Those Summertime Blues...

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

Suffocating heat, scorching sun, dryness, pallor, dehydrated limp bodies trudging along, searching for a tiny corner of coolness, a bit of air...Searching desperately for a whiff of freshness, a caress of a breeze...nothing. Nothing but heat and sitting in pools of sweat. Water, search for water. Maybe we should drink our own sweat instead A drop here, a drop there, counting them like precious little diamonds. The river is next door, eaten up by the Green zone... Evenings are long, tediously long. A light bulb here and a candle there, generators pumping, then stopping then pumping again...sometimes there are none. Fridges, freezers, air coolers, AC, fans, ventilators, forget it...only in the Green zone. Only in the comfort zone of the Brothel... Thirst, infants dying of thirst and the river still eaten up by the brothel holders... Quenching with the morning dew. Hoping it will change, maybe today, tomorrow, a little here and a little there, a piecemeal of hope, a tiny ray of light. But no, nothing. And the genocide goes on...and on and on..

continua / continued