[adapted from my blog,
Peace Tree Farm]
Riverbend is back!!!
These days, she blogs even more infrequently than I do. It had been nearly two months since the last missive was posted on Baghdad Burning, and I was beginning to despair that something untoward might have happened to the Iraqi woman who calls herself Riverbend.
Today, she reappeared! Huzzah!!!!
As always, her words cut to the heart of the matter. In this case, though, it's both the situation in Iraq and what is being shown on Iraqi television about the destruction and chaos in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Excerpts below the fold...
On her homeland:
The electrical situation deteriorated this summer in Baghdad. We've gone from a solid 8 - 10 hours daily to around six. During the winter, we have generators in the area providing electricity when it goes off. In the summer, however, with the heat and the heavy electrical load from air-conditioners AND the fuel shortage, many generators have to be turned off for most of the day.
We're also having water difficulties, though people have grown accustomed to that. You can tell first thing in the morning that the water is cut off. I woke up this morning and knew it even before I had gotten out of bed. The house just sounds... dry. You strain your ears for the familiar house sounds and they aren't there- there's no drip-drip-drip from the faucet in the bathroom down the hall. There's no sound of dishes being washed in the kitchen downstairs. There's no sound of a toilet being flushed, and certainly no sound of a shower. The house is dry.
Many areas in Baghdad seem almost shrouded in black these last two weeks- ever since the A'aima Bridge tragedy. There's a mosque a few kilometers away from our house and the last two years we've been accustomed to seeing the large black banners draped across its outer walls. On each banner are carefully painted words in elaborate Arabic fonts announcing the death of another Iraqi and notifying people that the male members of the family would be receiving condolences inside the mosque for the next few days.
Now, the dusty beige surface of the mosque wall is nearly invisible under the black of death announcements. The eye can barely take it all in. The most disquieting thing about the banners is that many of them no longer carry a single name- after the bridge stampede, the banners now announce the deaths of two, three, four members of the same family.
And on the destruction and chaos in our Gulf:
The dryness and heat are a stark contrast to the images we see on television of Mississippi and Louisiana. Daily, we watch the havoc Katrina left in its wake and try to determine which are more difficult to bear- man-made catastrophes like wars and occupations, or natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis.
Best of all, Riverbend closes her entry with the note that tomorrow she's going to blog her impressions of the draft constitution. That is, "at least what I've understood of it" after reading and rereading the thing.
I'm looking forward to her thoughts and observations. More than that, I'm thrilled to hear that she's OK and that she's ready to start posting again.