best.


"If you hit bottom, there is no way but up" Arabic proverb

- We Iraqis, and for the past 35 years, we’ve always thought that we had hit the bottom, but amazingly enough, it always turns out that what we had hit was not yet the real bottom. This situation still holds.... Please define ‘bottom’ we do need to know where we stand.


"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it."
Chinese Proverb

- If at any point in time, I will say that the situation in Iraq has reached a point that it is beyond repair, please remind me of this quote.


Despite all this, I still believe that in two years time, Iraq ‘will start to see some improvement and will start the rebuilding process. What I am worried about is the next couple of years till this starts happening.

I did

The Ultimate Voters Guide

My company decided that it is better not to go to work till after the elections because of the increasing risk factor involved. Therefore, I’ll have a lot of spare time and amazingly enough, I’ve decided to write a post. so I sat down, started my computer, started the word processor and started gazing at the white page on screen.

As with what usually happens whenever I wanted to write a post lately (and which lead to me not posting), I started thinking why should I post? I know that you will say that it is useful to let others, specially the Americans, know what is really happening in Iraq, but is it really useful? How many people will read the post? And if all those people decide to do something for us, will they be able to? And if so, what is that thing that can help us? If I as an Iraqi don’t know, how will they?

Another reason preventing me from posting is that I’ve used my real name and that prevented me from writing some of the things I really wanted to. Maybe starting another blog with a false name is an idea worth considering.

One noble reason I keep convincing myself with is to let others see the true good side of Iraqis and Muslims that the ignorant Iraqis and Muslims are doing a very good job at destroying.

Enough with this discussion. I finally came to the conclusion that with so much spare time, posting is at least better than doing nothing or watching TV.

Attention: Complicated paragraph ahead. If you have a headache, just skip it.
Well the truth is that I do have much ‘scientific’ reading to do but I am being lazy and doing nothing or watching TV instead. So concluding that posting is better than being lazy and doing nothing or watching TV instead of reading which I should do, lead to me ending up posting instead of reading which in fact is more useful than posting! (I, on the other hand, have been reading ‘The ultimate hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy’ by Doglas Adams and this paragraph reflects my influence by his writing style. This novel is not what I was referring to by scientific reading – It will be useful though to write a post ‘The ultimate hitchhikers guide to Iraq’ since it is more dangerous and can be more adventurous than hitchhiking at the Galaxy).

So here is my long awaited post.

The ultimate question: “To vote or not to vote?” (I read this quote somewhere but I forgot where, I assume the source will not mind me using it)

Personally, I very much do want to vote, but up to this moment I have not decided whether I actually will. I think I’ll wait till the elections day, see how things will go and decide then. My family is afraid of voting and are asking me not to go fearing for my safety, but as I said, I have not decided yet.

Once I’ve read a very useful quote meaning that when you are forced to choose between two alternatives, choose the one that will not make you feel guilty or sorry if it turns out to be the wrong one.

Let’s apply this rule on ‘to vote or not to vote’.

If I choose ‘not to vote’, and the elections turned out to be successful, I might regret that I was not part of this process. This leads to the conclusion that I should vote.

If I choose to vote, and then something bad happens to me or to any of my family, I will surely regret my decision even if the elections succeed. This then means that I should not vote.
Oops, the rule does not apply on this case.

What complicates things is that the area I live in seems to be against the elections since one can hardly see any elections posters that I see in many other places in Baghdad.

But what if everyone thinks like me, Which means no one will vote and the elections will fail. Then I should vote to prevent that. But will my decision really have to do with that of any other? The answer is no (I forgot what this case is called in the probability theory – I think it was that my decision and that of any other is mutually exclusive). If this is the case, then I can ‘not vote’ since this will not affect the decision of others, and being one person whose decision ‘not to vote’ will not affect the whole process, then it’s safer not to vote. Problem solved. Unfortunately, I am still not convinced :(

Moreover, all the above discussion assumes that the results will not be tampered with, something that many doubt and say that the results are pre-set and have decided not to vote accordingly.

One thing you don’t know about me, is that I can keep on with such an argument for ever, but luckily for you, I will not.

Now a brief discussion about the nominated lists
There are 84 lists each list containing from 1 to more than 200 people, the total number of people in all the lists is about 7000 whose names was only published last Tuesday that is less than a week before the elections day and that is because the nominees were too afraid to declare their names.
Only the main 5-10 names in each list was declared from the beginning and it looks like that those top names are the only ones people are looking at.

I, Personally have a reasonably good knowledge of 7 of those 84 lists.

- The Independent Democrats List: Headed by Adnan Al Pachachi, who is an old politician and whose list contains an elite of educated Sunnis and Shias. So it can be categorized as a purely secular list. But unfortunately it is not a popular list for some reason that I don’t know of.
- The Iraqi Coalition (Al I’tilaf Al Iraqi) list: Contains the 4 major Islamic shiat parties in addition to some individuals and a minority of Sunni individuals. This list is informally backup up by Sistani and this qualifies it to take most of the Shias votes. Despite of the fact that those in the list deny this fact bu I think those in it are greatly influenced by Iran. I wish that I am wrong in this.
- The People’s Union list: This is basically a communist’s lists with a few other independent individuals. Surprisingly enough it looks like it is quite popular and according to many surveys it is expected to get between 17%-25% of the votes!
- The Kurdistan Coalition list: This is the main Kurdish list and is expected to get the majority of the votes from the Kurds.
- ‘The Iraqi List’: Headed by Ayad Allawi, a secular list that is not very popular because of Allawi’s failure to control things during the period he has been in power, but nevertheless surveys show that it might get about %10 of the votes.
- The Constitutional Monarchy list: Headed by Al Shareef Ali. A secular list that is not opposed by neither Sunnis, nor Shias, but also not popular.
- The ‘Iraqis’ list: Headed by Ghazi Al Yawir, the current president. Its name is very similar to that of Allawi’s. Also a secular list but again not very popular.

Surveys show these lists in the following order.
1- The Iraqi Coalition (Al I’tilaf Al Iraqi) list: about 35%-40%
2- The People’s Union list: about 17%-%25%
3- The Kurdistan Coalition list: about 10%-17%
4- Allawi’s list: About 10%
5- The other three lists did not get more than 3% of the votes each.

Unfortunately I support the three lists that took the least number of votes :(

I guess this long post may make up for me not posting for a LONG time.

Not the right time to post!


Dear all,
I want to thank all of those who gave ideas and suggestions about what normal citizens can do. I have made a lot of notes preparing for a post summarizing what is practical and what is not in Iraq.
Unfortunately for the past two weeks, and due to the constantly flowing stream of bad news, I have been feeling very depressed and discouraged. And since I like my blog to be filled with optimism, I will waiting for my moral to get a little better to be able to do a positive post. If I do it now, it will be very negative as for the time being I am only seeing the glass as 75% empty.
Please be patient and hope for an optimistic post later on.

I just want to tell ‘Submandave’ that I am impressed and surprised by how well he has analyzed the situation in Iraq.
And to tell Steve in Boston as lynette said “That was beautifully written. You just said it all.”Thanks again for all your contributions.

A different approach

Dear friends, where have you been all this time :)

In most of my previous posts, and in most of the post of all other Iraqi bloggers, the general tendency have been to complain, complain, complain, then to blame the Americans then blame more and more and more.
Since that will not take us anywhere, I’ve decided to be more positive and take a different approach.

If you want to know the current situation now in Iraq, there are many very good Iraqi blogs that are continuously being updated about the situation here and I don’t see any reason why should I repeat what they are saying. Perhaps I do have a slightly different perspective, but the general picture is still the same.

Before I go on any further, I would like to say one thing. From the many letters from Americans that I have received, and from the comments from the Americans that I have read on other Iraqi blogs, I must say that regardless of what I think about the American policy and politicians, I am definitely pro-American-people. Some Americans oppose what their government have done here, others defending it, but both groups are with the Iraqi people and that’s what matters to me.

Dear American friends, given the situation that we are in now, what do you think that we Iraqi and American people can do to help in improving the situation in Iraq and to start with the reconstruction. Reconstruction may not necessarily be in buildings and materialistic things. Reconstruction may well be on the intellectual level, and that is something that we are supposed to be able to do.

The main problems here in Iraq are not bad electrical power supply, bad roads, shortage in fuel , or heavy traffic. Though in most of my posts, those were the things that I kept complaining about!! (One last complain: And now that schools and universities have started, THE ROADS GOT REALLY REALLY CROWDED WITH ALL THOSE BLOCKED ROADES). All the above problems will not get one killed anyway except for the following scenarios:
- bad electrical power supply: one gets hot to death. But on the other hand, deaths by electrical shocks must have been reduced since there is not that much of electricity to shock people!
- bad road: if on falls in a very big hole!
- shortage in fuel: one gets stuck in a fuel queue and gets board to death!
- heavy traffic: one gets frustrated to death!

Our problems are much deeper, and they are all caused by the way the Iraqi people are thinking.
- If many are still thinking of armed resistance, or are sympathizing with, or covering up for, those who kidnap or kill innocent Iraqis and foreigners,
- If many Iraqis think that beheading people is justified in war.
- If many Iraqis think that the new government should either be a 100% like what they want or they should fight it.
- If many Iraqis are not willing to compromise.
- If many Iraqis are not willing to put their hands in the Americans even with those that really want to help.
If this attitude continues, we can never start rebuilding our country.

Our real problems are those that endanger our lives. Problems that are preventing us from doing any action fearing that we might get kidnapped or killed (or beheaded!). So we have two types of problems: Killer problems, and non-killer problems. From now on, I’ll try to stop talking about the latter.

I am sick of keeping on blaming the Americans; this will not take us anywhere. In a comment from and American women, she said: Instead of blaming the Americans, ‘What have you (Iraqis) done to help your country?’, Well she is right. Although, many Iraqis are doing much to help the country, many of them are dying everyday in doing so, but what I, and other complainers, are doing to help Iraq? Blogging!!!! or in other words Complaining!!!!

How can bloggin help? Will bloggin help American voters in voting for the president that will do what’s best for Iraq after better understanding the situation here? Might be. But which president will do what’s best for Iraq? I definitely don’t know. I hope the Americans do, if so, please enlighten me.

Returning to positive thinking:
I would like to know of any practical idea on how Iraqi civilians like me and normal Americans can help?
Many have blamed Iraqis of not reporting about terrorists and criminals. Well, terrorists and criminals are not walking on the streets carrying signs that they are bad people so that we can report them (paraphrased from Salam Pax). So let’s put this option aside.

A group of IT friends are working on establishing a society of professional Iraqi ITs. I consider this to be a small step in rebuilding the country. I am partially helping them and I will keep you informed of their progress because I think that at some point I will ask for your help on this. At least they are doing something instead of complaining.

There shall be no more complains. There shall be work.

“The heights by great men reached and kept, where not obtained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept, where toiling upward in the night.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


As foreigners usually greet Iraqis now: Stay Safe

I wanted to write something since Sunday after the bombing of churches. I am feeling so angry and frustrated that I cannot write anything that I consider convenient.

A colleague at work missed the explosion by just few seconds, unfortunately a friend of hers did not

I want to say one comment to non-Iraqis: There is no Muslim-Iraqi who does not have some Christian close-friends. This simply cannot be done by Iraqis – at least I hope it was not.

May God have mercy upon all our souls.

I will add nothing more.

This is the building for the Olympic Committee (Uday's office). It was damaged during the bombing but the main damage occured during the chaos after the 9th of April, it was completely looted then burned as shown in the picture.
Now, I couldn’t find it. Its somewhere behind the fence!!

This is the Ministry of Irrigation. It is fully renewed now :)
Note that the Olympic building and the ministry of Irrigation are adjacent to each other and adjacent to the Ministry of Irrigation is the building for the Ministry of Oil. It is interesting to know that the building for the Ministry of Oil was not even slightly damaged and was immediately protected by the Americans!
So it will have the same picture before the war, right after the war, and now. Unfortunately I have not taken a picture for the building :(

Following are some pictures taken right after the fall of the ex-Iraq regime, and pictures for the same places taken now.

This post is only for people interested in health care in Iraq. If you are not, you will find it very boring.

Hospitals – revisited

Many of my friends abroad have been very concerned about the situation in Iraqi hospitals. I have previously talked about the situation in one of the main children hospitals in Baghdad, and now I will talk about Abu-Graib hospital.

The information I am stating is taken from a close relative of mine who is a surgeon in that hospital. The name Abu-Grapib must sound very familiar to many of you because of the Abu Graib prison. This hospital carries the same name because it lies in the same city. Abu Graib is a small city about 10 kilometers to the west of Baghdad with a population of about 500,000.

Facts and figures
- The hospital receives about 750-900 out-patients a day. About 600 of those are received in the morning shift with only 7 or 8 specialized doctors. This means that a doctor examines an average of 80 patients a day!!!!
- The hospital was built in the seventies when the population of the city was only about 50,000 and as I have mentioned, the population now is about 500,000.
- The hospital receives about 5 bullet and road traffic injury cases a day.
- In general the services level has not been improved but the wages have been reduced for the patients..
- Doctors are not allowed to describe more than three drug items for the patients. Usually there is only type of anti-biotic hence doctors don’t have to think a lot of what type of anti-biotic is most suitable for the patient. The decision has already been made for them. This is helpful in making all doctors equal. Good doctors and bad doctors will always give the same medicine because that’s the only medicine at hand.
- Shortage in suture material and hence doctors are left with no options to choose what is suitable for a certain case. They have to use what is available at the moment. This is again helpful in making sure that all doctors are equal.
- Amount and types of drugs are less than before (before the war that is) and without any coordination or planning as to the types and quantities supplied.
- The hospital has not gone through any renovation of any kind. It does not even have any sewage disposal system. About 5 tanks of sewage are usually drained from the hospital. Toilets are flooded and are completely unusable.
- The hospital lies in a very polluted area very close to a dirty public market for fish, meat, vegetables, etc.
- The doctors situation in the hospital is very bad. There is only one small room for the doctors with only 8 beds for 30 doctors and hence many doctors have to sleep on the floor when they need a rest. What a rest that would be!
- The time required to drive the 10 kilometers between Baghdad and Abu-Graib may range from 15 minutes to 90 minutes depending on many factors like temporary road blocks and the presence of American troops.
- There comes cases where shootings occur inside the hospital and doctors are sometimes threatened by the patients or their families.
- If the patient dies, the doctor will have to pay a compensation for the deceased family, regardless of the reason of death. The amount of compensation is about 3,000,000 ID (about $1,500) or get killed. With the absence of law, such compensations are carried out under the tribal law. On the other hand, an operation only costs the patient about $70.


Good news
- The hospital has an air conditioning system
- The hospital has a large standby generator. That is the hospital has no problems with electricity.
- Ambulances are available.
- The hospital was donated a Sonar machine.

Good or Bad?
- In the first days after the fall of the ex-regime during the looting, the hospital was protected by the good civilians living near the hospital. They protected the hospital for several days till the Americans took over and started protecting the hospital. That means the hospital was not looted. I must say that though the Americans were late in starting to protect such vital organizations, my relative doctor was impressed by the politeness of the soldiers that were protecting the hospital and how much did they care not to scare nor annoy the patients there. And as they say: better late than never.
- The salary for the doctors increased by a factor of almost a hundred. Now my relative who is a surgeon with 17 years of experience in practicing medicine, gets paid about $350 a month. Much much better than before, but this is still considered a small salary for someone like him. A newly employed IT specialist now may get paid more than that in the private sector.

Surprisingly bad news
During the Falloojah events (Abu Graib is the nearest city to Falloojah) when the Americans surrounded Fallojah city, the Americans surrounded the hospital and there were snipers all over the place shooting ‘anyone’ coming towards the hospital and the hospital remained empty for about a week.

That’s all the information I gathered. I did my best to be as accurate as possible and I hope that this information answers as much of your questions as possible.

Handover of sovereignty - At last

On Monday, when I heard that the handover had taken place, I simply felt HAPPY. It definitely is a step forward and I will not allow anyone to convincing me otherwise.
For those who say that this handover means nothing and the Americans will still control our country, I just want to say: Get real. What have you been expecting? Let’s be reasonable for once and get the best of what we can have instead of dreaming about unreasonable things. Do you really believe that after all what the Americans have done, they will simply leave Iraq completely for the Iraqis? They must at least ensure that the future government(s) will be ‘American-friendly’ ones.

Public opinion: Though I hate classifying Iraqis in any way, but let me tell you one thing: In our small office, we have Sunni, Shia, and Christian employees, all with college degrees and have many different political opinions but nevertheless we all felt happy.

On Monday, while I was driving back home from work listening to the speech of our new prime minister (which was brief and full of useful sentences, unlike what we are used to) with a big smile on my face :D, an American tank passed on the other side of the road. I must say that this wiped out my smile and destroyed the magic of the moment. What free country in the world has foreign tanks wandering on its streets? But again I said to myself, lets be practical and make the best out of what we have. I drew a new smaller smile on my face J and kept on driving.


Iraqi Police
I just want to salute the Iraqi police. Unlike before the war, Iraqis now look at the Iraqi police men with real respect.
Since the announcement of our new government, the police started playing a more noticeable role in law enforcement. Finally they started preventing people from using the streets for selling used cars or demonstrating goods. They started giving tickets for those breaking the traffic law. I see a police car in the street and I just feel a bit safer. I cannot imagine how those claiming to be resistance kill our police men in the name of patriotism. It just doesn’t make sense. As one Iraqi said on TV “a police man is either my brother, my cousin, my neighbor, or my friend.”
Security situation (apart from bombing) is getting better. I am driving my car alone and we are staying out till as late as 10:30. Rumor has it that some restaurants remain open till after 1 AM. But who dares to check the truthfulness of this.


Roads
The new government has promised that removing the road blocks and reopening all the highways are among its priorities. Driving has become a real burden and am really looking forward for this.

Adventures on the road
On my way to the office I must drive through a main highway known as ‘the airport highway’ where many attacks against Americans take place. I drive by at least 4 marks of explosions on this highway. One of those road mines exploded after I have passed it by about 15 minutes. To get blown up, you have to be on the WRONG place at the WRONG time. Passing over a mark of an explosion means that I did pass through the WRONG place, and it’s just the timing that was RIGHT.

More than a week ago, I failed to reach my office because there were traffic jams everywhere. I returned home and tried to go back to work after about 90 minutes. A main highway was still blocked and we had to drive through a service road. The highway was blocked because the Americans were REMOVING a pedestrians crossing bridge from which the American troops were attacked. We had to drive right beside the Americans and their tanks when I heard the sound of an explosion and saw cloud of dust in my car’s mirror. Luckily it was in an empty space, but the Americans started running and the tank started to move heading toward us. I did panic then because I was afraid that they will start shooting randomly as I have learned usually happens in such cases. Fortunately this did not happen and I was near the end of the service road so I drove as fast as I can to go as far as I can from that area.
Another day on my way back, a main intersection was blocked by small tanks on both sides (the kind with a soldier on the top and a small cannon (or is it a large machine gun?)) because someone obviously more important than me, at least as far as the Americans are concerned, was to pass through that intersection. The tank was only three cars away from me. The US soldier on top of it was aiming the cannon on us moving it from car to car. I prayed that no one will do anything stupid because having a cannon aimed at you is simply ‘NOT GOOD’.
The same day and on the ‘airport highway’ there was another traffic jam and I had to pass by three large tanks standing on the side of the road aiming their large cannons on the passing cars. This was even worse than having one small cannon aiming at you. It was VERY NOT GOOD.


Obligatory subject: Electricity
Now that we are in summer where electricity consumption is at its peak, we are getting an average supply of electricity ranging from 8 to 12 hours. During the period when we are supposed to have 2 (or 3) hours of continuous electricity, but we usually have 2 or 3 power failures taking from 5 to 30 minutes each. So much for continuity. One of the reasons for those power failures is that in the regions where two adjacent districts have different power schedules, people will exchange wires from both sides so that both sides will always have electricity. This means overloading the network and that’s what causing the failures.

Finally, someone setup a big generator about 400m away from our house and we have subscribed for 10 Ampers. An Amper costs about 5000ID (that is about $3.5) a month, so we are paying about $35 a month for this extra source of electricity. This is considered quite a lot of money when the average employee gets about $150 a month. When we want to do any work requiring a reliable power source, we wait for the power from the generator and not from the national supply.

In addition to the street generator, we have a small generator that gives about 12Ampers to be used when the BIG street generator is not running, and a power inverter that gives about 2Ampers (using a car battery) to be used at night if the street generator is not running and when its not practical (or because I am too sleepy) to go out and start our generator.

Estimated electricity consumption tables (known by heart by all Iraqis)
- Air conditioning unit (most useful in summer): 15Ampers (too much so it is out of the question for most generators or subscriptions)
- Air cooler: 3-4A Much less useful than an air conditioning unit, but better than nothing
- Fan: 0.4A
- Florescent: 0.2A
- TV+Satellite: 0.4A
- Computer system: 1A
- Refrigerator: 1-1.5A

So you can see that 10Ampers are almost sufficient for all the basic needs except the air conditioner which unfortunately is the most needed.

The government plan was to return many main power generation plants that were damaged during the war back to service in June, but after the kidnappings of foreigners started, most of the foreign companies working on restoring those power plants left the country and the work on them stopped. Thank you kidnappers! We remember you with each drop of sweat.

Fuel revisited
The fuel situation is much better now. We have several gas stations dedicated for high quality fuel (the reddish type, if you still remember) and others for normal fuel. Some gas stations are open for 24 hours now. So to refill my car I need to stay in line for about 15 minutes, which is acceptable. Only this months I stopped buying fuel from the street and returned to using gas stations.

Hospitals
I am still trying to meet with my relative who is a surgeon at Abu Ghraib hospital to get some more facts about hospitals as I was asked by many.

I must mention one subject related to medical care and that is the kidnapping of doctors. Kidnapping of normal people decreased recently, but many well known doctors are still being kidnapped. Their ransoms are usually in the range of several hundred thousand dollars. It is said that the kidnappers ask the doctors to leave the country after their release. The fact is all of those who were released did leave the country and I cannot blame them. Many of the other well known doctors also left the country fearing that they will be next. This is leaving the country without good doctors and that is very worrying. It almost sounds as if it is planned.

Yours,
Ahmed Kharrufa
Baghdad - Iraq
June 29, 2004

Hello Again,

A very interesting program was broadcasted on Thursday June 24, 2004 on BBC Radio Channel 4 called “Letters from Iraq”. Excerpts from letters sent from Iraq by Iraqis (including me), American soldiers, and others are read ‘by actors’. It is directed in a very touching manner and it helps a lot in getting an idea about the feelings about different people in Iraq.
The program will remain on the BBC website till next Wednesday (I guess) and you can find it on this page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml?focuswin

If you are in a hurry and you cannot listen to the whole 30 minutes, listen only to the last 15 because that’s were excerpts from my blog are read ;-). No seriously, I don’t think its good because of that, but because it really is, and you have to listen to the whole 30 minutes.

A few days ago, I got emails from two Iraqis living abroad who have their own very interesting blogs. They have added a link to my blog and since then I’ve been getting much more comments from abroad. This only means that their blogs are quite popular and are really worth reading.
The blogs are :

Live from Dallas: http://fayrouz.blogspot.com/
The Baghdad Dweller: http://iraq-free.blogspot.com/

If you want another perspective of some other aspects of life in Iraq and for a city other than Baghdad, you can look at this interesting blog by a 16 years old girl from Mousil (North of Iraq). The blog is at http://astarfrommosul.blogspot.com/

You know, I really should spend some time enhancing the design of my blog and to add some usefull links to it, specially that I am a computer programmer, but….
We have a saying in Arabic “The door of the carpenter is broken”, and it definitely applies to my blog L

For those living in Iraq – Stay safe,
Others – Take care

“All generalizations are false, including this one. “ (Blaise Pascal)

Dear friends,

My last letter was not long time ago, but I had a lot to talk about so here is another letter which again turned out to be a long one.

What to believe?

I have heard many stories about the behavior of American solders that I did not believe. I did not believe them because many people are continuously spreading all kinds of rumors just to increase hatred against the Americans. I did not believe them not because I thought that American solders are saints but because I thought that they were strongly prohibited from committing any act that may jeopardize the US army’s reputation in front of the world and Iraqis specially.

I’ve heard of American solders stealing gold and money from the houses they search,

I’ve heard of American solders mutilating bodies in Falloojah as an act of revenge,

I’ve heard of American solders killing Iraqis on the streets for the silliest reasons or because of the smallest doubt that they may cause any threat,

I’ve heard of American solders arresting Iraqis for no reason at all, and finally

I’ve heard of American solders abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Graib.

Not only did I refused to believe these stories, but I used to mock the people who told them arguing that the Americans would not do that because they don’t need to, and because they cannot risk destroying the image they are trying to build for their army. The army whose sole purpose in life is to help people in all the world to gain freedom and democracy and to help people to enjoy their HUMAN RIGHTS. I don’t see why they did not believe me then!!

But now…
The story I refused to believe about prisoners abuse was not only true, but it turned out to be a cut down version of the ugly truth. The real version was much worse.

This forced me to review all the stories I’ve heard and refused to believe. Are they all true or only some of them? Are they exaggerated, or are they only part of the truth? How am I supposed to know what to believe now? I definitely will not rely on my –proved to be illogical- logic any more.

I will gather all my courage and say with extreme frankness that for a moment I felt relieved because the news of the prisoners abuse have shown the Americans, who after the falloojah mutilation event mistakenly thought that all Iraqis are inhuman, it showed them that IT IS NOT RIGHT to judge a nation by the acts of a minority. If this generalization is applied on Iraqis, then should we apply it on the Americans?

It is strange how fate have put the American people in the same position Iraqis were put in after the Falloojah mutilation event. God does work in mysterious ways.

I wrote the first draft of this letter few days ago, and before I send it, came the horrible news of the brutal killing of Nicholas Berg in Iraq. I just want to say to those who did this “Don’t do it in my name. Not as an Iraqi, not as an Arab, and definitely not as a Muslim”.

Remember
“All generalizations are false, including this one. “ (again Blaise Pascal)

Another subject

For the past few days, each day I got used to wake up at about 7:00am due to the sound of an explosion. I look at the clock, discover that I have yet few more minutes before I have to actually wake up for work, then return to sleep instantaneously. Yesterday, It took me few minutes to return back to sleep (which is quite unusual) and it crossed my mind that just at this moment, few more HUMANS (Iraqis and/or Americans) had just died….. It may seem rude of me to say that I did return to sleep after that but that is what actually happened. Please forgive me because I cannot allow myself to keep thinking in such a dramatic way in a country were one usually hears a minimum of three to four explosions a day. It is a thought that crossed my mind for a moment and which I wanted to share.

Today I woke up on the sound of machine guns. No explosion today, just machine guns. I wonder if this is considered an improvement in the security situation or not?

Today on my way back home from work, I was forced to change my way because the road leading to where I live was blocked by Iraqi police saying that there is a land mine planted in the street at about 300meters from where I live. In the end, it turned out to be a false alarm. I told this story just to give you a glimpse of how we are living our everyday life.

Roads

Back in the old days (pay attention that I did not say ‘the good old days’) the road to where I work was about 15Km and it used to take me about 20 minutes to get there. I used to cross the river driving over the “Hanging Bridge” which passes through what is now called “The Green Zone”, then drive through “Abu No’as” street which extends along the river bank looking over the Green Zone from the other side of the river.

After the war, the Americans blocked the Hanging bridge and many other roads which caused very heavy traffic over the alternative Jadriah bridge, making the road to work about 17Km and taking about 45-90 minutes.

After the car explosion about a week ago near the Hanging bridge, the Americans blocked “Abu No’as” road too and again increasing even further the distance and time required to reach my company.

I wonder what more roads will be blocked in the future and whether I will be able to reach my working place or not. Please don’t block any more roads. I just want to reach my company. Is that too much to ask?

Hospitals

I’ve been asked by many people about the situations of hospitals in Iraq. We keep hearing speeches from American officials on how all hospitals are fully functional now and how they are being rehabilitated and some more wonderful talk.

I’ll mention two stories and leave the judgment to you.

The first story is about one of the main children hospitals in Baghdad where my sister works as a pharmacist. She has been working there since before the war, so my first question to her was whether we can say that the situation in the hospital now is better than it was in Saddam’s days. Her answer to my surprise was “NO, the situation is pretty much the same. The only mentionable difference is the salaries of the people working there.” I will mention few more notes about the current situation of the hospital (but excuse my translation of some medical terms. I only hope that you will understand what I mean in general)

- The amounts of the drugs are almost the same without any noticeable increase in the supply of drugs.

- The supply of other medical devices like syringes and canulas (a device inserted into the patient’s hand for injecting medicine and liquids) is also the same with periods of shortage in many items till the hospital receives some donations.

- The alleged rehabilitation is nothing more than repainting some walls specially outer ones leaving most of the elevators, the sewage system, and the leaking roofs as they are.

- Many Ambulances are not functional and those functional are not equipped with any medical equipment.

- In the ‘blood disorders’ section, there are times when two children are forced to share the same bed.

- In many cases children leave the hospitals with more illnesses than they entered because of the very weak sterilization.

- Some of the “Intensive care” units were closed after the war because of the lack of maintenance and specially to the sewage system.

- No air conditioning!

- An important observation that lacks a proof, and which my sister had heard from other hospitals too is that the rates of deaths and specially among children have increased after the war!

And the list goes on and on.

The other story is from the eyes of a patient or to be more accurate the family of a patient.

The father in-law of a friend of mine had a heart attack and was taken to one of the main public hospitals that contains some equipments not available in other hospitals. His words describing the hospital were “This is not a hospital, it is more like a trash can! Blood is on the walls and all over the place. We were unable to use the main medical instrument that we needed because at that moment there was no national supply of electrical power and the hospital was supplied from its standby power generator which cannot be used to operate that instrument”.

After less than 24 hours, the patient’s wife insisted that he should be taken to a private hospital even though such a hospital may not contain all the required equipment. “At least private hospitals are cleaner”, she said.

Despite all that, we should not forget the fact that “All generalizations are false, including this one”. Do I like this quote or what?

For those of you who want to argue, I know that many of the above problems in hospitals are caused by, and can be solved by Iraqis, and the Americans have nothing to do with them. I was asked about the current situation of the hospitals and I am replying to this question. It is up to you to decide who should get the blame. Iraqis got used to carelessness in public organizations, they were almost trained for it. I hoped that they will be taught to act more responsible. I hoped that they will be supervised more closely. I hoped for many other things none of which came true. Now I only hope that I never need to go into a hospital, a much less noble goal, yet as difficult to achieve.

Finally, some of you have asked me about my previous letters. They can all be found either on my blog on www.thoughts04.blogspot.com or on the great site www.frombaghdadtonewyork.com then “Letters from Baghdad”.

Yours sincerely,
Ahmed Kharrufa
17May04

Dear friends,



Warning: Long letter ahead of you….I have been writing this long letter for some time, so it contains all kinds of news and my moral state had changed several times during writing the letter. Starting with high spirit and ending with the lowest spirit possible.

Some time ago, I was planning to write about some of the good things happening lately and are positively affecting our everyday life, but unfortunately some bad events on a larger scale keep happening and more frequently than ever, making writing about the little things, in the good things category, seems inconvenient.

Not wanting to ignore those good things. I’ll mention them anyway even if its not the right time for them, fearing that the right time will not come any time soon and these poor minor improvements will pass away unnoticed. Bad news are all over the media and no one misses them, all what you have to do is multiply the size of the problem by %50 if reported by Arabic media and %200 if reported by western media and you’ll have something close to the truth.

Few weeks ago, electricity got much better and we were getting an average of 18 hours of electricity a day instead of the long persistent 12 hours a day rate. I cannot not mention the miracle happened about two weeks ago when we got 36 consecutive hours of electricity – can you believe that? I personally didn’t! Nowadays we are getting 12 hours again, but that’s because it’s the maintenance season and many stations are getting prepared for the hot summer awaiting us (though we are definitely not awaiting it, and this is a special case where Einstein relativity theory does not apply). We were promised a 16 hours average in summer, but I will be very happy if we get 12 during July and August.

To sum up, electricity is better now. Though frankly don’t know whether electricity got better, or better had redefined itself to be used to describe the electricity we are having (Now that’s Einstein’s theory)

Fuel is no longer a big problem. Its not perfectly normal, but there has been no real crises in fuel for the past few weeks. We completely forgot about the quality of fuel, what matters now is quantity. Those seeking good fuel must buy it from the black market. I cannot stop myself from saying: I don’t know whether fuel is better, or whether “crises” had redefined…OK don’t worry I’ll stop here. Don’t laugh at that, our dictionary IS being redefined without us noticing specially such words as good, bad, safe, late, stable, crises, patriot, traitor,..

Iraq, finally had mobile service, still very lousy, but its there and its bound to get better with time.

Except for the last couple of days, shops used to stay open till about 9:30 pm instead of about 8pm. One can still notice life in the streets up to 10:00pm. An exception is the last couple of days because of the unstable situation we’re having. I’ll return to that later with the bad news section.

Now this is a matter that’s very debatable, I considered our new Basic Law as good enough and definitely better than nothing, while MANY others don’t. Some people are gathering signatures against it and I have had long debates with such people. Neither of us is the least convinced in the opinion of the other, and will never do – Typical us, Iraqis that is.

End of good news.


The main advantage we Iraqis gained after this war and that made us bear what we are going through is… freedom. Unfortunately, we are loosing that too. We returned to the state of fearing to talk against certain people because they have lots of followers and militias all over. Such people being extremists and close minded are expected to do anything against those opposing them. Such things did happen and will continue to happen for some time to come. Again we are being careful on what to say in public with the presence of strange people. The media and even people from the governing council fear to talk against such people. If we loose the freedom we gained then we’ll have nothing left.

An unavoidable subject, Falloojah events. Its very common for people to feel ashamed of actions taken by their government, but its not that common to be ashamed of actions done by the people. Unfortunately that’s what all Iraqis felt about what happened in Falloojah more than a week ago. I only wished that our rejection to this act was shown in a stronger way to make it clear to everyone that such an act was not only rejected by Iraqis but we also had a feeling of strong anger towards those who did this. It’s very unfortunate that a small ignorant group of people can destroy the image of a country and its religion.

As for the US reaction…… should the punishment be killing more than 400 Iraqis (so far) and wounding about a thousand (again, so far)? Do you imagine the hate that is growing against the CPA now. Iraqis are very emotional people; now they forgot about the cause of this reaction and all that they can think of, is that the CPA is killing innocent people in Falloojah.

Up to this minute, we keep hearing about truce, end of truce, truce, end of truce and so on. Now I don’t know in which state we are now. Truce, I hope.

A common phenomena that was reduced a little, but returned to increase lately, is kidnapping for a ransom. Sometimes gangs don’t even bother to kidnap, they’ll simply threaten someone to give them money or have him or any member of his family get killed. Sometimes people are even threatened for incidents happened years ago. The police is more occupied with national level security and not personal level crimes!

A story:

News about cars getting blown up in the streets because of mines put for the US troops are always heard in the news.

A week ago, while we were going to visit some very close relatives living on the other side of the city, and when we were almost there, and while I was feeling surprised and happy that the road took much less time than expected (a normally 20 minutes road now takes usually about 45 minutes because of the blocked roads, and other miscellaneous problems), we discovered that a main road was blocked and we noticed large amounts of US army, Iraqi Army, Iraqi Police, and Civil Defense forces. We had to drive on the wrong side of the road for a while (very common now in Iraq), then through many side roads between the houses (something I usually avoid because most of the armed car thefts occur in such places). We finally reached the destination after loosing my feeling of happiness because at that moment we spent more time on the trip than the usual extended version.

We knew then that some mines were discovered on that road and after that we heard 3 loud explosion (Controlled ones, if you are wondering). All the time we were there I was somehow worried thinking of alternative roads to go back home. Well, there aren’t many. Alternatives are either blocked, or are through some deserted areas that I strongly avoid specially at night.

Luckily at the time we left, the road was open, but all the time I was driving I was paying great attention to the sides of the road keeping away from any object fearing that it might be a bomb, what if they have overlooked one. Even a Soda can on the side of the road is dangerous. I don’t believe that any of you have drove with his eyes on the roads watching for mines, but take my word, its nothing that you want to experience. If I’ve heard a similar story from someone, I’ll say its exaggerated. Well, in normal cases it might be, but driving into a road that you know had mines in it few hour ago, you can’t stop thinking that there might be more. Trust me.

Now is a very unstable time for the country. The morals of the people are so low, and we are beginning to wonder if things will ever get better. Each day I wake up and wonder if it is wise to go to work in such circumstances. Few days ago, we woke up at about 5:30am at the sound of a small battle (heavy gun fire with some loud explosions) similar to the ones we used to hear a year ago when the Americans entered Baghdad. The sound was loud enough, it sounded like it was not more than 2 to 3 Km away (We’ve became experts on such stuff). I assumed that the situation got out of hand, and of course decided not to go to work. About an hour later the shooting stopped (my 3 years old daughter returned to sleep saying that the good guys (whoever they are) took the bad guys back to their moms!!!). It turned out that it was a trap set for an army patrol on the Highway near us. I made few phone calls later in the morning, and it seemed safe to go to work. This is an example of how we are living nowadays.

The strange thing is that we didn’t hear about this incidents in the news, while sometimes we hear about battles in the news that turn out to be few shots between police and few thieves. A one hour battle with loud explosions and all kinds of fire power gets ignored, while few gun shots may be described as a battle, like what happened in Al-Adhamya few days ago.

I personally (and many share with me this feeling) had completely lost trust in the Arabic news channels. They exaggerate bad news, and never mention the good ones. They describe those blowing up places and killing Iraqis and Iraqi police as resistance.

Killing Iraqis is resistance. Resistance against whom? Us!

I am sure that if it was without those Arabic channels, things would have been much better here in Iraq. All what they do is add wood to the fire to make interesting news.

Today, there was some kind of a strike. Almost 95% of the stores were closed. Baghdad had never looked as depressing as today. I wait for the news hoping for some good news but instead we keep hearing more bad news. The only good news I heard today was the agreement of releasing the three Japanese hostages. If taking hostages continues, then we can say good bye to rebuilding the country.

A year have passed since the falling of the ex-regime. A year ago we were drawing very bright pictures of where we will be a year later, unfortunately what we have now is far from what we had in mind. We must learn to accept less, and hope for less. I wonder where will we be a year from now; I will not learn from my lesson and will still hope for much.

Ragards,

Ahmed Kharrufa

Baghdad-Iraq

10 April ‏2004‏‏

9Mar04

Unlike what I expected, I made a blog but I am not adding short comments everynow and then as planned.
So I am adding this paragraph just to convince myself that It was a good idea to make a blog
A very short update about the current situation:

First of all, you all heard that the constitution was finally signed. I read it all, and it sounds good. IF IT IS FOLLOWED. Because as far as I know, the constitution that we used to have was good enough, but nobody followed it.

Electricity got much better ranging from 12-16 hours a day. Lets hope it will not get worse.

Finally we got a mobile service, but it cannot be any worse. So far the quality of service, makes it almost useless, plus very the high rates.

For those who had read my last message, Let me update your information: We now have a new type (color) of fuel, it is dark brown and its very good...very rare...and very expensive. But it is good.

Since I plan for this to be a short update, let me keep it to good news for a change.

So thats it and take care

Finally I finished posting all my previous emails. Now the blog is ready for new material.......

Keeping you updated, 26 Jan04

Dear friends,


I've been writing this message for about two weeks. I am too lazy to finish it, and each time I leave the message for few days, some of its news become obsolete, I delete them and the message shrinks in size, so I wait few more days to add more news and so on. Another reason for not writing is thinking to myself: Ok I'll write, then what? People will read this, feel sorry about us, then continue with their lives. If it has not been for some certain people who are insisting that I write something every once and a while, I will surely have stopped. At the beginning I used to write such messages because I felt a need to do so, now I write them only because I am asked to do so. I guess this greatly affected the style, and the type of news included. This one, will very likely be the last.



About 2 weeks ago, I decided to start my own blog. I thought that in the blog I can add short comments whenever appropriate before the subjects involved get obsolete. My first problem was with choosing the name. I thought that it was very impolite of the site to ask me to choose a name at about 3:30AM. How was I supposed to choose a good name that late. The site should have at least given me a chance till the morning to choose the name. I was barely awake and the best I could think of was "thougths04". You can visit it if you want at http://houghts04.blogspot.com if you visit it now, you'll find one great line there, and that is:



"Test"



Since then, I haven't put anything yet. But I'll keep wishing that I will add some stuff later.



The situation now is as follows:

- Electricity wise, same same. We get electricity from 8 (the general average) to 12 (The very best) hours a day at best. Though few days ago, we experienced something we've forgotten long long ago. Guess what? It was 7 consecutive hours of electricity, but unfortunately it was from 2Am till 9AM - The least useful time in the day. In return, for the last two days, the average hours of electricity a day became 6 :( As I said before, I've written this paragraph long time ago, now we are having about 12 hours a day :)



Let me give you some facts about fuel:

- Since in our country we moved from one party, one leader, one everything to many parties, many leaders, many everything, I don't see why the case with gasoline should be any different. Now we have the following types of gasoline:

* Reddish, which is considered as the best type.

* Yellow, A moderate poor quality.

* White, Very bad fuel. Barely keeps the engine running, but this is the most available type in gas stations.

* Some times we see greenish fuel. (not categorized yet!)

- Those who sell fuel, stand in the streets with almost transparent containers in front of them so you can see the color of the fuel, and decide. If the container is not transparent, I will not advice buying from that person.

* I used to use the reddish type, but it started to disappear gradually. And now unfortunately, I cannot find any. The interesting thing, is that if you take 20 Liter of the white type (the worst), and add just one drop of red hydraulic to it, the fuel will have exactly the same reddish color for the good quality fuel. This raised another problem. If I do find some reddish fuel on the street, will I buy it, or not? Risky business.

* Fuel sellers also used to mix gasoline with kerosene to increase the quantity, but luckily (regarding this specific problem only) the kerosene prices got as high as the gasoline, so it became impractical to use it as a mix. I hope they will not use water instead!

* The authorities (I don't know which, the CPA or the GC) forbade selling fuel in the black market on the streets, and forbade the gas stations to give fuel in containers. That was about two weeks ago, It was even said that those who do that, will face a maximum of three years in prison!. So if you wanted to buy fuel for your power generator, or if you are unwilling to stand up in long lines (like me), then this caused a real problem. Haven't they thought about that: if someone has a power generator and no car (as is the case with thousands of people), how will he get the fuel? We were forced to buy the fuel in secrete from homes, or from the dark streets at night (We were forced to make such a crime). Luckily, like every other law stated in Iraq, laws only hold for about a week or so, then they don't apply anymore!!! This has always been the case with law in Iraq.

We used to have things like the "Obey the traffic signs" week. The police would make sure that no one breaks the traffic lights during that week, and when the week ends, they will stop caring. The same for many other things, make a low, apply it for few days or weeks, make a fuss about it, then forget it. And that’s exactly what happened here (Thank God).

* Anyway, the fuel problem (quantity wise) is almost solved, but quality wise, I still deeply miss the reddish fuel :(



- Security. Unfortunately, I've heard a lot of kidnapping events lately, but in almost all cases, there is always a catch. Either the father had some political problems, a long forgotten revenge case, or the family is extremely wealthy. Being very rich is a curse now. Many wealthy families left Iraq fearing from such events.



- I've heard of few cases where doctors were threatened to be killed or have one of their family get killed if they don't pay large amounts of money as a compensation for an old incidences where the patient had died or had his leg cut for example. Such a thing happened with a relative of mine who is a doctor and (only attended) an operation for cutting a patient's leg which was necessary to save his life. That was about ten years ago. Now his family came to him asking for 2,500,000ID (about $2000) or they will kill him or one of his family. Such things are more organized than you think, after paying the money, both parties sign papers to document the case. The police does not involve itself in such cases. Yes, unfortunately we are back to the dark ages.



- As for expositions. Well, we hear the sounds everyday. Some are louder than others, some are bigger than others, but we've learned to simply ignore them and go on with our lives. Otherwise, we'll end up locking ourselves in our homes. When we hear about an explosion in the news, hear about the number of casualties, we get a mixed emotion of sadness, anger, and helplessness. We curse those who do such crazy acts, but again we go on with our lives. We always had the feeling that this will always happen to someone else, someone we don't know, someone we don't relate to. We are untouchables. Well, It doesn't need a smart one to know that I am wrong, and I am just fooling myself. The last big explosion that happened near the "Jamhuriah bridge" (at about 8:00AM Sunday 11 January), killed the brother of a friend of mine. He, like many others was going to his work, but was unfortunate enough to be in the car next to the one that exploded. He is married with three children, the youngest being few months old. They spent two days without knowing anything about him, no one to ask, no one to turn to. I wonder, if they wanted to blame someone, who will that be: The man who did this, the people who tricked him in doing this, the Coalition for invading the country, or Saddam for giving the Coalition the excuse to invade our country? Good question, isn't it?



"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is brought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" - Gandhi -



- Another subject that worth mentioning, is the way the Americans (referring to the armed forces) drive in our streets. It is very common for them to drive on the wrong side and at high speeds. So at any moment, one might find himself facing a humvee or a tank, and if he is lucky enough, he'll be able to escape them. When one drives very carelessly in a street in Iraq, we say he is driving as if the street belongs to his father (il shari3 mal beet il khallifoo) Is that the case with the Americans? Do our streets belong to their ancestors? Only in the past two weeks, I've heard about three people whom I know who had car incidences with the US army's Vehicles. In one case, they stopped, gave the man a number to call, and in the other cases, they simply continued going in their (wrong) way. Three incidences with people that I KNOW, should give you an idea of how much this is happening in general. Drivers are doing their best now to avoid being anywhere near an army troop. No one knows what might happen at any moment. (There is an Arabic essay which says: Go far from danger, and sing for it - Ib3id 3an al shar wa ghanillu)



Our currency:

In the past month, the value of the Iraqi dinar varied from 2000ID for 1$ to 1000ID. This was caused partly because of the deadline for replacing the old currency which was 15 January 04. Now it is varying in the range of 1300 to 1500. Having such large changes in such a short period, caused a lot of problems and confusion to everyone. People either get paid in US dollars or in Iraqi dinar. So some had the value of their payments dropped to almost half while its doubled for others!! now it is almost settled in between.



There is one subject that I haven't talked about in this message and that's whether to have "elections or selections" as was expressed by one of the station. Well, this is a rather complicated subject and deserves an email of its own. I wonder if I will right that email?



PS: You know..After reading my message, and for a certain paragraph that was in it, I decided that I should either remove my name from the letter, or that I should delete the paragraph. Just having such thoughts got me scared, I thought to myself "Oh my God", this was the case in Saddam's days, we should be able to write freely now without being scared, Unfortunately this feeling started creeping back to us because of many different reasons.





Yours,

Back to where we started, 23 Nov 03

Dear friends,

The last message I wrote was before the beginning of Ramadan, and I was worried that Ramadan will not be as it used to. Today I write this message with only a day or two left of Ramadan. Things were a little bit better than what I expected. Many shops remained open till about 10pm and streets remained busy till about the same time. Though the day ended much earlier than before, but still better than what I personally expected.

Evaluating the general situation here, it looks like we’ve gone back to were we used to be about four months ago. And here is why: 1. Electricity got bad again and the power cuts now range from 12-16 hours a day after it reached to about 6-8 a day. 2. Queues for fuel returned to be very very long and prices of fuel in the black market are higher than ever. I used to bye the liter for 125ID, now it reached 400ID (black market prices), while the official price is 50ID for liter. 3. After opening the “hanging bridge” at the beginning of Ramadan. The CPA closed it again few days ago. Opening that bridge was very important because it is a vital bridge and greatly affects traffic on other bridges. 4. Civilian airplanes are no longer permitted to land or take-off from Baghdad international airport. So if there was a hope that the airport will return to receiving passengers soon, this hope is now vanished. As you note, some of the factors that affects everyday life got worse, after they did get better. Who knows in what direction things will go next.

Let me tell you an ironic story about things here. A month ago there was the problem of deciding the beginning of Ramadan. For those who don’t know, Ramadan starts when the moon is born. So to decide the beginning of Ramadan, people must monitor the sky to see whether they can see the newly born moon or not. Lacking a government that people trust, each group of people relied on a different source to determine the beginning of Ramadan. Some followed the Sunis leaders, some followed the Shia leaders, and others (like me) followed the TV which represents the government. The funny thing is that neither the Sunis, nor the Shias followed the Government. So some started Ramadan on Sunday and others on Monday. Even in my own family, some started on Sunday and others on Monday. Anyway, the beginning is not as much a problem as Eid because Eid is a holiday where people visit each other and having different dates for Eid will create a problem. Unfortnately the problem did occur, some announced tomorrow as the first day of Eid while the others (including me) will have the first day of Eid either tomorrow or the day after!!. This is a very unfortunate thing. It seems Iraq is the only country with two moons. A suni moon and a shia moon!!! How to differentiate between the two is beyond my knowledge.

Another sad thing is what was written in a newspaper few days ago. The ministry of foreign affairs (whose minister is from Kurdistan) announced that it has some job opportunities but those who submit must be graduates of Kurdistan!. I’ve heard that the same thing is happening in other ministries. In the past to submit to any job in the government, one has to be from the Baath Party. Now, since each ministry represents a certain party, then to submit to any ministry, one has to be a member of the party (or religion belief) represented by that ministry!

Another thing that I heard is that in some ministries, men are forbidden to wear a tie and women are forced to wear hijab. This of course happens with ministries belonging to extreme Islamic parties. So much for the promised freedom. Maybe in some other ministries men will be forced to go to work in shorts and women in Bikini. Who knows, everything is possible in my country!

In the old days, it was a crime to be seen taking pictures near governmental and presidential places. But at the beginning of our freedom era I started taking pictures here and there to document things. Unfortunately, we lost this freedom again, and if one is caught taking pictures in public places by the US army, he will be suspected to be preparing for a bombing or any other attack, and will probably be arrested.

Day by day, the CPA is discovering that the best way to force security is Saddam’s way, but they refuse to admit this. In the old days, you can see agents from the intelligence or from special security forces standing in main highways every few hundred meters. Or you might not see them but if your car stops they will come out from everywhere. Now we are in desperate need of such system to stop people from putting mines in the highways or from attaching US troops in the middle of the city. What the US army is doing now is building high fences (about 3m high and 1m wide) along the sides of some main highways and near their high security areas. Those fences are build from concrete blocks basically imported from Turkey (as I heard). I also hear that each of those blocks costs about $2000 (including transfer and setup). The amount of such blocks in Baghdad now are by thousands. I wonder who is paying for this. We or the Americans. Hiring few security people would have been much more practical and cheaper and will at least offer some extra work opportunities.

Let me tell you some good news for a change. The security situation (in term of robberies and such stuff and not bombing) got much better, and now I am using my car normally, though I never go out alone, and never out after 9pm. But some more courageous people do. People are returning to living their normal life more and more despite of everything. We waited for things to get better to return to our normal life. But since it does not seem that a noticeable improvement will happen soon. People stopped waiting and just went on with their lifes. It is said that "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." And from what I have seen from Iraqis in the past few months, Iraqis did prove that they are unreasonable people. I don’t know whether now this is considered as a virtue or not.

The process of replacing the old currency with the new one has been going on for about a month now. At last we have a well-printed currency on special currency paper, instead of the old terribly printed currency on normal paper.

That’s it for now because the battery of my computer is running low and as usual we don’t have electricity right now.

Regards,