Brothel politics...

Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...

...As a matter of fact, I do miss Saddam. Again, no, it has nothing to do with a father figure fixation... Neither it has anything to do with belonging to a political party. Actually, I have never been a member of any political party and I am not sure any political party would want me as a member either. Faithful to the Marx philosophy, no not Karl but Groucho who said " I would never want to belong to a club that would accept me as a member" or something along those lines... Am too independent in my head and therefore perceived as too unruly to belong to anything or to anyone. I am not even a Saddamist. I am not sure what a Saddamist means anyways. Bush and Al-Maliki first coined this term, so it can't be all too bright. Can it now? But yes I do miss Saddam and I wish he were still alive. I wish he was still ruling Iraq. Someone from Latin America wrote to me once, asking me to describe what Iraq was like in the 80's , prior to the embargo and the sanctions. So I wrote back a fairly long email, giving this person details of what Iraq was like. I touched upon nearly every aspect of Iraqi society. Infrastructure, agriculture, health care, education, women's position, the arts, sports... I re-read what I wrote several times and thought to myself, goodness, we were really in many aspects a "developed" country. And that, despite a long war with our wonderful neighbor, Iran...

continua / continued