Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Xmas in Baghdad



When the Sky Was Turned into a Christmas Tree

by NESREEN MELEK
CounterPunch

"....Xmas reminds me of the war in Iraq in the early nineties, when the Americans turned the sky of Baghdad “into a Xmas tree” from their continuous bombing as Wolf Blitzer at CNN described it. Xmas and the death of the innocent people was one in the eyes of a CNN reporter.

It has been twenty years, but Xmas still reminds me of the death of the Iraqi people who did nothing to the Americans who celebrated that Xmas in the nineties and others after that. Xmas reminds me of the thousands of Iraqi kids who don’t go to school because they have to support their families. Xmas reminds me of the suffering of my own people because of the wars which were launched on them by killers who claimed that they would spread democracy in Iraq.

I wish I could be able to move the time backward so that I could sit on the floor of my old school’s church, look at the Virgin Mary’s face and speak to her again “You are a mother, how did you allow this to happen to the Iraqi children and why do they have to suffer from poverty, cancer, literacy and wars, Why .. Why?”

I also wish I could be able to tell the Iraqi kids to hope for good days to come."

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