Riverbend, posting again!
Riverbend has posted again. Hat-tip to D. Mathews. She's safe (apparently) and has been in Syria since June (I think.)
This post is her usual blend of the wryly intimate and the deeply reflective. And her usual beautiful writing.
Read it and weep.
I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over- the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away.
Helena
I keep finding that I still have to do some of Edward Said's unleaning. I never expected people in Baghdad to be playing Monopoly.
Oh dear God, what have we done?
Americans believed that they will be welcomed with flowers at the gates of Baghdad.
Iraqis are now forced to go and sell flowers to Americans.
There is a big lesson there for those who care to ponder.
http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2007/09/fading-away.html
Another Iraqi girl writing
There was much about Riverbend's early chronicles of pre April 03 Baath-run Baghdad that reminded me of Vera Brittain's account of pre 1914 England, Testament of Youth, and Margaret Mitchell's nostalgic evocation of the pre civil war privileged American southern lifestyle in Gone With the Wind.
It surprised me that her family stayed so long. Their departure from Iraq suggests an entire era has closed. It would be good if one day Riverbend writes a detailed memoir of her family and upbringing in Baathist Iraq.
"Last week also saw the burying of 40,000 unidentified Iraqi corpses. A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq is expected to take thousands of lives and spread in other parts of the country. World Health Organisation (WHO) experts attribute the epidemic to a shortage of potable water and a security situation that prevents Iraqis from seeking medical attention or travelling to hospitals..." Al Ahram Weekly
Thanks so much for the heads-up! It's astonishing how attached I've become to this young woman, and how worried I've been during her long silence. It's a great relief to know she's safe, and as always her eloquence delights and moves me.
I imagine that everyone here knows that River has had two books published. The second one, Baghdad Burning II was published about a year ago. You can order them on Amazon. Just do a search on Amazon for Riverbend, or for Baghdad Burning.
I also must recommend very strongly a book that will be released next month by the extraordinary VERY independent, never-once-imbedded American journalist Dahr Jamail. I know this remarkable young man, and have followed his reports from the beginning. Those of us who read his reports knew that the U.S. was torturing and killing detainees long before Sy Hersch broke the story of Abu Ghraib. It's just that no one would listen until they heard it from him. Dahr was also one of the first, if not THE first to report the use of white phosphorus in Falluja. Not only was he there, on the ground, in the middle of the fray to send remarkable reports that you could not get anywhere else, his heart is very much there. He "gets" Iraq. As a concerned American, he also "gets" the bigger picture. The book is called Outside the Green Zone, and it is available for pre-order from Amazon.
For samples of his work (and a link to the book), see web site: