Why? Jo Wilding, Electronic Iraq
28 March 2003
Why? Why did the human species ever bother with the creation of language
only to dream up and carry through ideas so monstrous as to wither all the
words we ever thought of, to strip them of meaning in the face of that intent.
And why is it considered a legitimate way to live, for a person to get up
in the morning, kiss his or her kids goodbye and go and spend the working
day experimenting and discussing and planning and building novel and
ever-more efficient ways of severing soft, beautiful, living human bodies?
And why is there no way of physically preventing someone from getting in a
plane and flying over schools and homes and firing rockets which burst
through the wall and into a million fragments in the middle of the night,
splintering a family's sleep and driving vicious metal squares into their
flesh and vital organs?
Last night's bombs were so immense I could see the flashes from inside a
room with the curtains drawn and my eyes closed. The building swayed like a
treehouse in the wind, rocking long after the sound had died away and the
soothing voice of the prayer call was singing out, as if from a machine
activated by the sudden shaking of the minaret.
Late Thursday night, a missile exploded near the International
Communications Center in Baghdad. (Al-Jazeera) The communications towers
were hit last night and today there are no phones. The internet is but a
fantasy and even the carrier pigeons have dirtied the pavement and
deserted. I don't know how Zaid is, or Asmaa and Israa and Mimi and Omar,
or Majid and Raid or Ibrahim, probably less than a mile away, although it
may as well be a million, or Umal or Waleed or Samir or Hamsa or any of
them. Kamil's house is trashed - it's on El Shaab street, near the ruined
market. Mr Zaid, the minder, is understandably a little tense today after
his house was hit last night.
As foreigners we're not even allowed to cross the road without a minder
now. Six peace activists were kicked out this morning. A good friend was
expelled yesterday to Syria as a "security risk". He must've passed the
wreckage of the bus convoy. I'm still waiting to hear he's arrived safely,
but he won't be able to phone me because the phones are down. Another good
friend has just been told, half an hour ago, "Leaving tomorrow."
Right now Friday prayers and a rally are going on outside the mosque,
people crowding into the circle opposite, among the fountains. A thick
crust of sand has mummified the streets and buildings with a monotone
yellowish-grey, clogging the drains so that the blood of two sheep,
butchered on the pavement an hour or two ago, provides an almost welcome
splash of colour.
Shane and I blew bubbles over the edge of the second floor inside balcony,
down into the dining room on the first floor and the reception area below,
and watched in glee as grown men jumped and laughed trying to catch or pop
the bubbles and, all the while, the bass thudding of the bombs carried on
around us. Playfulness in the face of war feels like profound defiance.
There's no way of telling the US/UK governments' bomb fires from the Iraqi
government's oil trench fires: as ever both sides at once are choking the
Iraqi people, poisoning and darkening the air they breathe. People are
running desperately low on money because they're not able to go to work.
Between the two sides they've now locked the Iraqis out of all
communication with the outside world, as between them they have shafted the
Iraqis for the last couple of decades and a bit.
And why and why and why, like a sigh, like a mantra, beside every hospital
bed, every bombed and burnt out house: why did they do this to us? Why did
they kill my child? Why are we a target? Why can't my mum come back? Why
destroy my shop and my living? Why can't anyone stop them?
And how? How did it ever come to this? How did we surrender our power so
completely that an entire world of people screaming "No" is not enough to
stop a few from bringing about all of this? How did we forget that they
were supposed to carry out our will? How did we lose sight of our
responsibilities to each other, and continue to pay taxes and commit our
labour to the people who harness it all towards death and their own power?
And when are we going to put an end to it? They have to go. These
politicians have to go. This whole system has to go. If we can think of
ways to kill, in their homes, people we can't even see, render non-existent
whole buildings by remote control, we must be able to imagine and bring
into being a better way to run our world, to conduct ourselves without
these corporate controlled governments, without any governments. They've
failed us, whatever their ideology: now it's time for the people.
Jo Wilding is based in Baghdad.
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/03/29/2289538
C.Prizzi writes on Sunday March 30 2003 @ 12:21AM PST: [ reply | parent ]
They godda go...and you godda do the job on them! Give us your answer here!
