This will be short, just a notice that Riverbend has added a new chapter to her odyssey.
For those who don't know, Riverbend is the online name of a young woman from Iraq who started blogging about her experiences being in the eye of the Baghdad storm during the occupation over four years ago (rendering her not quite as young a woman as when she started out, I suppose).
As her family has finally given in and crossed into Syria to escape what's happening in Baghdad (they held out as long as they could), life is very different now:
By the time we had reentered the Syrian border and were headed back to the cab ready to take us into Kameshli, I had resigned myself to the fact that we were refugees. I read about refugees on the Internet daily... in the newspapers... hear about them on TV. I hear about the estimated 1.5 million plus Iraqi refugees in Syria and shake my head, never really considering myself or my family as one of them. After all, refugees are people who sleep in tents and have no potable water or plumbing, right? Refugees carry their belongings in bags instead of suitcases and they don’t have cell phones or Internet access, right? Grasping my passport in my hand like my life depended on it, with two extra months in Syria stamped inside, it hit me how wrong I was. We were all refugees. I was suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country- including their own... especially their own.
The lady's eloquence is her own, and she continues to be a must read. Go check it out.