Blown to the Winds...

Layla Anwar - An Arab Woman Blues

Have you ever been lost? Like, have you ever tried walking in one direction only to end up in another ? Have you ever been without a map, searching for signposts? A total stranger where the streets, the faces, the roads are the Unknown to you ? Have you ever walked and kept on walking, thinking to yourself, this it, you have nearly reached your destination only to find out that your destination has moved ? Have you ever asked for guidance and been given the wrong directions? Have you ever desperately searched for someone to assist you and found no one? (...) Have you ever felt like a beggar even though you hold all the riches of the world inside of you ? Have you ever begged for validation, recognition, a voice you can borrow, a hand you can use ? Have you ever been classified, labeled, pigeonholed, branded and given a serial number ? Did you ever hate yourself in the process? In the process of becoming a non person, a non being, a non citizen of anything ? No? Then consider yourself very lucky. Unfortunately for the 2 million Iraqis and the hundreds of Palestinians, in exodus, in exile, they do not share your good fortune. Add to them, the other 2 million internally displaced, living in tents, refugees in their own country. A country that no longer tolerates or wants them. Most have fled due to sectarian violence, a lot of them underwent torture ordeals, the majority at the hands of the Jaysh Al Mahdi of Muqtada al Sadr and the other death militias tied to the Iraqi puppet governmen...

continua / continued