La La Land

La La Land
Maxine Nash, Electronic Iraq, 13 December 2004

Living here in Iraq I sometimes get a distinct sense of unreality. Recently, I was working in CPT’s office. My colleague Tom Fox was in the office with me, working on the computer. Next to the computer he had placed a kerosene lamp so he could see the papers from which he was working because the electricity was off. In Iraq, the name for a kerosene lamp is la la. I couldn’t help but be struck by the sheer sense of the bizarre in this view of Tom using the latest in technology with the assistance of the kind of lighting my grandmother would have used.

The absurdities shout at me every day. It’s more affordable and easier to own a car here now, but you wait in line for two days at the gas station for fuel. The country now has "freedom" but it’s difficult to travel outside Baghdad because the roads are too dangerous. I needed to go the doctor the other day but the doctor was gone, having fled to Jordan because doctors have been the targets of death threats. Saddam is gone so Iraqis should be speaking out about their ideas and opinions but people are afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals from armed actors, both resistance fighters and U.S. troops.

Last week I spent one night with my Iraqi family that I lived with for two months last year. My Iraqi "mom" had some new kitchen cupboards. She explained that she had bought them from a friend whose 15-year old child had been kidnapped and the friend was selling off household items in order to pay the ransom.

Selling off the kitchen cupboards in order to buy your child back? Am I living in la la land?

The unreality reached a new high yesterday. Tom was on the roof of our building enjoying the sunshine. He looked down at the street and noticed four humvees with about twenty U.S. soldiers who had stopped to get a soda and to play with the kids. Tom thought it was a nice scene showing soldiers in a different light than we are used to seeing them, so he took a photo. His action brought the wrath of the troops upon us and our building as five heavily armed soldiers came to the door, demanding we open it, and then proceeded into the building shouting questions and demands, "Who took the photo?" and "Give me the camera."

I have to say that, probably for the first time in my life, I was frightened of U.S. soldiers. But after we talked with them they went from being scary GI Joes to being Jeff and Billy with wives and families of their own back in the U.S., and distinct fears and apprehensions about being on the front line of the war in this country.

Perhaps it’s time for us all to do a reality check about la la land, and consider the effect of choices and actions of the United States in Iraq.

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1750.shtml