Looks familiar?

The picture is hauntingly familiar to the one in the previous post, then again, what is more like death than death itself?


I chose not to say anything when Mahmood al-Hashimi died, as as most of you say I may be biased, and in terms of Iraqi politics a person's best course would be to curse everyone in office and get it over with, but now I feel an obligation.


Today's morning, Amir al-Hashimi, brother of [Sunni] vice-president Tariq al-Hashimi was killed by a dozen of gunmen posing as security officers who broke into his house and killed him after disposing of his bodyguards.

This is the 3rd close relative of Tariq al-Hashimi to be killed in the past year, with his brother and his sister being the 1 and the 2.

and now I would like to talk about my father.

father was just like me in his early days, he even got as far in the imitation as having a bad haircut and playing godless American rock anthems on acoustic guitars until one day he smashed the guitar into pieces and found religion, which is where I seem to be heading.
Haji Amir, his architect friend and the good-natured SAINT who built al-Anbiyaa mosque and who was killed by Badr back in July 2005, was his first close friend to die in the unfortunate series of executions that followed, I shed tears for him though little I have known him, but for his good soul that is so hard to find in these black days, Mahmood al-Hashimi was his 2nd close friend to die. Although I did not know the guy then, but from the responses I got from my grandmother when she heard the news I could feel that he was just as good as Haji Amir.
And now Amir al-Hashimi, who was also a friend of father but not as close as these two.
When my father returned from his work today and heard the news, he immediately went to the balcony and sat all by himself, saying nothing, looking at the sky, I was afraid to look at him, and I experienced a cold shudder of sadness and molten anger.

I do not know Tariq al-Hashimi personally or his family relatives, but I know my father, and I know the sort of people he hangs out with, in the place where I come from, a religious person meant a guy who knew his rights from his wrongs, a person you could trust, a person who could never lie or steal ; my father never scolded me for my guitarplaying or forced me to wear certain things ever, and he has the sign of praying (a patch of changed skin on the forehead that results of much praying when the forehead touches the ground) on his face. The people who he hung out with were good, honest people, people you could really love, people of virtue. NOT the extremist, life-hating, vengeful caricatures Muslims have been cornered into, nor are they the pro-Baathist dictator scum Sunnis in Iraq have often been shoe-horned as.

Whenever I would go into a mosque and sit down after prayer I would feel the peace engulfing me, a calamity and understanding that becalms one outside the cyclone of life outside, the constant searching for meaning and answers...the tough-guy posturing and the struggle for bread.
But now these people are exterminated, exploited and destoryed in this meaningless Wahabi vs Rafidhi war.

Man, this is turning into an obituary.

On a much lighter note, errr....

errr...

....

"The nights of toil have stolen the smile of the lips"
"And years are spent in despair and eagerness"
"Yet, there still is hope in my spirits, never smoldered"
"And I feel my soul, still enfolded, and awaiting"
- Bassim