A couple of months ago an Iraqi man of 70 years old died of a heart attack. His poor family mourned his death almost with no one, not a lot of people (including relatives) managed to attend his funeral, because of fear from false checkpoints in different areas in Baghdad. Yesterday I called the man's youngest son to see how he and his family are doing. He told me about the continuous tragic situation ... how people are struggling with living regarding high prices of everything from fruits and vegetables to meat, from the level of corruption penetrated every single aspect in society..etc I asked him: "so people now are more concerned with that more than with the daily kidnapping, killing and other forms of violence?" He replied "They do fear death, but they lost hope in life too, some of them wish to die. Imagine, I was talking the other day to a friend and he mentioned my father. He said "God rest his soul, he's now in a better place. We should be happy for him, because we’re still alive... in this misery!""
Thursday, October 18, 2007
We’re Still Alive...
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4 comments:
Thats so awesomely sad. It is hard to relate to the day to day relentless weariness of just living, of surviving.
Thanks for writing that Mix, cause if you and others didnt write, others like myself couldnt begin to understand it. My prayers are with your friend.
But how does one help. That is the question I get asked. With all the corruption how does one help the person or family who struggles on.
I feel so powerless when I have so much and others have so litte.
That's the problem, corruption is emmensely high there... for example even a student who want to apply for university studies, he should pay one hell of amount of money and he might not get what he want! There are many stories, also on the blog sphere where we read about how horrible the situation there.
We are powerless, I don't want to sound down or not optimistic, but the game is controlled by people with more power and money.
Here in the Netherlands the people said NO to having troops in Iraq. The same thing happened in Spain...This might be arguable and the interest of both The Netherlands and Spain, for example, came first, but it is also a indirect realization that the whole war was based on a lie, and it is wrong to keep occupying forces somewhere, becuase the concept of liberating Iraq from tyranny has fallen. Again, it is arguable to say "yeah, lets get our boys back" and that's it, because what is happening in Iraq is more complicated than just do one single action, wait for consequences and do the second action... there must be parallel solutions because there are parallel problems, if you know what I mean, Turkey, is an example and before that Iran and its equal influence to that of the US within the political scene in Iraq, and the list goes on and on.
Again, do we have to sit and do nothing? no, we shouldn't
So often I hear about "a fate worse than death" and I really only understand it in a general concept. Experiences like the family you spoke of are generally just so far removed from my world.
It is blogs like yours that bring together the 'brotherhood of man', reminding us all we are born of the flesh and that if my brother is hurting then so am I.
So often the focus in the regular media is on 'others' or those who 'aren't like us' and if you listen for long enough, you begin to believe it.
Thank you.
"So often the focus in the regular media is on 'others' or those who 'aren't like us' and if you listen for long enough, you begin to believe it."
Good point, mountaingirl... thanks to you :)
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