Baghdad Now

it's my third week in baghdad. my last week was so hard and wearisome. in one single day i had to go to different far places in baghdad and with traffic jams, closed or diverted traffics it's not a strange matter to fuel the car every 2 days. as for baghdad, it's great. now it's on the way to heal and stepping forward in the road of revolution and good future. except for some what i call "defects" here and there, one may say that the city has settled down. the people now feel safe and can go out for shopping, visiting friends and relatives without fear. i feet that the normal life is getting back again. while in febuary last year (like the current days), i just wanted to get out of baghdad because at that time i couldn't get oiut of the outdoor. eveeryday we heard someone or two were murdered in our destrict. no one day passed without a funeral. 3 years before when i was a student, we were going to college and afraid of what the roads were hiding along our way. many female students were afraid of getting kidnapped and many times they accompanied us or gave them a lift. my close friend was about to be killed just because he was the son of an embassador!!!! and from that time we were obliged to carry a gun in the car for protection, the other one received a paper threatening him and i did my best to protect him when we were together just because he lived in Adamiyah!. they were bad days.as for now, we don't have to do any of those.i visited my friends in different dental centres and we went for buying some clothes and spent great hours and fortunately it was only us(the guys) or we were stacked in the markets for hours just on shoe shopping.the national guards checkpoints and outposts are eveywhere in addition to the american soldiers who you may see them walking by your side in the streets.
last week a business exhibition was in baghdad for 3 days called B2B (Baghdad to Baghdad). the exhibitors came from different countries and in different fields ( communications, power supply, trade, transport, security companies...). it was satisfactory but the most annoying was the entrance, one must pass through different kinds of personal searches including canine search and to stop many times for checking IDs. mobiles with camera were not allowed and you have to remove its battery. they were very welcoming but so restricted.
we still have some problems concerning electricity ( well they are big problems). the electricity in baghdad just say "hi" for few minutes twice daily. we have two generators in the house, subscribed to an external power provider and about to buy a big diesel generator next month."all that for electricity"
the goverment who lack experts spent millions of dollars just to provide every family with 10amps of elect. "WHAT A WISE & SMART STEP" 10 amperes for every family?!!!??. that means no A/C at all, can't iron with refrigerators turned on, can't use ovens or microwaves and and .... moreover till now we are not supplied with that 10 amps. where all that money has gone??. can any one of those big heads in the government tolerate to live with 10amps only (i'm not saying without electricity). i'm sure he will suicide.the victims are poor and people with limited salary.and the parliament (who is supposed to represent the iraqi people) spent two weeks of quarrels just to change the falg. is it a big matter to change it? or is iraq is so perfect to spend sessions on secondary subjects and left behind all the basic needs?
is it so hard to provide giant generators??they were saying that"because of the insecured situation and presence of terrorists and saboteurs in baghdad we can't achieve the contracts with big companies" and now what??i hope this will be solved soon.

High Spot

Several times I heard from "mama"(the mother of sunshine) what sunshine did and doing of big achievements beginning from crossing over her obstacles courageously and helping people without hesitation or getting bored , to her education, knowledge and her skills.
One day when I was in the diagnosis department, “mama” came with a teenage girl accompanying her. “is she sunshine?” I thought but I didn’t ask. There were many patients came for diagnosis. As the crowd was over ½ hour later I asked “mama” whispering and pointing to the girl “sunshine?” she answered “yes”. I didn’t expect so because she is a young girl. After talking with her, the personality of sunshine in her blog appeared. One may notice immediately her smartness, capabilities of speech, language and knowledge from her selection of words during speaking with others. She is different from her age mates in wide ambitions and eager to get knowledge even if that may cost her to spend all the credit of her mobile!!.
She really likes net and her computer. I agree with her because I’m addicted to those two. If I’m not using my desktop pc then you’ll see me sleeping with the laptop next to me.
At that day, someone made me mad and I did crazy things. He was one of the national guards came asking for removal of calculus around his teeth, it’s a cleaning of teeth with an ultrasound device. He was listening to the loud music of his mobile and sat on the dental chair with a gun in his hand. He then pointed his gun to all the doctors in the clinic including sunshine. I asked him to move it away but he said that he couldn’t as one of the terrorists might attack him in the clinic!!!. Then he pointed it straight into my face. It was a half metre of my face. Everyone just went out. I closed the door and was in crazy state with a calm looking face. i cut off water of the device and he began to feel some pain with his finger on the trigger. Thanks god I’m alivve now.
As for “mama”, I’m very grateful to her because she encouraged me to write in a blog. You can imagine what kind of a woman who raised up a girl like “sunshine”.
“mama” , “sunshine” you both owe me one.

Well well wellll. I have many thoughts, pictures and facts I'd like to share you with but I don’t know which one to publish and for the current time I have limited spare time. Now I'm in Baghdad. Sometimes I feel like an egoistic because I left my friends in this critical situation but I have a lot of stuff to be done. I consider this period as the days that will limit my future life and the way I will pass through for my goals.
I went out of mosul and tears flowing on my cheek. Inspite of the sad days and facing terrorists in streets killing people infront of me, I couldn't and will not forget all the marvellous and supporting friends.
For me it's impossible to see my tears even at the hardest times, close friends may notice my reddened eyes but not tears.
The situation in mosul is fluctuating between chaos and calm. Many troops were headed to mosul but "I think" that will not help the people, on the contrary, because the "plan to clean mosul out of terrorists" as was declared , was known by the whole world. In every ceremony and media conference there was that announcement and details about mosul.
I have a little experience but they were ought to follow the sudden and silent plan. So "as I think" this army will find the innocent people only but from the other side order may shine again since the weapons as I hope will be carried by officials only. All I wish is to live in a peaceful environment, neither presence of militias and terrorists nor chaos.
Several days ago I visited the college of dentistry I graduated from. I met the dean and professors who consider me as their son. What surprised me was the news about American forces arresting some of the guards in the college as a result of weapons found in there one day after my visit!!!!.
And now a spokesman of the us army is saying that those weapons were stored to be used later by militias.
Weapons and armors inside an educational institution???!! And in the centre of Baghdad!!?. I don’t know when all this kind of hostile contemplation will turn into passion especially between politicians.
From now on as soon as I have the time, I will keep on writing to publish the truth.