An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...

Who am I ? The eternal Question . Have not figured it out fully yet . All you need to know about me is that I am a Middle Easterner, an Arab Woman - into my 40's and old enough to know better. I have no homeland per se. I live in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Egypt simultaneously ... All the rest is icing on the cake. /Copyrights reserved, 2006-2007

A New Map of Iraq.

This is " Iraq al Jadeed ", the New Iraq of the sectarian Iranian Government, with its militias and thugs and "Islamic" revolutionary Guards...who landed with the Occupation

This is the New Iraq of the "Islamic" fundamentalists, the pious ones, the " God fearing ones." ...who arrived with the Occupation.

This is the New Iraq that America brought to us. This is American Freedom and Democracy. This is American Liberation.

This is my Dear Raouf. This is the gentle, kind, Raouf.
This is his body. These are the marks of the New Iraq. These are the hands and arms that embrace us daily in the New Iraq.

This is the Iraqi body. With its streams, mountains, rivers and skies...Look at it well. Scan it well like you scan our irises. Make prints out of it, like you take our digital fingerprints....Look well, very well.

Contemplate the colors.

The deep black, the color of the new map. The Southern part is all black. The color of the chadors. The color of the turbaned mullahs. The color of perpetual mourning for something that happened 7 centuries ago. The color of political shi'ism from Iran. The color of oil, shiny black.
You absolutely adore, worship shiny black. Don't you?
So take it now. Contemplate it now.

And what about the red ? Admire the red for me.
Red, the color of your valiant peshmergas in the North. The Northern part of the map is all red. It covers Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk, Sulaymaniya, Dohuk...
Your leftists love red. The color of independence, revolution and blood ....
Your leftists loved the Independence of the Kurds. They did everything to beef up numbers and sold it to your rightists. Now applaud the red you see. Drink it and quench your thirst with it.

And have you noticed the white patch in the Center ?
This is Baghdad - the destroyed, vanquished city. With its 2 million livid white dead bodies waving like white flags in the air, like birds of "Freedom" in the winds... White the color of sunni robes. White the color of Death.
Snow white. Yes it is. It is bandaged in snow white. Revel in white now. Purify yourselves with it.

Observe the blue. Blue is the color of the sky. Blue is the rivers...
Why has this blue turned brown ? Scorched brown, burned brown, putrefied blue brown.
Observe the blues, turning brown...
You love it when everything takes on the colors of feces. A reflection of yourselves. Admire yourselves now.

And the new map has green writing in the middle. "Allah Akbar" it says. God is Great.
If you look close enough you will find it.
It is written with human hands, with fingers, with nails, engraved, etched, scratched, deep into the skin of the Iraqi Body.
Search for it, in between the marks of the chains, rods, sticks, rubber hose...
Search for it well, in between the scars, amidst the wounds, in between the mutilated cracks, inside the infected sores...Search well.

This is the new Iraqi body, the partitioned body, the divided body...
This is the new Iraqi body, the raped, violated, tortured, mutilated Iraqi body...
This is the new Iraqi body, the invaded, occupied, Iraqi body...

The new Iraqi body, the piece of meat of Liberation...
The kingdom within, the temple, that has been spoiled and broken without, losing its sacredness, its integrity, its identity...

This is the spirit made flesh, that you spit on, insult, scar, wound, stab, piss on, behead, chop, drill, amputate and murder.

This is your doing. Your Violence. Your Brutality. Your Greed. Your Evilnesss. Your Silence. Your Apathy. Your Indifference. Your Negligence. Your Irresponsibility. Your Immorality. Your Cowardice. Your Selling out...

Yes You, Right and Left.
Yes You. Americans and Westerners alike.
Yes You, Iranians
Yes You, Israelis
Yes You, Arabs.

This is the New Iraq. This is You.

For those of you who are new to this blog, and want to find out more about Raouf's story - Read my previous articles : "A postcard from Iraq" followed by "On the edge and Unwanted."