I am still on holiday and the blogs are still running. So here is a summary of what I liked up to the point my kids wake up…

First a special mention to new Iraqi blogger Zappy. According to his profile he is a “34 year old Male living in Baghdad I love Marmite,I hate veggiemite ugh!,love Sea food, hate Green Veggies and stupidity.” His blog is Where The Date Palms Grow.

Aunt Najma says this about his blog.. “Please read this blog, I'm getting addicted to it in a very bad timing. 60 days of studying left, plus 16 days of exams.” If it pulls Najma from her studies it must be worth reading!

If you read only one post this week read this

A lot has been said recently about the bias of journalists. I was there explains the journalist's side of the argument:

When you see all this Iraqi blood and peaces of flesh every where around you at the scene, how could your story be neutral and balanced? Your readers could be Iraqis or non-Iraqis and you still have to put your feelings away when you write for them so your story will be neutral.

To explain, he recalls a story of a bedouin who became rich telling the tale of the death of his beloved one:

He realized, later, how bad he was to become rich out of the death of his beloved one.”

So we have to cover the story as it is for those people who are dieing to make the whole world understand what is going on and why those Iraqis are dieing not to become famous out of it..

April 9th – another anniversary

But which one? I'll let Attawie explain for me..

It was “Baghdad fall” as they call it, or “Baghdad liberation's day” if you may. But I don't know what to call it. For me it's definitely none of them both… Whatever you call this date I still insist is not. Baghdad is still standing and still struggling to gain liberty. Baghdad is still resisting just like it will always be.

Therefore, it is neither a fall nor a liberty.

24 Steps was excited on that day in 2003 and went out looking for the American soldiers to wave at, and:

“I did. He or she waved back… At the end of the day, I felt I did my part. I thanked them for launching this war to help me have a better future. I was waiting for this future to come, or at least to appear in the horizon. And when they came, I believed it would be the first step. I am still waiting!”

Chikitita (the only woman in Iraq who cannot haggle) has to call off a shopping trip. She tells her friend (who is not impressed) “mum says there are seven car bombs waiting to go off any minute, it's in the news, she won't let me go for an errand as stupid as this one, sorry!.” But it turned out to be the opposite of what she expected:

It was the finest day of the lot; no sickening news of bloody carnages or sectarian wars, no political analyses or grim speculations, no mention of conflicts; it felt like the old days…
April 10 was exactly the opposite. Once the Azan was concluded, people flocked to the gas station and the mosque and I finished my prayers, a car bomb went off. Back to real life! Somebody's calendar has been jumbled up!

I was there discovers how many young men felt about the Americans then and now from the pictures on their mobile phones. Apparently Saddam pictures and tunes are very popular. He asked the owners of some mobile phone shops:

“Many young men come every day and ask us to download some pictures for their mobile phones and a lot of them they ask for Saddam Pictures, we bring any thing the costumers want to make more money and we have to look for some thing new every day”…

“The young men used to ask for American flags when the Americans invaded Baghdad, the demand on these desktops [pictures] is not much any more the demand on Saddam desktops is much more, they did not gain from the Americans the things they were expecting”, another mobile shop owner said.

And finally

The Konfused Kid celebrates the Profit Mohammed's birthday in an original way:

I was subtly entranced by an array of sounds that pretty much resembled a mighty crash of so many kettles, teapots, and some other assorted faux-aluminum pans and pots all crashing together at the same time. Word? turns out it's the Birthday Surprise Party for Prophet Mohammed at the local mosque…today they apparently hurled out the nearest cassette they can find of Prophet Praise, which I think was recorded in a kitchen… I just couldn't take it anymore and decided to join in the celebration my own way, by locking the room tight and shedding out my Gibson Airguitar Extravaganza and accessory longhair wig for a lean'n'mean session of headbanging classics, a ritual I haven't done in a looong time

[Aha – I can hear my 4-year-old stirring. Time to end this post. Normal service will be resumed next week..]