Sitting in the taxi with my sister ... passing by a picture of Saddam, defaced ('Saddam you son of a bitch you will never come back') ... me laughing and then turn my head to the taxi driver, my laughter subsiding ... ten years later sitting in a bus passing by a picture of an Islamic leader, me laughing with all my heart ... someone turning to me: 'are you laughing at our great leader?'
I was born in 1989. My generation was raised on the idea of loving the great leader, raised to be the great soldiers needed to kill the enemy; not that we needed to know who the enemy was - the great leader would handle that. The same goes for any ideas or opinions we might have. After 2003 this idea is over - it's up to my own decisions from now on. Ten years later, nothing has changed here, except for seeing every day numbers of people killed, by different methods, such that it makes no difference to me if ten or a hundred are slain. They are numbers, and I need not think of them. At this point I start to realize that I am losing my humanity. I should be affected by these numbers. They are real people, with real families, just like me. From this moment I started to think that if I remained silent, I would be the next to be killed, another number to be added to all the others.
