Iraqi New Year

I stopped reading the Iraqi blogs for awhile. Some of the bloggers I used to read fled the country, some disappeared, and some were too depressed to keep writing. The American soldiers' blogs have all disappeared, with the exception of a few jingoistic ultra-patriots. Maybe only five or six are left of the dozen Iraqi blogs I'd originally linked to.

I checked up on the survivors this morning. None are doing well.

Here's Sunshine, a 16-year old student:

I was reading my previous posts and I realized how unoptimistic and depressed person I become , many of my posts start with " it was tough week " " it was a horrible day " and so on .

But I really don't have good news to tell !

it was really bad week for me , I feel like something inside me will explode, I try to hold my tears all the time I feel so bothered from life , house , school , exams , and everything , the problems never ends . I hear the people's problems but I'd never say mine , because first I don't want to bother the others , and second all of the people I know have so many problems in their lives , so they definitely don't want to hear more !.

my marks are not bad ,I get the highest marks in English , mathematics, biology, religion .. I'd never take a mark lower than 90 in them , my par in mathematics is 99.4 % , and religion 100 % , but I still don't know my exact par in English and bio.

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I hear at least five or six explosions every evening while I am studying ….
They are loud , they scare my brother very badly , and that caused a problem in his pronunciation , he repeats every word many times before pronouncing the other , I am really worried about him, there aren't any good doctors , the good doctors left Iraq...

HNK is a teenage girl in Mosul:

Many things happened that deserve to write about.
But Many hours passed I thought that I could not write in this blog anymore. I can't say Happy Eid for all, I can't say happy christmas and happy new year.
Because I feel that I am writing only a words that can't do anything for the people who read it.

My words didn't left steps in your hearts and it will never do. because my words is mine. it only mean to me because it's come from the deepest point from my heart.

You know what?
I think I was wrong.. ... My opinions changed from the first year I wrote in this blog. I thought in that time that everything is going to be good and acceptable for all of us but I was wrong my friend, I was so wrong. I was wrong when I said that Saddam don't mean to me anything. I was wrong when I said that I think he is a bad guy ( he might be, but he might be not).

Now I feel guilty because now I believe that he is a MAN ( a brave man) if you just saw the video that someone took in his execution, you will see no fear from death. You will see a look in his face, a look of someone who is ready to challenge, who believe that he was right . Who believed he was doing the right thing after all.
He was smiling . I don't think that I will smile if I was in his shoes.
I will probably burst into tears and say Mameeee :(

Anyway, from now, I won't say anything bad about Saddam because I don't know whether he was right or wrong . But I know that the people who came after Saddam is Evil and worse than devil and Saddam was better than them......

And I have to say something, What were they thinking when they executed Saddam in the first day of Eid ? Eid is our chance to be happy, to gather with our family and try to forget everything bad. And they turned our happy feeling to sadness. This is the most stupid thing they have ever had, did this people lost their mind? I am sure of that . That was a huge Mistake ( a very huge mistake).

Thank you all for reading... And happy new year

your lost friend HNK
from where Iraq was there

And Nabil in Baghdad has set up an escape fund to help him emigrate to New Zealand:

To Whom It May Concern

The reason for writing this letter is that my life is like living-hell, everyday is like a very bad nightmare, I start each day and I can't expect what could happen to me till the end of the day.

I live in fear everyday, I wake up in fear, and I sleep the night in fear too, few days ago I stopped going to college, because the road to college is very dangerous, fake police check-points are everywhere and at any moment they can stop me and ask for my ID and once they see that I'm a Sunni they would have me killed or kidnapped or tortured, because they can figure it out from my name and my address (my district is a sunni district), and the 2nd reason why I stopped going to college, is that in Monday (20th Nov. 2006) two police patrols attacked our college building, and opened fire on the outer gate of the college for nearly 15 minutes, then they stopped after they injured some guards of the college, and they left immediatly without giving excuses for what they did.

The last two months I have experienced a lot of things that I never imagend that I will experience in my life. About two weeks ago, my district was attacked by mortar missiles, we had missiles falling everywhere in the district, destroying houses and killing innocent people, the district was attacked with about 75 missiles in 5 days, one of the missiles fell on the side-walk just two yards away from the outer door of my house, it was shocking and very horrible, about a month ago, gunmen killed a woman who was a hair styler and owns a shop near my house for no reason, they just stopped her in the street when she was closing her shop and killed her, and left her corpse laying on the street, and truly I don't want to end up like that.

After living 3 horrible years in Iraq and witnessing all what I've witnessed, I realized that I can't live in this country anymore, I can't live in a country where some gunmen prevent me from going to school, where corrupted policemen will kill me just because of my religion or what's written on my ID, where religion bigots will have me killed just because I wear jeans, or shorts or because I shave my beard everyday in the morning.

The only thing that I want is to finish my studies, and to work and to create a good life and to be a good man who can be helpful and successful and to live the rest of my life in peace.

New Zealand is a great country, I think it's the best place for me to study and work in, and that I have great friends there whom they offored to support me make my dream happen...As soon as I can have residency Visa to NewZealand.

Please, help me make my dream, Please Save my Life!.

Nabil
22 November 2006