Four years and two days ago I started my very first blog. It was born out of a variety of frustrations both personal and political and always strayed back and forth between them with frequent forays into the world of rock and roll.
I recently revived it after a rather long hiatus. Earlier today, I was going back through the archives and found what turned out to be the single most read post that I ever made on the site. It's also absolutely the most heartbreaking. It was awfully sad then and it's even worse now.
On March 5, 2003, I posted some letters, from children from a school in Baghdad that were written to other children in the US. They were brought back to the states from Iraq by a teacher friend of mine and some of the letters haunt me to this day.
Here's what I wrote to introduce them:
a friend, a school teacher, recently returned from baghdad where she visited an iraqi school. those students wrote letters to her students. here are some of those letters. i have to admit that when i read these for the first time i was really overwhelmed. i read them at work and a few made me cry right there in my office. all of them, to me, illustrate just how absolutely insane this whole predicament has become. this is madness and it needs to be labeled as such. these are letters from children who live in a city that is perhaps days away from something the pentagon calls "shock and awe"
. this is what we have become. we have become a country that can and apparently will launch an unprovoked, pre-emptive war on a city of 5 million, half of which are children. and we wonder why the rest of the world thinks we are insane.
Here are some of the letters...
The Bird of Peace [drawing of a bird with a flower in its beak]
Al-Adamia Preparatory School for Girls
Baghdad, Iraq
March 3, 2003
Dear American Student,
I am Sara ... I live in Baghdad and I want to live in peace here ...
and I
am 17 years old.
So I don't know what I say. I am very sad and I am very confused. I
like
you to understand me what I want to say, and you have to forgive me
because
my English language is not good ... but I hope you understand my pain
...
Just my tear could describe my pain ... I love you very very much
because
you want to help Iraqi children ... I want to be your friend ... I'm so
sorry again for my English language is bad ... I'm so sorry.
Yours,
Sara Amer
[drawing of a flower] This flower is for you
Dear America Students,
I send this message to any one of you to know us (Iraqi pupil) as it
should
be! I really glad to make a friendship with the U.S.A. student.
My name is Sarab and I'm 17 years old and I have no mother because she
died
in cancer last year... So I think this friendship will help me to get
out
from this sadness that I'm gonna through... I hope I met someone of
you face to face and to still friends forever... What I hope is our
problems solve... In fact I really love American people from all my
heart.
I swear it's true... I wish I can visit America and see you and you
have to
promise me that we will be a friends forever and ever.
I like dogs and I have one. It's german shepherd dog, his name is
Bone...
Tell me what you like, like I do...
I love Backstreet Boys, specially (A.J.)
I feel we'll contact with each other so in the second time tell me what
you
like to know you better.
Yours,
Sarab
Friendship forever [inside a heart]. Keep in touch and don't forget
me...
your friend, Sarab Taha El-Anne
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Dear Friends in U.S.,
My name is Hiba Monther. I would like to tell you that I want to be
like
any people in the world. Well, I live with my family and from my house
watch T.V. and read many books about the nature. Write to me and tell
me
about your feeling about this world. And I want to tell you that every
night when I saw the moon and I feel that I am one of the stars in the
sky.
Best wishes to you and your family,
Hiba Monther, 17 years old.
Hello also from Hiba's friend Rokoya (who doesn't know English very
well).
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Dear American Student,
My name is Rasha. I'm 18 years old. I want to say that I love the world
and
I love peace. I don't want war. Why do you want to kill the smiles on
our
faces? We want to learn and live in peace. I want to be a dentist, so
how
could I make that if the war happened? We are a peaceful people. We
love
peace. We love American people, so why do you want to kill us? I pray
for
the God to avoid us the war, and I hope for whole the world the peace
and
love. I want to be friends and keep in touch with you. Let us spread
love
among us.
With all the best,
Rasha Ali Abdul-Raheem
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We are love the people U.S.A. We hope go to U.S.A to meet to people and
explain my feeling to you. Our hobbies listening the music and
swimming. We
hope becoming engineers. We are 18 years old. Our names Mary and
Daniah.
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Dear American Student,
I am 17 years old. I want to tell you that everybody in Iraq love
everybody
in the world. Only my wish is to continue my studies.
Yours,
Meelad
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Dear pupils in U.S.,
I am Lubna Saad. I am seventeen years old. I am student in Al-Aadamya
Secondary School for girls. I live near the school and I love watching
TV,
and specially the movies. I hope I will be a lawyer in the future and
to
travel to America and I want to told you something - when I get out my
house in the night I saw the moon and I believe that all the people in
the
world would see it even in different times. So I wish that we all live
in
peace and visit each other. Thank you.
Lubna Saad
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Dear American Student,
My name is Duha. I'm 18 years old. I love people America. I don't want
war.
We want peace. I hope to live in peace. I'm very love pupil America and
I
want to see somebody and I want to say for somebody pupil America. I
want
to be in touch with you always. I hope to love for me so as you love me
for
love you.
Duha Ali
I was quite overcome reading these letters again after three and a half years, even more so than when I had first read them. After these three plus years of seeming unending tragedy, after all the mayhem and violence and blood, after all of this, i am consumed with a desire to know what has become of Sara who apologized for her english skills and drew a flower for our children. What about Duha who told our children how much he loves them or Lubna who wished we could all live in peace and visit each other?
I think about them when I read in the New York Times that 715 Iraqis have been killed in the past 8 days and over 1,320 found dead already this month. I think about them when I read leaked nonsense about "going big" or "going long" or some combination thereof. I think about them everytime I see our Dear Leader's smirking face...
How many of these kids have seen their parents dragged away by armed men in the middle of the night? How many have seen the effects of a power drill and a 9mm pistol on their father's body? or their brother's? or their mother's?
How many of these and countless other Iraqi children are now orphans? or "internally displaced"? or exiles altogether? How many of them have lost an eye or a leg or a classmate or a cousin? How many of them have lost their homes?
And how many of them are simply no longer with us? How many of them were killed by a bomb dropped from the sky or one delivered by car to the market where they were sent for tomatoes or tea? How many of them are now officially classified as "collateral damage"? How many of them were killed a checkpoint by bullets fired from American guns or from an insurgent's Kalshnikov? How many were killed simply for their family name? How many of these kids who professed their love and friendship for American kids weeks before the war eventually took up arms against the American kids patrolling their neighborhood?
How many were killed simply for their family name? When they took their last breaths, did they still love us?
This Thanksgiving, for those of us fortunate enough to have family to share it with, fortunate enough to surrounded by those we love, fortunate enough to share time with our own children or grandchildren or nieces and nephews, hold them. Hold those children close and tell them you love them and then tell them that you have pledged to fight like hell, like motherfucking hell, to make sure that this country is never again involved in perpetuating such tragedy again. Tell them that you have sworn to never again let this country send its children off to a foreign land to visit death and destruction on others based upon a stinking pile of lies.
And then tell them that you mean it.
I'll finish this with the words I used to finish the original post from three and a half years ago.
now, does anyone really feel that murdering tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of iraqis is going to make us safer? how safe do you feel now?
thought so.
this is a madness.