A
Family Tree
By Layla Anwar
31 October, 2007
An Arab Woman
Blues
I
have spent all day drawing up my family tree i.e my genealogical tree.
I tried assembling all the
information together. Souvenirs, memories, faces, locations, names...some
sort of a mental compendium of an oral and visual history.
What I heard, whom I met,
what was said about who, who married who, where did they come from,
their origins, their sect, their religion, where they ended up, their
life stories...
I tried to go as far back
as I can, gathering all these little pieces and sat down and sketched
the family tree, starting with my great grandparents -both maternal
and paternal.
It was not easy...
Some of them are already
gone for good. Some I never really bothered to find out more about,
some I took for granted, some were too distant physically and some emotionally
out of reach, and some were a taboo subject...
I spent hours remembering
names and faces...They were difficult, painful hours...
My immediate family was just
a branch of this tree amongst many other branches but we were all attached
to the same trunk. We all belonged to the same trunk.
I got tired after a while
and stopped this exercise...But I was curious as to why I had started
it in the first place. Why this sudden need to delve into my own personal
roots...
I have no clear answers.
Maybe because I have been
feeling like a leaf that has fallen, amongst many other leaves, kind
of scattered "pêle-mêle."
Maybe because winds blew
us away, apart from one another, sometimes ripping whole branches to
the ground...
Maybe it my own feeble attempt
to hang on to something solid...like an imaginary tree when my own grounds
are so shaky, almost non existent.
So I sketch trees instead,
family trees...
I remember a long time ago, I lived through an earthquake, everything
shook and not knowing what to do, I held on to some wall only to feel
the wall wobble and crack...
It is the same now. Everything
around me feels like this wall - wobbly, cracked...Fractured.
I console myself with the
thought that I, at least, have the memory of a Tree. Something to give
me strength, verticality, and a sense of belonging even if it is on
some fictional, imaginary level...
I have serious doubts that the increasing number of Iraqi orphans can
console themselves with that same thought.
A friend who is closely associated
with an International Organization, told me that the unofficial figure
for Iraqi orphans is 5 million. I have no way of verifying this figure
but it does not surprise me.
Who will remind these orphans of their family tree? Who will tell them
stories about their parents, grand parents, aunts, uncles, cousins,
relatives...
Who will feed them? Who will
nurse them? Who will hold them? Who will teach them how to draw trees?
Who will recount their origins to them?
Thousands are growing up
in the streets, in the garbage dumps, sleeping in packs, in some corner,
in some rubbly building, in some orphanage, abused, neglected, traumatized
for life...
And if they ever make it
to adulthood, that is if they do not commit suicide before or fry their
brains in drugs or end up incarcerated in some prison for petty theft...or
get caught in some pedophile ring, or see their life story written in
some brothel at the hands of some perverted adult... What will they
tell you?
What Tree will they sketch
?
Do you ever think of them
? Do they ever cross your mind ? Or are you just sadistically pleased
with your great Iraqi production ?
I really have to say it -
You are a VILE lot. Every single one of you. And that includes you too,
impotent, treacherous Arab shits. And that includes you too perverted,
sly Iranians you and your supporters. And that includes you too, sectarian
heinous, repulsive Iraqis.
There are also hundreds of other Iraqi children rotting away in local
prisons, under the pretext of helping the "insurgents."
Prisons run by the sectarian
militias from Iran. Militias, that you, anti-war, another category of
shits, support.
Militias run by the bastard driller Muqtada al Sadr and the Al Hakeem
clan and the Maliki puppet whom you welcomed with flowers in Washington
D.C.
And you wonder why I call
you VILE? And you wonder why I call you a DISGRACE?
An article appeared yesterday, and it states that these child prisoners
show signs of severe torture. Read on.
"The five children showed
signs of torture all over their bodies. Three had marks of cigarettes
burns over their legs and one couldn't speak as the shock sessions affected
his conversation..." (full article here)
It is believed that there
are about 220 child prisoners in Iraqi governmental run prisons. I say
bullshit to that. Multiply this number by 3 at least, if not more.
It is also common to witness an armed militia man walking into some
hospital with some sick child prisoner (sometimes not older than 12)
and the doctors have to treat and ask no questions whatsoever. Some
of these children are diagnosed with STD.
Would you like to see your
own children in a similar state ?
So you have the orphans, the child prisoners and you also have another
category, the traumatized for life, beyond help category.
Take this one for instance;
"Salah Hashimy, 14,
has lost his parents, sisters and many friends since the US-led invasion
in 2003; finally there was no one to look after him. He lacks education,
love and support, a combination that, according to doctors, caused his
mental health problems. My memory is very weak but I cannot forget when
I saw my sister being raped by militants until she died," Hashimy
said." (full article here)
And we all know, all of us
Iraqis know, who does the "professional" raping in Baghdad.
None but the sectarian militias from Iran and IN PARTICULAR Jaysh Al-Mahdi
of your "patriotic" Muqtada al Sadr. And they are ALL "rogue
elements."
And this is a FACT.
Congratulations to you, anti-war shits, supporters of Genocide.
So tell me, o'civilized ones, how will these children draw a Family
Tree?
What will they say ? Our
family tree was bombed, raped, tortured, murdered, imprisoned, broken,
exiled in the name of Democracy ?
Or will they just stare at
you and point their fingers at your eyes ?
Or having lost it all, will
they later join the Resistance, and clean us from your filth...and find
a sense of belonging ?
Only then, will they be able
not only to create a NEW Family Tree, but also draw One...replacing
the one you viciously and violently uprooted them from.
The one you robbed them from ever experiencing.
The one you never allowed them to feel or...remember.
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