Goodbye and good luck

once I asked my mom why some countries change their presidents, how these presidents accept this, how the people can live like this since Sadam was the one and the only at that time in Iraq the idea of elections was to say yes we wants Sadam for more years,my Mom smiled at me and said "this is democracy hun,you may not get it now but one day you will understand".

fifteen years later I understand that democracy have 2 meanings :

the first is creating change and give chances to everyone to represent the people which is lame idea, and the other is that having the same people leading the country to hell.

so here I am spent 13 years from my life in Sadam`s regime, 3 years in war, and 8 years and the next 4 years under Maliki`s regime.

Democracy means there is no such a thing called change, this will be my last words talking about a dream called IRAQ, this was a page in my life and I'm now looking forward to remove it from my life.

goodbye and good luck 

Noof 

from a strange place called Baghdad 

    

The Show Most Go On

I saw a post today on Facebook saying that "why our live is hard? because we dont let go the sad memories"

it is true it is hard because we keep remember the bad and sad memories, we even carry it with us all our lives and we don't think of the good memories in the same level of details like the sad ones.
and this is one of our problems as Iraqis we keep carrying the bad sad history.
I was once asked to create a timeline for Iraq and the first question was what was the biggest change in Iraq History? my answer was the Mogul occupation to Baghdad, I didn't say for example Iraq being the first country in the middle east who become a member in the United nations countries, or having the first TV station in the middle east...etc, it most be bad and sad thing to start with.
but I realized that we should be happy and live our lives, so I decided that from today I need to start thinking always in the good memories and also start creating good happy moments for me to remember in the future, so I hanged out with my friends and had really a good time,and then I get back home with a smile,and as usual my dad is watching the news and as usual the news in Iraq shows you only the stories of death, so to change the mood in the house I was showing my dad a YouTube video on one of the Iraqi dancing bands who dance Chobi traditional Iraqi dance, so his reaction was yelling and saying that "these are bad people are dancing while people are killed, its not a good time to dance or celebrate", I was as well trying to pass to him the inspiration of today and was trying to tell him dad yeah I know there is people get killed today and every day and we spend our lives seeing people getting killed but that dos not mean we should stop living and have a normal life,

(THE SHOW MOST GO ON)

Ordinary Day in Baghdad

Baghdad Today

Months ago I decided to stop blogging and write anything any more since its wont change any thing.

but here I am again start writing again, I'm going to write about an ordinary day in Baghdad the city I am from and the city I love, once I heard someone says 'it is hard to be in love with the city you cant love to live in it any more"

it is hard... for me I love Baghdad but I reached a point when I can say that's it I cant take it anymore I need to have a normal life, its not worth it to be optimistic all the time.

so lets go back to the Baghdadi ordinarily day.

my ordinary day starts with a huge traffic jam made by security checkpoint who are not doing anything just look or not  looking at all these cars, so basically my day starts with 2 hours driving in a suppose  to be 5 min driving road.

arriving to the office pissed off until I got my morning coffee and cigarette 

 started working, and then email popes up from our security manager to let us know that crazy 6 suicide bombers taking hostages in the human rights ministry building and ends his email with (ALL OUR STAFF OK)

but their staff are not this is what it comes to my mind and then remembered I know a friend who works there. 

trying to reach that friend but cant reach him, after lots of phone calls and reaching out to people not even in Baghdad we reach him, he is OK nothing wrong with him and he is not in that building who is full of people wants to kill everybody to have a meal with the savior of their believes and have nice time with virgins maybe.

any way my friend ends his call by saying (don't worry we are all OK and we DON'T KNOW anyone from the hostages).

but again there is someone knows them and they do have families care about them.

then work hours are done and its time to go home so since I live in the other side of the river I have to cross the bridge and I always like to look quickly at the river on that time when the sun become shy and tries to hide in the water I turn my head to see big smokes coming from one of the buildings, I think to myself its only an ordinary explosion.

reached my home and get out of the the car to open a chain my neighbors put to protect our neighborhood from the monsters outside (silly idea I know) but its only to make us not feel guilty when that monster attacks and we tell ourselves at least we tried 

little girls pass by me with smile and asks me with a strange accent to help me open the chain after a small chat I understand they are from Syria, and I asks myself are they really coming to Baghdad to seek peace???

what should I care at least they are smiling, and that smile was the highlight of my ordinary day.

Noof

30-1-2014