This was posted this winter at Revisiting Schools Online.
It brought back a lot of memories about how we discussed her blog and the run up to the Iraq invasion. I remember we worried when she skipped posting a while, wondering where she was, if she and her family were safe. She ended up in Syria finally. Here is her
final post at Baghdad Burning in 2007.It is heartbreaking to read.
By the time we had reentered the Syrian border and were headed back to the cab ready to take us into Kameshli, I had resigned myself to the fact that we were refugees. I read about refugees on the Internet daily… in the newspapers… hear about them on TV. I hear about the estimated 1.5 million plus Iraqi refugees in Syria and shake my head, never really considering myself or my family as one of them. After all, refugees are people who sleep in tents and have no potable water or plumbing, right? Refugees carry their belongings in bags instead of suitcases and they don’t have cell phones or Internet access, right? Grasping my passport in my hand like my life depended on it, with two extra months in Syria stamped inside, it hit me how wrong I was. We were all refugees. I was suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country- including their own... especially their own.
We live in an apartment building where two other Iraqis are renting. The people in the floor above us are a Christian family from northern Iraq who got chased out of their village by Peshmerga and the family on our floor is a Kurdish family who lost their home in Baghdad to militias and were waiting for immigration to Sweden or Switzerland or some such European refugee haven.
The first evening we arrived, exhausted, dragging suitcases behind us, morale a little bit bruised, the Kurdish family sent over their representative – a 9 year old boy missing two front teeth, holding a lopsided cake, “We’re Abu Mohammed’s house- across from you- mama says if you need anything, just ask- this is our number. Abu Dalia’s family live upstairs, this is their number. We’re all Iraqi too... Welcome to the building.”
I cried that night because for the first time in a long time, so far away from home, I felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003.
Long read, but she describes the fate of many Iraqis who were forced to leave after we invaded.
I admire this teacher for using Riverbend's blog for her classroom studies.
Baghdad Burning Heats Up World History I wanted them to see history as something alive that really mattered, filled with the stories of interesting, everyday people. How could I generate some enthusiasm for the past?
At the same time, I was worried about how to integrate curriculum about the war in Iraq. During the lead-up to the U.S. invasion, the topic came up naturally in class. But now students seldom raised it and were often resistant when I brought it up. “We’re burned out on Iraq,” they told me. How could I teach world history and not explore the current events that were sure to have an enormous impact, both on my students’ lives and on the world’s future? I knew I didn’t want to relegate today’s news to a few weeks in June, but I hadn’t had much success with such formulaic approaches as current events days or weekly news assignments.
At just that point of confused frustration, I stumbled across an extraordinary resource: Baghdad Burning, Girl Blog from Iraq and Baghdad Burning II. The author, whose pseudonym is Riverbend, was a young computer programmer in Iraq when the war started. First trapped in her house by the bombings and fighting, then barred from working because of the deteriorating situation of women, she turned to blogging about her everyday life, events in Iraq, and the international situation. These first-person accounts are extraordinarily well-written and compelling (Baghdad Burning won the 2005 Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Literary Reportage)
The sign of a good teacher, to integrate vital current events into the classroom. It must have been very hard with all the tension over the invasion.
She also posted one of the most moving Riverbend posts. It is heartbreaking. It is from August 2003 when the Iraqi people were paying dearly for our invasion and occupation of their country based on lies.
Riverbend Blog Excerpt
Over 65 percent of the Iraqi population is unemployed.
. . . The story of how I lost my job isn’t unique. It has actually become very common—despondently, depressingly, unbearably common. It goes like this:
I’m a computer science graduate. Before the war, I was working in an Iraqi database/software company located in Baghdad as a programmer/network administrator (yes, yes . . . a geek).
No matter what anyone heard, females in Iraq were a lot better off than females in other parts of the Arab world (and some parts of the Western world—we had equal salaries!). We made up over 50 percent of the working force. We were doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, professors, deans, architects, programmers, and more. We came and went as we pleased. We wore what we wanted (within the boundaries of the social restrictions of a conservative society)
What bitterness the women in those professions must have felt when Bush invaded their country.
Riverbend in that post told of a visit to the office where she used to work. Hanky time, maybe 2 or 3.
. . My little room wasn’t much better off than the rest of the building. The desks were gone, papers all over the place. But A. was there! I couldn’t believe it—a familiar, welcoming face. He looked at me for a moment, without really seeing me, then his eyes opened wide and disbelief took over the initial vague expression. He congratulated me on being alive, asked about my family and told me that he wasn’t coming back after today. Things had changed. I should go home and stay safe. He was quitting—going to find work abroad.
. . . A. and I left the room and started making our way downstairs. We paused on the second floor and stopped to talk to one of the former department directors. I asked him when he thought things would be functioning; he wouldn’t look at me. His eyes stayed glued to A.’s face as he told him that females weren’t welcome right now—especially females who “couldn’t be protected.” He finally turned to me and told me, in so many words, to go home because ‘they’ refused to be responsible for what might happen to me.
. . . I cried bitterly all the way home—cried for my job, cried for my future, and cried for the torn streets, damaged buildings, and crumbling people.
—Riverbend, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2003
Kudos to that teacher for taking the tragedy that was Iraq into her classroom. There is no doubt that there are students who will never forget the writings of Riverbend.
Baghdad Burning: "I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend..."
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