November 29, 2004

The situation in Falloojeh is worse than anyone can possibly describe. It has turned into one of those cities you see in your darkest nightmares- broken streets strewn with corpses, crumbling houses and fallen mosques... The worst part is that for the last couple of weeks we've been hearing about the use of chemical weapons inside Falloojeh by the Americans. Today we heard that the delegation from the Iraqi Ministry of Health isn't being allowed into the city, for some reason.

I don't know about the chemical weapons. It's not that I think the American military is above the use of chemical weapons, it's just that I keep wondering if they'd be crazy enough to do it. I keep having flashbacks of that video they showed on tv, the mosque and all the corpses. There was one brief video that showed the same mosque a day before, strewn with many of the same bodies- but some of them were alive. In that video, there's this old man leaning against the wall and there was blood running out of his eyes- almost like he was crying tears of blood. What 'conventional' weaponry makes the eyes bleed? They say that a morgue in Baghdad has received the corpses of citizens in Falloojeh who have died under seemingly mysterious conditions.

The wounded in Falloojeh aren't getting treatment and today we heard about a family with six children being bombed in the city. It's difficult to believe that in this day and age, when people are blogging, emailing and communicating at the speed of light, a whole city is being destroyed and genocide is being committed- and the whole world is aware and silent. Darfur, Americans? Take a look at what you've done in Falloojeh.

The situation in Baghdad isn't a lot better. Electricity has been particularly bad. Our telephone has been cut off for the last week which has made communication (and blogging) particularly difficult. The phone difficulties are quite common all over Baghdad. It usually happens in an area after a fresh bombing. We joke amongst ourselves that it's all an agreement with the new mobile phone companies, but the truth is that the mobile phones aren't very much more reliable. For the last couple of weeks we've been able to receive sms from abroad (which was impossible before). It's nice to get a message every once in a while from some concerned relative or friend living far away, especially when the phone starts glowing eerily in the darkened living room.

We spent the last week fixing up the house. Around 10 days ago, there were a series of very large explosions in our area and the third or fourth one took out three of the windows on one side of the house. Riverbend and family spent two days gathering shattered glass and sticking sheets of plastic over the gaping squares that were once windows. We sent E. for the window guy but he was booked for three days. Our window man has become a virtual millionaire with an average of about 20 windows to replace daily.

The situation is really bad in Baghdad. Many areas have turned into mini-warzones. A'miriyah, A'adhamiyah, Ghazaliyah and Haifa to name a few. The rest of us just get our usual dose of daily explosions and gun fire.

Elections are a mystery. No one knows if they'll actually take place and it feels like many people don't want to have anything to do with them. They aren't going to be legitimate any way. The only political parties participating in them are the same ones who made up the Governing Council several months ago- Allawi's group, Chalabi's group, SCIRI, Da'awa and some others. Allawi, in spite of all his posturing and posing, has turned himself into a hateful figure after what happened in Falloojeh. As long as he is in a position of power, America will be occupying Iraq. People realize that now. He's Bush's boy. He has proved that time and again and people are tired of waiting for something insightful or original to come from his government.

The weather is cool now. You can't leave the house without a jacket. Baghdad is popular for a dry, windy cold. The kind that settles in late, but once it's here, it seems to creep into everything, including one's bones. The kerosene heater has become my cherished friend these last couple of weeks. The days are much shorter and it gets a bit depressing when the darkness sets in- especially when there's no electricity. We aren't using the generator as much as before because there's still a fuel shortage.

There's a collective exhaustion that seems to have settled on Baghdad... it feels almost like an epidemic sometimes.

- posted by river @ 10:10 PM