loracs | Jan. 6th, 2008

I've been reading several blogs by Iraqis in Mosul: a young girl http://livesstrong.blogspot.com/ her mother,her uncle - educated, middle class people caught in a terrible, untenable, evil situation. To sleep with the windows open, even when it is very cold, because nearby bomb blasts keep blowing out your windows, to have mines planted on the street in front of your home forcing you to find another way to get to school, to have to plan the safest way to get to a friend's birthday party 2 blocks away from your home, to move into your sister's bedroom, on the other side of the house, because a sniper has taken up residence in the neighbor's house next to your bedroom window; these are just a few of her stories. I don't know how anyone can keep their sanity in this insane situation. And yet they gather, they celebrate (most recent post about traveling to her grandmother's house in Baghdad for Eid), they go to school, they dream (even in this nightmare) they still dream and plan for a better future. I'm both amazed and depressed by these stories. The human spirit amazes me, the evil humans can do to each other depresses me. The fact that my government, with my tax dollars, causes much of this evil makes me so angry I can feel my blood pressure raise. The helplessness I feel brings me back to my current state of depression.