Lost . . . lost homes
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/4455
Women are peculiar beings . . . whoever, whatever they are . . . they are always attached to home.
Our home is our shell, our protection . . . the men may come and they may go, but our homes are our shelter . . . you take away our homes, you strip us naked . . .
Many of us Iraqi women have been stripped naked that way, some of us even more, a full striptease . . . until we ended up in brothels . . .
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Specially don’t count on empathy from those in the “first world,” they are too polluted, these are people cut off from the most basics . . . they are far gone—down. Forget them.
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Turn that grief into the real thing . . . into an accounting exercise. Your language does not count no more . . . the language of grief, of feelings, of emotions, of sentiments, mean shit . . . you need to learn a new language . . . the language of accounting, of adding up figures . . . of even out . . .
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You may never recover your home, your protective shell, but at least you would have learned a new language. You have been taught a new language for well over 9 years now . . . Speak it. And speak it well.
Layla Anwar’s blog is An Arab Woman Blues—Reflections in a sealed bottle where this was first published.
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we took away their homes, we are guilty