Battle Of Adhamiya, Live as LIVE can be

(PRELUDE)
I have read so many contradictory and strange reports on the events that summarized the Battle of Adhamiya, between the good people of Adhamiya and the notorious Interior ministry forces, bascially, everybody down there really knows what's going on, so here's how I, until very recently a resident of this glorious area, interpret what happened in the past tragic couple of days.
First off, this isn't the first time that such a thing had happened in Adhamiya, the very same thing, on a smaller scale, was tried last month, and has been happening everyday in short bursts, read my post (The Day I Tried To Go Home), two posts before this one.

On the night of Mahmood Al-Hashimi's death (THURSDAY, Apr 13), clashes in Adhamiya were ferocious, it is said that the usual young dudes were returned home and only the tough guys, the ones with the BKCs and RPGs, were in the zone.
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Monday, April 17 2006
TIME : 2 am

I was at my room, pretending to read, except I just bought myself an amplifier for my electric and was trying to scare the bejesus out of my grandparents sleeping below, Aerosmith was banging hard on my setlist so when the fas hit the ras (Iraqi antonym for fit hit the shan) I didn't know.
Hell was loose outside, all sorts of variations on the word Boom could be heard from all sorts of directions, I shrugged, in our side of the Earth, rat-a-tats at night were the oh-so-mundane lullaby of the bedtime story, they usually subsided after 10 or 15 minutes, probably some wise-asses Shiite back-in-blacks trying to take over the nearest mosque they could get at in the Sunni monster of Adhamiya, or like last time when a dude of the locally set-up watch teams accidentally mistook an American hummer for Interior forces and lashed out, intiating an accidental firefight that lasted for 30 minutes, only this time, it didn't break down.

As time went on, things only got worse and worse, the explosions became less monotonus and more scary, and for the first time in many moons, me, the careless, bohemian 21-year-old guitarist started to feel the pangs of fear, this was different, these goddamn Interior forces, why just couldn't they let us be...

I washed myself at 4 am and tried to pray, from far off, explosions stopped for a minute, triumpahnt cries of 'Allah Akbaar' were heard before the explosions barked back in retort. The event gave me a very uneasy feeling, what WAS going on out there?

I went to sleep.
I woke up at 6:30 am, half an hour before our Kia arrives to take me to college, Abu Esmail was up, as usual, but what was unusual was that the explosions outside did not die down.

This was bad, the room was hot, and I woke up in a pool of sweat, it was one of the few times when I felt an unbearable force of gravity pushing me to the ground and I felt that if only I could just get out of my clothes, my body, and just be free of all this terrible mess, of this inexplicable country, if God could only fleetingly transform me into an unimportant bird that could fly high in the sky singing songs about summer and meadows, as if in some false sugarcandy musical.
Oh my god, Oh my god.
I called the Line Driver, who said that he ain't coming and that All Adhamiya is sealed off.
Sure, I said, how can u come?
I cursed under my breath, took off my half-worn college clothes and slept semi-naked, Abu Esmail was still up.

***

I woke up at 2:30 pm, I heard nothing and I grudglingly I did some few chores before going outside to sniff out some news, Habeeb, my favorite naive neighbor told me that yesterday only five of our guys were killed, two of which were killed by 'friendly fire' or what he cheekily called 'own goal', of the Interior forces, he couldn't say, there were dozens dead ....

Those sons of bitches, they had it coming...
The people of Adhamiya are known for a strong anti-occupation stance, Adhamiya was named because of the Abu Haneefa mosque, otherwise known as Al-Imam Al-Adham (The Greatest Imam) hence the Adham in Adhamiya, the mosque ranks in importance as that of its Shiite counterpart in Kadhimiya, Imam Mosa Al Kadhum's. for these reasons, it is sometimes identified as the leading Sunni territory in Baghdad, in as much as Sadr city is THE shiite region.
Sectarian Badr/Interior forces have been responsible for the deaths of many good men of the area, such as the aforementioned Haji Amir which I talked about...
According to Iraqirabita.org (Arabic), which is so far the same site which told the events as we saw them on ground, about 2 am yesterday, a force of the Interior ministry backed up by militias in civil uniform demanded to enter the area for search operations, since any search operation was prohibited after curfew (11 pm), and the force was not backed up by any joint American coalition forces as instructed by the Interior/Defense ministry directives, the local watchteams refused their entry, clashes erupted soon afterwards... preliminary counts indicate that six vehicles of the Interior commandos were destroyed with its crew and that bodies filled up the aptly-named Omar street.

By the end of the day, I called my Shiite college friend, who told me that life outside was pretty normal and that everyone, except those whose homes are in Adhamiya, have attended seminars. His talk seemed very alien to me at the moment, as if speaking from another planet, I found normalcy irrelevant, he tried to talk me up about the graduation party but I almost wanted to slam the phone in his face, where the fuck are we and where are you? it was weird because normally I didn't give a damn.

Pretty soon, the day ended and the night came, I stayed up waiting, 2 am, 3 am, 4am
nothing....
oh well, I slept it and called it a day.

DAY 2

I woke up at 6:22 am, precisely so because the Alarm clock was mad and furious at me, I woke it up angrily hoping for all that noise to stop, I shut off the alarm,
it didn't stop.

the noise were outside, this time 3 times stronger than yesterday, I didn't even bother to call my line driver. the gunshots and explosions were literally over the top of our heads, calls from anxious relatives came rattling and local people with AK-47s were running in the streets, the mosque gave away a customary Muslim war chant : Allah Akabar , Allah Akabar , La Ilah Ila Allah....
some reports said that gunmen banged on doors and demanded young men to defend the area, nothing of the sort happened in our part of the town. Habeeb and his brother stood outside at the rooftop with their guns ready, much as we did in the days following the Feb.22 Samarra mosque catastrophe. I wished I could participate, but my parents have got rid of all the guns.

My love for my country, incongruent but always there, have focused now on my love for the people of my area, this was one of the dangers of sectarian get-togethers, my grandma, TA'IFFIYA, cursed Shiites on her every passing-by that day, and I don't blame her considering the trauma we've been suffering her for her emotion, wrong and politically incorrect as it may be.
As for the interference of the army in containig the crisis, a relative called and said that the National Guard people were just 'standing there shooting up in the air' while the fight rang on elsewhere.
American forces also joined in, siding up with the Interior forces, I really don't know about this one, I'll ask my pals later today.

Cursing, I slept again at 10 am, woke up at 3 and found that the noise has subsided thankfully, I hurried to Habeeb, we sat together talking girls for a while before his uncle came, telling us of the Interior forces commando who was lain dead at the head of our street for 3 hours...

The fight, as always, took place in the approprietly titled Omar street, as well as the Ras Al Hawash areas nearing the police center.

Fights were rampant around Baghdad college perimeter as well.

That afternoon, My grandparents told me that fliers were thrown in which 'Shiites' threatened to kill or arrest all the youths of Adhamiya, and said that the place have become unsafe for me and they told me that I'd better do the moving out which I've been planning for several months now today.

I quickly hurled up a few items of mine into a taxi and hauled ass, this was 5 pm.
the area was mostly empty, in Kamm street, Iraqi army forces set up checkpoints and began inspecting cars, we left there for my other grandma's house in an area that shall remain unknown.

Today, I called my grandma TA'IFFIYA to see how she was doing, she said things were fine and people at Abu Haneefa mosque gathered : National Guard officials, Msulim Scholars and Interior forces representatives settled to solve the issue, but said that there were rumors of things loose still, I told her I wanted to come back and pick up a few things and she approved this but instructed me to be careful.

I took up a taxi again and as soon as we reached the place I felt a sense of wondrous, wondrous pride of the people of my area, goddamit, we are strong, word on the street that something as big as 400 Interior forces members were killed.

Look at me, all sectarian and igrnoant in this post, but what can u do when hell's split asunder, u run for people who look like you, I'm sorry to say this, but the chances of any average Iraqi Joe considering things in non-sectarian terms, be it the people he meets or the subliminals given off by the color of his underwear, are as much as the appearnce of the proverbial Red Flying Elephant.


All this while the assholes in the g-zone play merry-go-round round the Prime Minister chair.
















Wedesnday, April 19 2006

Freedom's 3rd Birthday, and Happy Birthday, Prophet Mohammed!

"I was born in the cemetery
under the sign of the moon
raised from my grave
burned dead
and I was made a mercenary
in the legions of hell
now I'm king of pain
I'm insane"
- King Diamond

(Music: Sami Yusuf - Al Muallim)
Prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon him) was born in Mecca in the Sixth Century year of 570 AD, in the year known as the Year Of The Elephant, by the time when he was 40, he frequently spent time alone in a cave known as Huraa cave, when the Angel Garbiel desecended upon him with the first words of the Holy Quraan, signaling the beginning of Islam which spread onward to the rest of the world yadda yadda yadda and they married and lived happily ever after.

Now to important stuff.

Oblivious to everything as always and at 5 PM today, I was in my room pretending to study for my B.Sc but actually trying to get some highly inconveniently placed hairs in my nose, when I was subtly entranced by an array of sounds that pretty much resembled a mighty crash of so many kettles, teapots, and some other assorted faux-aluminum pans and pots all crashing together at the same time. Word? turns out it's the Birthday Surprise Party for Prophet Mohammed at the local mosque...usually at this time of day the mosque would broadcast subtle Quraan readings way until the Sunset (Maghrib) prayer but today they apparently hurled out the nearest cassette they can find of Prophet Praise, which I think was recorded in a kitchen. the guys in the scene were taking his Birthday as a subtle excuse for dancing the life out, 15 minutes onward, I just couldn't take it anymore and decided to join in the celebration my own way, by locking the room tight and shedding out my Gibson Airguitar Extravaganza and accessory
longhair wig for a lean'n'mean session of headbanging classics, a ritual I haven't done in a looong time, this is the only reason for the Mercyful Fate quote headlining this post.

Shortly afterwards though, power went down, silencing pretty much everyone.

The festival brought back some fond long-buried memories, too. Back in 1995, when I was a wee 12 years old, I was also, ahem, now this might shock you, but...I was a mosque enchanter.

* THE SECRET LIFE OF KONFUSED KID THE MOSQUE LEAD SINGER*
(Music : Led Zeppelin - What Is and What Never Should Be)

WHAM? SLAM? BAM? true, at the pristine age of 12 - my parents, both religiously committed, enlisted me at the local mosque to learn Chapter 30, the easiest one, of the Koran by heart - amongst other local kids, as the days approached the Birthday, we sensed some kind of frenzy amongst the mosque administration, turns out the mosques engaged in giving out some kinda 'activities' to cememorate the day, one of which included Islamic chants, so they took our group (some 6 students) and gave us some Islamic chants to chant, pretty soon, they discovered me - I had a good singing voice - and that I know all the Holy Names of God, a chant I figured in my childhood, and pretty soon I was made lead singer of the band.
This starts a tour amongst lots and lots of mosques in the area that pretty much lasted a month, we would chant for a bit and then I'd do my piece, only to be rewarded afterwards by a large dish of KOOZI (rice and lamb meat, amongst other niceties) which we would eat by hand like some hungry sons of bitches who's never tasted anything for the whole year, and there were some weird days, the first performance, we were gathered early for the chant so we decided to spend some time by playing soccer, luckily, there was a beautiful garden nearby where we could play much more nicely than the usual streets, to avoid tearing up our dishdasha (traditional Muslim white-cloth), unfortunately, after an hour-long of fights, curses (lots of which were
directed at God and all that is holy, as pretty much all street soccer matches are), and slide tackles, we ended up looking like....SHIT...that's all I could say, our white ironed dishdashas looked now like army camouflage with so many grass-brown stripes, and we were supposed to perform now.We did it anyway....them were days, but now the band's broken apart and everybody's gone their separate ways, no more touring for these bad, sad Afghan version of the backstreet boys...
* END *

Baby, if this ain't turning into a nice old Islamic Republic of Iraq...spitting image of its sister eastward - I am sure u noticed I'm kinda cranky at the subject, not that I mean any disrespect for the holy prophet (much to the annoyance of some of my marauding friends) but I am so sick and tired of these fucking religious ceremonies, Death of Hussein, ha, we got the Birth Of Mohammed, and all these Shiite visitors can't wait to visit Imam Ali to 'congratulate him on the birth of the prophet', as if they're both real, breathing persons and not old long-gone 7th century dudes.

(Music : Iron Maiden - The Evil That Men Do)
In reality, I think this festival is incorrect by its own right, and I think the prophet wouldn't approve of it if he was amongst it, there are only two 100% certified festivites in Islam : Eid Al-Adha and Eid Al-Fitr, all else is bid3a (creative balooney).

Crikey, verily.

Today, the prophet just made his 1436 birthday, damn that's a lot of candles, if we were to make a cake, I think people would be pretty much eating the wax off the 1436 candles than anything else. and what can we bring as presents anyway?

and of course there's that oh-so-adorable part-time hooker TV broadcaster on such cheap call-quiz Satellite stations such as STRIKE TV, who offered important statements that shed much-
needed light on the ceremony today :و

مرسي خالص للله و لحالكن و بنقول للنبي الكريم هابي برثداي

There sister, you just made yourself a hassana, may Allah put u in Janna.
And the answer to the riddle is an Ostrich, dammit, a fuckin' Ostrich.
Should i just call?
Ow, who cares!

Happy Birthday, Prophet Mohammed!

(MUSIC : Happy Birthday To You)

**************
In other news, today marks Freedom's 3rd year, she now knows how to walk and talk and is still stumbling through her first words way beyond normal age for talking, yesterday she almost spit out 'roadside bomb' and 'armed car with big boo-boo', Freedom looked pretty darn cute on the first days, but these days she's turning into a real ugly boar, we avoid looking in her face most of the time, her teeth are falling apart and something is growing at her nostrils, we are seriously considering dumping her at the nearest trash-joint...

If Saddam died these nearby days, I think the gravestone should read:
BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW.
and he'd be glad, that son-of-a-gun.
Anyway,
Happy Birthday, Freedom! ....
(MUSIC : Mawtini)

The Day I Tried To Go Home...

[TRUE STORY]
Thursday, March 23 2006

[SCENE1 :
We are on the outskirts of Adhamiya, THE Sunni territory in Baghdad, largely Shiite National Guard have installed deployments on its outskirts, a convoy of three police cars, filled with members of the notorious Interior ministry forces, arrive and is stopped by the National Guard].

INTERIOR POLICE CAPT : I demand to enter the area
NATIONAL GUARD : You do not have jurisdiction here.
INTERIOR POLICE CAPT: You do not tell me what I have and do not have, we have business to do and we will do it whether you like it or not.
NATIONAL GUARD CAPT: We have an agreement with these guys, we do not enter and they do not hit us, You will not enter.
INTERIOR POLICE CAPT. : Them? We shall enter the place and kill them to the last Jihadist, Fuck them, and their mothers and daughters, we will go in there and tear up their asses, and rape down their mothers and sisters in every house.

[INTERIOR POLICE CAPT. shoots three bullets near NATIONAL GUARD CAPT's feet]

NATIONAL GUARD CAPT. : You did this...okay, then please step right ahead, but I should warn you, they are monsters.

---------------------------------------------------------
[INTERIOR CAPT. rides up his car and the three vehicles progress onward, NATIONAL GUARD CAPT. waits for a bit and then goes to MUJHADEEN, telling them of what happened]

MUJAHEDIEEN : Take your troops and leave the area.

--------------------------------------------------------------
[EARLIER THAT DAY]
a Kia filled with sleep-deprived college students is lazily trotting in a quarter of Adhamiya notorious for its high insurgency factor, in the Kia, KONFUSED KID sits near the driver's seat, pretending to read for yet another exam, a pose he's been doing these whole two weeks, the narrow steets are filled with masked men holding checkpoints]

KONFUSED KID : Something's not right.
KIA DRIVER, a young dude the same age as KONFUSED: Them are just leftovers from yesterday's nightwatch.
KONFUSED KID: True, but why are they all masked?
KIA DRIVER (ponders) : Yesterday 13 returning visitors from Karabala were killed in Amriya....probably it connects....
On the way to college, the Kia drives by, TANTAL, a guy in the same department as Kid's, but has a different ride - the two exchange waves.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCENE : College, 2pm apx.
(TANTAL's phone rings, it's his mother)

TANTAL's MOM : Hello Sweety Tantal, listen, do not, at ALL costs, attempt to return back home today, it's very dangerous right now and bullets are flying everwhichways, explosions are on a minute basis, please, please, return to your aunt's house in Palestine Street. is that okay?TANTAL : Okay.
--------------------
nearby, KID is met by two people in his line : a guy, JIDIDA and a girl, JUBBA.
JIDIDA : Hey Kid, line's not coming, says he's got car trouble or something...KID : Oh...(looks at JUBBA, who confirms), I guess we'd all have to take a taxi then...
the three pick up their stuff and head back home to Adhamiya.while on taxi, JUBBA's mom calls - tells her daughter not to come back to Adhamiya cuz it's a slaughterhouse right now, the girl has no place to go and tells the mother she's with two guys from her line, Mother grudgingly accepts the fact but tells JUBBA to be careful, and to most importantly stay out of the main roads. JIDIDA makes phone calls for most of the trip, KID - always broke and never caring, is unpetrubed - he sits near the driver and hums to the radio.
-----------------------------------------------------------

SCENE :The roads today were conspicously straightforward, we now are overlooking THE BRIDGE leading to Adhamiya, police forces have completely blocked out the entrance and prevented even people from going across.The other side of the bridge looks promising - smoke rising from several different places, gunshots, minor explosions here and there...

KID : Sounds like Fun day.
The three step out of the taxi.
JIDIDA (to passerby) : Hey, how can we get in there? is Kadhum route open?
PASSERBY : Closed, so is Kassra's, everything is blocked out nowadays.
JIDIDA makes several phone calls at once, JUBBA is infected by his workmanship and does so too.
JIDIDA is flustered, he sits on the pavement.
KID takes a picture of JIDIDA, shows it to JUBBA.
Although JIDIDA seems to lead the scene right now with his businessman like-nervousness and phone calls and KID has kept to himself most of the day,
JUBBA always dicusses things with KID. KID wonders why...

KID : you have no place else to stay?
JUBBA : no. My uncle's in Jihad Quarter, and things are worse there.
KID : Then I guess we'd have to walk you home
JUBBA : You don't really have to
KID : What can we do anyway, all roads are blocked.

After a while, people are finally allowed to cross the bridge at their own risk, the three decide to take their chances, JUBBA's house is at the district just left of the bridge, once the boys get to drop JUBBA home they can be move more freely.as they move near the guards, JIDIDA asks :

JIDIDA : Can we get through?
GUARD is apparently slightly annoyed : Sure, at your own risk.
ANOTHER GUARD, more hippety-hop : Where you wanna go?
JIDIDA : Sifeena(Both guards exchange mocking looks)
ANOTHER GUARD : You'd need a boat, my friend.
KID : What's going on, anyway?
ANOTHER GUARD (with a smile) : Our guys versus yours, you know

The guards were friendly enough, as the three are halfway the bridge, the rucus, which have been quiet for a while, suddenly cracks big to life again - in Technicolor, multiple shots are fired and car sirens bellow somewhere close to where they are heading right now...the three make jokes about death, the atmosphere is tense joking, especially for JIDIDA, who's about to run.as they close on the area, the place is absoultely devoid of any human being at first - a ghost town, an ambulance car whizzes by quickly amidst the backdrop of gunshots. At any minute, a car full of gunmen could pass by and shoot the three stone cold.The street is lined up with shells.
JUBBA : As soon as we near the area, we can go into my friend's house, hers is the first in the sidestreet.
JIDIDA : What are we ever going to do? My father says on the phone the biggest problem is between Sifeena and our houses.
JUBBA : We can stay there until things quiet down, or even our house.JIDIDA is uncomfortable with the idea of hassling girls ; KID senses this and reminds him
KID : Hey dude, you forgot that we got friends here? both JESUS and MAHDI have houses here.
JIDIDA is relieved, JUBBA is a little disappointed.
Once the three enter the actual sidestreets of the area, signs of life begin to show up in volumes, all the usual kids are out on the street, some of them obliviously out of sync exchanging porn pictures on Bluetooth. they decide on continuting the trip to JUBBA's house, a little deeper inside the area.
The three are met with glances, JUBBA is a girl of the area and the two strangers with her merit some explanation.
JUBBA finally gets home, she invites them for a sip of water as a thank-you, KID wanted to give in but he was interrupted by JIDIDA's nervous no-thank-you before he could open mouth.
the two go to JESUS's house, a guy with them in the Kia but didn't go to college that day. JESUS is not christian, they just like to call him that

The street of JESUS is filled with masked men holding AK-47s.
a man talks to one of the masked men
MAN : Yo Mohammed, take off the masks, Americans are patrolling Jirdaagh street...
MASKED MAN doesn't answer, three other masked men arrive, a car finally picks them up all and heads off somewhereJIDIDA almost pisses his pants at the sight.
JIDIDA : Who are these guys?
KID : Probably Mujahideen of the area
JIDIDA : Goddamn.
The two ring up JESUS's house, after 10 tense minutes, JESUS appears, apparently just awoken up.
-------------------------------------------------------
SCENE :Jesus's House, Hour later.
Food is on the table, Jesus does the role of hospitable host very well, urging the two to stay the night here until things quiet down. JIDIDA is strongly opposing the idea, talking about what if Americans patrol the area at night and takes us as detainees and what of these crazy-ass Mujahedeen out there? He continues making phone calls throughout, KID also calls his grandmother, TA'IFFIYA, who tells him to stay put.KID is still unconcerned, JESUS is almost dying of insistence to make the two stay, and JIDIDA is dying to get home.
KID : So what if we got searched, plus, you are Shiite, we are the Sunni folk, we gotta be afraid, not you, What if we can't go home, man? Plus, I think you wanna go home because of the rumorsJIDIDA : about waht?KID : About Jesus's sexualityJESUS looks at JIDIDA sidelong glance, the three burst out laughing.
KID and JESUS try to strip JIDIDA while he is talking to his pop on the phone.
in the end, JIDIDA's brother rendez-vous with JIDIDA at the tip of the bridge, just where the taxi guy dropped them, as the two walk out, much to the opposition of JESUS and his pop, BIG JESUS.
Both men are very tired and worn out, hair in disarray, looking like shit and smelling like piss.
a taxi man comes out of nowhere, and asks them : Why is the road closed?The two look at each other, nobody bothers to answer.
JIDIDA's brother awaits them in a 4x4 as promised.
Finally, KID is dropped off at his house at 5:30 PM.
------------------------------------------------------------
FINAL SCORE
2 HOMEBOYS KILLED, 16 POLICE OFFICERS DEAD.
---------------------------------------------------------------

And so here I am, back home after one of the most troublesome days I've yet met - made more intense by JIDIDA's incessant fears and nagging.Today I was utterly and truly convinced of the helplessness of the political game, I lost faith again in keeping interest, true, I love my coutnry and I wish the best for it, and I may have been more optimistic in the past - much to the admiration of those stupid clueless Americans who just want someone to assert their legality of the war - FUCK THE EXCUSE, the country is falling apart, people, it takes strong strong wills to have more faith in this country, look everywhere on the blogosphere, hope is quickly dying...I just wanna swear my ass off at this horrible mess we've deteroriated into, it is now impossible, I tell you, impossible not to think of sectarian terms, as people are being divided into Sunni and Shiite territories, things do not look very promising. Six months earlier, I didn't even know what the word 'sectarian' meant in English, after a death of a close family friend by Badr, I became aware of the danger, but I shrugged it off as something that cannot ferment a long-standing unity, but today, it is amazing how little evil work can change a belief so quickly - these days, every person I meet, there's a little voice inside me that wants to know if he's Sunni or Shiite, I've become hatefully familiar with all the discrmiminations between Sunni and Shiite and how to tell who's who (names, areas, clothings, rings, vocal intonations)...All out Brother-against-brother Civil War? why the hell not....
The only place I feel free of these constraints is in college, most of my friends there are Shiite from southern governorates, and some of them are actually UIA-affiliated, they are also the nicest people - we spend our days talking girls and laughing head-over-heels, but when you get back to your repsective Sunni/Shiite territory, things are a lot different.
Well well, what to do, I guess I'll turn up Metallica's 'Mercyful Fate' and revel in swearing it all away as a last resort of an insecure teenage dude who's weak with words..
[hip-hop backup beat]
F**k You
F**k Me
F**k Sunni
F**k Shiite
F**k Iraq
F**k USA
F**k Allys
F**k
F**k
Piss
C()t
D((k
Stupid Mothafa'in' Politicans

oh, btw, if anyone cares to know, I no longer am troubled by Allys, she took a hike with her rich ugly-as-mutt ex-boyfriend again, I still love her, but now seeds of a mercyful hate have finally arisen - I think I'll get past this soon enough.

"What's so civil about war anyway?" - Axl Rose

Redemption Of The Devil

I have refrained from writing from so long despite a flood of ideas sparked by the increased interest in my blog, this is because I'm so sad these days, this post is personal and could be admittedly boring, as I will treat you as my psychiatrist. You have been warned like hell so don't flame in the comments.I have been wanting to write about this for some time, it now has reached the point of no return. I have no one to talk this really well but my blog, so there, please bear with me.

First, let us address matters unresolved since my past post. I looked upon this idiotic outburst of mine with a mixed sense of personal regret and professional integrity - I have not tampered any of my emotions in writing the post and has therfore suffered some social problems with my friends, I apologize tremednously for both Z and A13, come on dudes, both of you know that I did not attack you personally - as both of you have enriched my blogging experience in ways more than I can divulge here...sorry, sorry dudes, your point of view was completely rational and reasonable, not to mention accurately portarying the sense of despair that haunts all Iraqis and wastes no time freaking out given the chance. Sorry again, I take back my swears...fuck you? kcuf uoy...see, Anarki? the curse is now lifted, these things in the backs of your asses have been lifted and you can walk the earth again as normal, God-abiding bloggers.
People have accused Zeyad of succumbing to the wishes of the dark mistress of giving the people what they want : doom and gloom of the Iraqi situation, based on his experience in the NY Times.

This is so far from the truth...people! first off, Zeyad was one least interested in the NY project from the Five of us, he only submitted three articles and often expressed to me his annoyance with the limitations of the project. Me, on the other hand, was so keen on the project going as far as to write seven posts...It is true that Zeyad applies a sort of criteria in his posts to choose what interest people most, but that does not compromise his integrity - on the other hand, I, Kid, can be accused of these crimes much more - My last posts were politically inclined, hereby failing a resolution I made on my first post. I have succumbed to what makes the people tick to the world of blogging, which have been getting me into philosophical meditiations on what the purpose of my blog should be focsued upon (more on this in later posts), my traffic have increased twofold, and this is why I want to take my 15 minutes to break the cycle of giving you what you want and endlessly torture you with my own demons, hereby I like to address a somewhat personal issue that's been bugging me for several months now. This blog was and still is largely personal in nature, I intend to keep it that way...

As a 20-yr-old college student, my main interest in life wasn't politics, nor the future of Iraq, but chicas...pretty much like everyone else...Something happened in past December that, I think, will tremendously affect my personality in the time to come :
The girl in question was floating in my mind for some time now, but it was always in the back of my mind, amongst a sea of other girls who often took the spotlight, it was the battlefield of tits and asses found in pretty much all horny collegeboys' brains...now, this girl was in the back of my mind because there nothing sexually elusive about her for me, I liked for somewhat different reasons...I didn't know what they were at the time, I wish I never knew.

I had a friend, call her Nadia, she was a common friend between me and the girl, let's call the girl Allys, Nadia was quite a close friend of mine, she dug rock and roll and would often freely express opinions regarding boys, sex, drugs, lesbians, u name it...she was bascially a boy in a skirt and I always talked to her that way...so once I told her I kinda like that Allys friend of hers, and one day Nadia came to me and told me that she told Allys about her secret admirer and she said Allys told her to bring him on, several days later, she managed to introduce us...except it was an awfully embarrassing tete-a-tete, you see, Nadia had a grudge on me since I once told this guy she likes him a lot, so she introduced me to her and her to me then told her outright that I am 'dragging myself on the ground for her'...if I wasn't in it, I would've laughed my ass off - but lo! Allys managed to maintain a cold neutral face during the whole ordeal, and I could see our rendez-vous would be short-lived...except...
I could feel the tingling sensation build up in my heart, It was a feeling of purity I have never experienced before...now, I've had my share of crushes and a long-term relationship, and I can tell you, this feeling is not a product of mutual understanding, common interests, or whatever crap people name for themselves - I'm talking about this feeling that you suddenly experience out of the blue and cannot have a grip or control over, the movie-love effect, the cupid-arrow : in my past relationship, I used to often duke it out with myself for about 15 minutes to convince myself that the feeling I had inside myself could be interpreted as something resembling honest emotion when I knew deep inside my confines it is the simple loneliness of the manly spirit...this, my friends, is different, it begins from the left auricle of your heart and spreads around your blood cycle...I never ever believed such a stupid legend could exist, but let me tell you, Haneen, Instant-Love is very very true, it's also very, very, very, very painful.
Early on, my burden was small, it hadn't deteroriated into what it is today, I managed to hide it pretty efficiently, bumping into her every chance I can and mumble sweet how-you-dos, I was encourgaed by her positive feedback, it seems that the earlier embarrassement of the introdcution has faded in the subsequent two weeks (and the Eid holiday), anyway, I started talking to her more extensively - walking with her to her line once and then talking her for 15 minutes on the other, both experiences were very encouraging - she knew what I wanted from her and showed me no reservations. Aloha, my feeling became more pronounced over the days, it boiled and boiled until I could not take it any more, I went over to her one day, she was wakling with her friend, Nameless Hijab Girl, and told her this :
'Hi, Allys'
'Hello, Kid, want chips?' offering me a bag she was carrying
'No, thank you, How do u do, Nameless Hijab?'
'Fine'
'Where've you been?'
(hesitates) 'Lab'
'Erm, I want to talk to you for a few minutes is that ok?'
(mischievous knowning smile)
Nameless : 'So I guess u want privacy then?' she said privacy in English...
'Yes, please'
'very well'....

'You're looking pretty today' this was the first remark of its kind I ever told her, no response, just this mischievious smile...she knew what was going on, but she never expected this next line,

'Allys, I love you'

Similarly, I never expected the reaction, she laughed her eyes out, I felt only the stupid knee-jerk reaction of machismo inner satisifaction for making a girl laugh, although it was not in my interest now...I started mumbling for a few seconds before finding my way...I bascially told her that I didn't want to tell her this so soon but I couldn't take it anymore, I don't know how or why this happened but I had to tell you and you can do whatever you want with it, I'm talking seriously about this and I do not want any sort of adolescent horseplay, I just ripped myself out.

'Listen, Kid, you're younger than I am'

This was kinda expected...the matter of age is a well-known dilemma in our culture, hell, even the Western ones...but she was only 6 months older...it's just not fair that half of these years are in a differnt year...
basically, she worked me out a real nice letdown , telling me that many people came before me and she refused them all, so it's better to keep us as friends, which I rejected on basis of lying to myself and her, and told her that I'd try again tomorrow cuz the sky was cloudy today or some foolish other joke, giving in to her warm friendlieness.
Anyway, on any given girl, I would've stopped right there, a man's ego is an amazing holy place, it must not be run in the mud, except that I found myself willing to sacrifice that innocent lamb in the name of that most wicked Imam, Ayatollah Love.

Nadia told me that she phoned her on the same day, and Allys told her that she felt sad cuz she broke my heart and she was nervous etc etc, she told her that I was cute but short (which is really weird, considering she's far far shorter than I am), and also younger, and that she wanted to focus on her studyNadia told me in the end that after much talks Allys finaly alluded that she might agree if there is a marriage, which enlivened my hopes a little, she greeted me with a beautiful smile the next day for the first time, which was encouraging too...
But the pain, the wound of insecurity, have already been ripped open and have started to bleed like hell...
I maintained a nonchalant chit-chat for the few next days, until Valentine's Day...
I wrote Nadia a poem and told her to SMS it to her on Valentine's Day, 12:00 am, Nadia didn't do this so I had to write it on a piece of paper and give it to her one week later, the poem was a simple five-line two-verse with an easy-as-peanuts hidden word :

Sadly eloquent
Awaiting destiny
Like a half-moon
Lilting its purity
Yearning for completion...

She laughed when I told her
And took me by surprise
Like an Egyptian kitten
Legacies in her eyes
Yonders my wandering spirit...

The evil that stupid boys do for love, indeed....

at the final moment, I changed legacies to 'ladybugs', remembering an incident that happened when I was talking to her when a small bug entered her eye.

Nadia came to me shortly afterwards, frowning, she said that at the moment when she told Allys what is the piece of paper is in her hand, Allys immediately cited her disapproval, refusing even to read it, she wanted to throw it but Nadia told her about the word and she reconsidered, anyway, Nadia said that she was strongly rejective this time around -

'hey...why? isn't he cute?

''no he's not'

'but you..'

'no.'

'he's got lovely eyes..'

'no, who are you talking about?'

or something like this...
The next day, I noticed how hard she tried to avoid me, changing walking paths and all...
Why is this? Had something happened while I was away? perhaps a treacherous friend...perhaps a more composed state of mind? I interpreted the first response as the sponatneous outburst, this was either pre-calculated to be summoned at my next attempt or an embarrasement of the verse - fearing that If she takes it then it would be an outright acceptance of me.
Anyway, I never gave up hope.

Come February 22 and the dome of Samarra goes poof! we leave college for a week, I spent the week eager, but found my eagerness mercifully dissolving as the week got longer...could this mean that this was just a stupid flight of fancy that I could easily counter?

No such thing, the moment I saw her again, everything came back crashing down on me again...
So now I sit here writing this to you while I should be reading for my final exams, which should be coming next Wedensday, and guess what, I don't feel the least bit bad about it - because though may I smile and say yes, laugh at jokes and engage in mindless trivalities, I feel as if the WORLD - the collective SurroundSound universe, has been drenched and submerged in Sepia - It's like an old movie i've seen a dozen times...My sister, seeing my predicament, asked me why the hell should I pass myself through all this trouble for a person who's probably not deserving of all this attention, and raised an eyebrow when I told her that I love her - she said you should be hating her from the topmost hair to the final big toe for this...
What my sister, and all my friends, do not know - is that when the thing happened, I felt something different, something I did not feel for a long time and I am 100% sure of it - it was a reconnection with the old days of childhood, an innocence I long long sought to hide under pretence of seeking companionship with the big boys - the real world. I have lost it for so long and I do not think I can find it again that easily, ever, I cannot afford to be lost again. In my psychological development as human being, there was only one incident which could be pointed at to mark a transition, the day I wrote 'bitch' on a quiz paper and submitted it to my English teacher when I was 15 years old - a sign that I have completely abandoned my nerdy outfit into a callous, calculated state of shit-eating smirky grins and adolescent rebellion. Today I don't know what's happening to me, but I can tell you that a second transgression is about.
I have been in a long-term relationship that lasted 15 months, the girl loved me, she made me a guitar-shaped cake with my initials on my birthday without me even asking about it

- and maybe I thought that I love her too, but today I see that I did not - nothing can blind the truth when it dawns, maybe God is putting me through all this as a punishment for my trickery of the poor woman's heart. I don't know, all I know is, what I felt was a genuine lightness that opened hallways I've long tried to find but always seemed to lose - those of truth, good-will and most importantly innocence. Allys is with me wherever i go in some way, and I still haven't thought of her in any bad way from Day 1, and whenever I see her I just stare, for a long time, bringing back memories of a song I hated to death :

'Now and then when I see her face

She takes me away to that special place

and If I stare too long

I'd probably break down and cry

Her eyes remind me of a warm safe place

Where, as a child I'd hide

and pray for the thunder and rainto quietly pass me by'
- Guns N Roses, Sweet Child Of Mine
Axl Rose was right, fucking right...

Some people find redemption through charity, others in adopting kids from African wastelands, and still others through blowing themselves up in hopes of getting there on time for lunch at The Prophet's Restaruant, Heaven. I, have decidedly figured out what makes me pristine, and it was something I spent my whole past life regarding with denial, suspicion and a cosmic joke - something The Creator put in us to urge reproduction.
My dear friends, it is not.
I don't know what will happen now, but just like the guy in Woman On Top (movie), I ain't gonna stop till I get what I have.

(FINALE)
THe other day I was sitting alone in my room, pretending to be doing work on my B.Sc. project but actually thinking about her, when a song came out on the MP3 setlist, I hate Arabic songs, but this one struck a very sensitive nerve - a song by Shereen called 'Ala Bali (On my mind)', the song has a delicate, slow-motion torture that conjures an image of a bucket of hot sulfuric acid being poured down on a naked person in very slow bullettime, the way the skin melts afterwards is the essence of this song, I considered for a minute, before finally deciding to surrender to my ocean of turbulent emotions, I made sure no one is around, and let it out.
I cried, a short but extremely cathartic wallowing like Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt It's been a very long time since I last did so.I don't care what you'll think about me after this, I just want my soul complete...fuck you very much.

To sum it up, the following picture is a representation of my state right now, I like this picture, because my own interpretation of it (and I think it is the right interpretation) is very well hidden from what it seems to be when you first see it you'd think it is a metaphor for evil rape or something, when actually it is the Devil who's in sumbission here, despite the sexual implication of the devil's hand on the girl's lass - one look on his face will truly reveal what this pic is all about.
The shaytaan has found redemption, and surrendered.





p.s. thx, Z!

frustrated

DAY 3.5

WARNING : I am pissed off, so I may say things I do not mean.
Things have quieted down noticably today, more promising subtitles
abound in all major TV stations...

i have a singlemost frustration which I couldn't keep until a
further post, many many people started beating their chests and
calling it a Civil War from day one, to all these people, and
some of them are some of my best friends, I have the following to
say :

Fuck you.

That's right, Fuck you Zeyad, Fuck you Anarki13, fuck you my
sectarain grandmother, fuck anyone who's done anything to wallow
in the misery of Iraq and incite more hatred, fear and death
amongst the masses, either intentionally or not.
Those blogger friends who have taken to recluse in digging up any
horrible stories and passing them off to anyone who can hear,
glorifiying any negative news they can find, please ignore these
sorry fools, they are just that way...they gravitate to the dark -
thinking it's cool, naturally, that's my stance by default
, but I find this highly inappropriate regarding the circumstance.

For example, Zeyad, a friend of mine and arguably the best Iraqi
blogger out there, has been continously adding oil to the pan by
translating to the world at large gloomy news from a decidedly
miserable website, that website almost specializies in Shiite acts
of massacre against Sunni and its neutrality and objectivity is
highly disputed, all the news Zeyad's been passing are all about
doom and gloom, stop glorifiying the death, Z!...true, shit
happens, but for all I care, all that happened is predicatble and
can be transcended easily. and you should do something about the
name of your blog 'Healing Iraq?', fast.
I'm not saying you should remain calm, but you have a tendency to
exaggerate greatly...

That website (Iraqirabita.org, amongst many others Sunni and
Shiite media) is provoking images of hatred and murder when it is
the last thing we need right now, can't you even spare us a single
act of positive news? I am not for being hypocritical, but
nobody's done anything to tell of the GOOD news happening, and
there are lots of them! At last, Muqtada Al-Sadr guys and the
Association Of Scholars issued a unified statement today, and you
can feel the impact of the deadly violence waning noticably today,
I know Iraq will pass through this, and it will actually be a good
thing in retrospect because people have got a taste of what it's
like of pitting brother against brother and it will bring the
people together.
As for 13, who immediately called it a Civil War and put his head
in the sand, well, dude, please, I know u hate Iraq and everything
but can't u at least have a little faith in yourself? Iraq is
filled with nice intellctual guys, yeah I've come out and dared to
say it. These people will not engage in this folly...

The only blogger I am proud of is 24 Steps To Liberty, his posts encourgaed me a
a great deal, thank you for being there, I will read you more in the future.


I love my country. Shit, I never knew I cared so much.

Sorry about all the fucks dude....don't mean it...just pissed off..

Men In Black...with torn slippers...

For those of u still wanting to continue on the cartoon comments debate, i've posted there, so read. now...

Men In Black....wish Will Smith was here now.

Ahhh...where to start...
Not to look like everyone else, with the before/after askariya mosques, so here goes, i won't talk shit about what happened, so I assume u know the specifics, if not, go read pretty much everybody else, god I'm so sick :

DAY1
It was the normal kinda college day, I was walking with my friend Dobi, who is a shiite from Karbala, when suddenly another shiite from Najaf, Hamchi, comes all concernced, saying'They hit the Hadi shrine in Samaraa'
Depsite his Karbala descent, Hobi is practically an atheist, he shrugs and we walk on, this is also the first time I ever hear of the Hadi shrine...in Samarra? erm...excusez moi, but ce n'est pas sunni territory? what r u saying? Hamchi is deeply into religion and is part of the UIA-related organization in our college, much unlike the Badr horrific acts, Hamchi is probably one of the nicest guys I ever met....he walked away in hurried strides.

Anyway, things continued normally for the time being, I laughed so hard that day my belly still hurts. what a stupid fool.
Until it was time to leave college...
Considering that we live in the overly Sunni district Adhamiya, several of my friends decided to stay in college today, not risking going back, I chose to go back nevertheless, better today while I can...
I rode off in several mass transit lines, all the time hammered by calls from concerned parents and relatives, not all of them neccessarily in this country. My father was the worst, he looked deeply distressed as if cursing the day he let me stay in Iraq, his voice held a tone of introvert emotion....he asked me when will exams end and when could I come to Jordan...I calmed him down in a nonchalant voice, loving his concern for me but unable to react accordingly inside a suffocating Kia.
Things were quite normal outside, except for an extra checkpoint at Sunni Bayaa, but Mansoor, Bab El Ma'dham et all did not show me anything of the horrible confusion my parents/relatives were talking about. When I reached Adhamiya, the roads were blocked in a fashion similar to that of Ashoora's celebration day roadblocks, but everything was calm and orderly, the soldiers were not demeaning or threatening in any way, as a matter of fact, they were instructing people how to find differnet routes back home. I had to walk home, I picked up my dinner on the way back home. It was placid. thankfully...You only needed to watch the TV to see the horrible news unfolding from every direction, countless mosques burned and Imams killed, people dead on the streets...
the day progressed less than tolerably...
Past midnight, there were voices outside and sounds of footsteps, mistaking it for the long-sought thieves who steal the power wires of the local generators every other five days or so, I hurried to the window, only to find several plainclothes men with rifles and Klashinkov roaming the area, After a hazy confusion, I understood, those were neighbors out in the street to warn and defend the area should any Badr militia try to go through here.
I didn't go outside anyplace today, I feel gutted and tired the same way I got out of bed. My hair is getting long too.
So far, nothing has really happened in our area, wait a minute...just now....I can hear intense gunshots to the south, there seems to be two sides, one near me, the other distant, as if replying...the sounds have subsided after a full minute.
phone call....a family friend, asking me if everything's okay....i okayed him, feeling the general tension and very much not liking it.
well, that's pretty much all that's going on. General tension awaiting for things to resolve, gunshots every now and then, and horrible news on TV and the Internet, 111 dead!So far, nothing has happened in our area, but everybody's on their toes.

DAY 2

Today was a Friday, but guessing by the curfew I expected little to no sermons today, official hoopla was to 'deny preachers the right to inflame things up and to prevent gatherigs' I don't dig the government, but that was cool. I stayed home, supposedly reading for an indefinite exam, but actually watching tragedy after tragedy on TV. 47 bodies were found in Nahrawan, laying side by side like their babies. big bearded dirty blood-soaked babies.The curfew was supposed to end till 4, but it got extended till next day.
Events have culminated in the emergence of the 'men in black with torn slippers driving pickups', who are purpotedly Mahdi's army, but Moqtada Sadr denied their allegiance, the Men in Black have took numerous mosques around the capital, anyway, district-wise, these dudes tried to enter our district through Al-Noman's hospital, and were warded off, they also tried to take over the two nearby mosques, Sideeq and Assaaf, but about 30 something neighbors received them in their underwear with a heavy dose of AK-47 spray bulleting...I got a call in the middle of the night, It was Habeeb, a neighbor friend.

'Hey kiddo'

'Hey Habeeb, something happened?'

'Naw, just bored, standing outside here with my Noss Akhmaas [AK-47], wondered if you could come and join us?'

I never fired anything in my life, nor do I intend to

'I've got nothing but my dick in my hands...plus, I gotta read, ward off the bogeymen for me'

'Thought so'

'Can't believe u carrying it, shoot a bullet for me'

'Shut the fuck up'
I looked outside to take a peek, basically, all the assorted kids of the neighborhood, after The nighttime prayer, the lights are intentionely turned low, and the warzone officialy assimilates its shape. Five roof snipers, about 10 people on the streets, all the while smoking and laughing, probably watching porn on mobile phones too... Where are we headed? I don't know, but I'm hoping Habeeb stays with two legs this evening.

To quote the old Iraqi moral, I pissed and went to bed.

DAY 3
I couldn't stand staying in home much longer, things were realtively calmer today on TV. everyone with a turban agreed on national unity, but there was an explosion in a Karbala market...what the hell. My hair was very long, I went to Habeeb, who insisted that we go to the nearby mosque to pray before we head to the barbershop.The small mosque was crowded at the low-traffic prayer of Noon, amazing! but one needs little to wonder, often in times of struggle people turn to religion.
We headed out to the barbershop, the streets were ghastly and serene, by the time we reached the shop, it was closed, 75% of the market was closed, save for a few shops whose owners live nearby.
I returned, we spent the daytime on the street, the street was narrowed down with palm tree logs that would force any car to slow down...we sat on the log and traded war stories...
'15 Badr people have infilitrated Adhamiya''People in red Opel stopped and started firing yesterday, that's the mess u heard late at night'etc etc...
So far, the only people happy with the situation are the little kids, facing empty streets, they set up small soccer fields and kicked the living out of each other, they were all happy like chipmunks.
I looked at their happiness and felt the pristine carelessness of it, savoring the moment and wishing I could live forever as a kid who don't give a shit. It's a shame, It's a real shame what's going on, but I think things can be contained after all, as long as we keep the faith, in ourselves.
Curfew's been extended too, so no college tomorrow, Yay...on second note...Yay?

Hey....Right now, Sadr dudes and Sunni dudes are gathering in Abu Haneefa, working out a unified statement. hope it's not the usual condemnation gibberish.

Yesterday, I was sick and afraid, but today things have got quieter and I got thinking, although people have died, and mosques were torn, the situation has been boiling up for two years and it had to come to a point like this..despite the many extremists and stupid folks in this coutnry, the majority, Sunni and Shiite, know what's good for them and they won't shut up. Mahdi's army or not, these people will be vanquished....Sunni and Shiite people have come together and rebuilt Qibaa mosque and prayed noon together, always be optimistic, not stupidly so, but keep the faith in yourself and your people. Some media are scaring the shit out of me, but I will ignore them.

I can't wait for these days to finish, and they will finish, because afterwards Sunni/Shiite will be closer...

Kid

Comment On Past Post

This was a normal unimportant comment but it got too long, i thought i'd put it here...

GRANDPA DAILY QUOTE :
'Dog son of a dog' -About Rumsfeld.


Gee folks...that's like the largest comment sections i ever got...

Anonymous...I wholeheartedly disagree with you, listen, your line of thinking can be followed, but I think it's somewhat incorrect because you assume that religion is treated similarly by all the folks involved, the key is not the comparison of reaction towards religious offence, but comparing reactions towards SENSITIVE topics. Difference between insults towards Mohammed and other religions is that Mohammed guys tend to take their religion much more seriously than Jesus and Moses guys, cuz that's just the way they are! Other things, such as the holocaust, face similar, if not proposterous, reactions from the Western world...I can only stare in wonder at the 3-year prison sentence given out to British historian Irving for simply DENYING the holocaust...very simple example of western double-standards, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The evolution of violence in the demonstrations is very natural, unfortunate, true, but is a complete rational offspring of the political backdrop - I am against the violence itself, but I like the enthusiasm.
Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing, Dayez, and in a perfect world, I totally agree with you 100%, but there are subtle levels in the matter, for example :
This guy in our neighborhood, we don't like him a lot, matter of fact,one of his cousins had outright problems with one of us and nearly killed the sucker, so one day we're standing in front of his house in our regular corner when all of a sudden his hot mom comes out to water the garden, and voila, quite accidentally we see her things that should not be seen, now, considering that we kinda hate the dude, and considering that his mom is so fucking hot, so we spread the word around, calling his mom an intentional whore-under-the-blanket...
Now if the dude would react like u want, he would either ignore us, or try to talk reason with us, yes my mom wears short skirts, yes, folks, please, don't make a big thing, it's her thing, everybody has a thing, sil vous plait, oui, fuck me in the ass? yes?!?? Dude, i can't even complete that line of thought!

All this happens while we still draw naked pictures of her on the walls, and talk about how she begs for it everyday by exposing exclusive parts from the balcony...Put yourself in the dude's place, how many days would say would the guy wait before he dishes out the AK-47 for target practice? See what I mean...
some things are sensitive, very very sensitive, if these things are not sensitive to you, you should consider their sensitivity to other folks - Religion is not much of a topic in the West, except in the catholic circles, and maybe because of the ultra-violent things done in the name of the church, or maybe because of the Da Vinci Code...but It is serious here, DEAD serious.

CHALLENGE OF THE DAY (IRAQIS only):

In Da Vinci Code, Jacques Saunere writes out a complex code to his granddaughter before he dies, the code involves the reverred Fibonacci sequenece (pronounced Phi-bo-na-chi), to understand what this sequence really is about, close the door, make sure no one is around, and read the following word out loud :

Fibonaccni


L8erz
Ever Wisecracking Kiddo

Mohammed vs Laudrup

The year is 1992, I am a small kid, about 7 years old, I am frantically on my way back home, I get out from the car and leave my parents wondering in their seats....shit shit shit, I gotta get there on time...it can't be true, the bell is already ringing in my mind's eye, grandma opens, I push her aside and go over to the TV set...

and by the lordy Allah it's true, oh my Allah! it can't be!

Denmark has scored the second!
It was 1992 Euro Cup finals, Germany vs Denmark, I was a real German at the time, they exerted a much more attractive halo than the boring USA dudes who always win.
some dude named Marc Laudrup scored twice, it was my first encounter with the Danes, and it left a permanent childhood scar that forever haunted me...
so there, I told ya! u keep shutting me up but I told u and u won't listen...Denmark is the devil! Told u, for ten years I been tellin' ya....they are no use, there is no use....and now it's been done, now it's broke and ain't nobody's gonna do something about all the shit...

I wake up, go to the fridge, do a sleepy-eye makeshift inspection, and voila, there in the treacherous corner of the first drawer....what the?
An almost depelted package of Danish butter Lurpak...
Blood and sugar pressures went to the devil immediately...this is outrage! This is blasphemous, how can a Danish product survive in our god-abiding, muslim household...La, and a thousand La...I took out the cursed vile from the refrigerator and recalimed the appliance in the name of Islam.
I whipped out a knife, and with a ear-piercing 'Allahu Akbar' that startled my half-deaf gradnma I charged, cutting up the cursed butter into slices, frantically, I spread that on bread and added the nice aftertouch of strawberry blood - munching up the dreaded work of Satan quickly into oblivion, my mission to eradicate the evil conspiracy off the face of the planet was a resounding success!

Burp.

Seriously now,
I've already talked this at New York Times, my attitude was that of regret over the the Muslim reaction but with a somewhat Arabian pride - not the usual look-how-stupid-we-are stance taken by secular thinkers. Unforuntaely, I gave the Times the luxury to edit as they please, I was a wee lad, couldn't believe it, so they shelved up the Arab pride aspects - and so I felt I had to re-write my mind.
Some blogging friends of mine have already pointed out that them people who cry foul cuz the prophet's drawn are irrelevant cuz he's already been done a thousand times are a little missing the point, and so are other friends who for some unknown reason think the fuss is cuz Danish people did it are WAAY missing it...
not to sound like I'm full-of-myself selling-crap-for-cake pipe-mouth but here's my 2 cents :
First off, the publishing act in itself got the heat because of THE TIMING. The timing is critical, always, think Nirvana's Nevermind or Michael Jackko'S thriller - hitting the world at the right hour on the zeitgeist clock...
and what better timing to create a chaos when relations between Muslims and the West are constantly muddy after Septemebr 2001, the unspoken public Image of Islam has finally bared its ugliness out in the open -
Now, listen, just shut up and listen a minute before u go burning embassies and churches, it is natural somehow that this feast of uncovery would manifest itself in a country as removed from the affair as Denmark, had this occured in US or Uk, it probably wouldn't have seen the light of day cuz these people are knee-deep in shit with Islam already, they know it hurts the public image and wouldn't tolerate that kind of stuff. It's only common sense that this Western perspective of Islam would be more visible on the parts of world that are a little more ignorant of the sensitivty of such subjects and didn't forsee the true enormity nor concept of what is afoot - good ole Danes are probably the most tolerant of the lot and didn't munch about with Islamic jihaad, so they let loose what is a general overview of Islam not in Denmark but the West in general, in the same way that the cartoons aren't about Mohammed explicitly but really describes Muslims objectively, but u have to have it in a box so u can point ur finger at it, and Denmark unwittingly reaped what they sow.
I have always disliked collective judgement 'All mosul people are cheap'....'all Kuwait are Moslem Jews'....blah blah blah...So right now it's 'All danish are Islam-haters' the cartoons more or less is the indirect product of Al-Qaeda's battles with the West; the violent un-tolerant ideas they presented to the world as Islam, when u're sitting around at the best country in the world living the American Life, and some maniac kabooms a plane to ur favorite trade tower in the name of Islam and Muhammed, would u expect urself to understand the more tolerant aspects of the religion, aspects which hasn't affected u in any way or to fear and hate the gun-toting bearded dude who appears on TV and threatens to eradicate all ur life away for no particular reason of YOUR own doing?
Don't call ur friend for this one.
and so the rest of the Moslem world hung its collective world like it always did and let Bin Laden do the talking, then there's always these people :

Kid : Look at these embassies burning! They're loonies!Grandma: Why is that? They get what they deserve! those heathens, insulting our religion like this...Kid : Well i'm with the demonstrations and all, but what about the violence?Grandma: Things get out of hand...u know...too much spirit...Kid : What about the church bombings here?Grandma : That's Jew's work...like the Sep 2001....
welcome to the way life works presented by A Muslim...Jews Jews jews...Tom & Jerry? Arab & Jew! Adil Imam? Jew...Michael Jackson? Jew....Ur slipper cut off? Jew did it while u sleeping....

Aha! Eureka, we solved it! then u get these clueless Danish dudes who want to do the book about Islam, he can't find a cartoonist, so he tests the freespeech, in this rational gleeful offensive way Westerners often do.
The act was stupid, the insults intended, but perhaps innocent in not knowning how offensive! they could've did a vague Muslim caricature but they had to go and pick on the prophet himself! I believe in freedom of speech and all that, but this is kicking waay below the belt dude, Jyllands-Posten itself declined to publish Jesus-related material, citing its likely to create 'unfavorable tension'....and why can nobody diss the holocaust then? ha? answer me this?....fuckin' double-standards...
The acts of bombings, protests and embassy fires have cemented the fact that Muslims in general are intolerant and barbaric on such religious matters, and probably on all matters. In my opinion, what was needed was a reaction of dignity, a reaction that showed ur offender how small and meaningless was his childish purposes were...I'm all for the economic sanction...it's effective, suave and wouldn't hurt anybody in the physical sense, unfortunately, that is all apeshit in a nation of short-tempered history.
But i can't deny another thing....
U know...I watch these marches, and I feel it, THE PRIDE, the dangerous pride, of the ancient nation....that we can do something, we ain't as scattered, fat and torn as we have always thought we are, the force of reaction was fierce and admirable - i know it was wrong, but it was enjoyable in a sick kind of way, it's really weird, it's like when this one time Ahmedinijad was barking on the TV about not giving in to USA ways, and there's my grandpa saying :
'I like that motherfucker'
Grandpa! Why u painter, poet, Iraqi military ambassador at USA in the sixties, Sunni colonel...why would u say such a thing?
'Cuz he ain't afraid of the West'
and that's just right! he put it perfectly, the march, Ahmedinijad and even Bin Laden all cast a glint of sick, incorrect pride in the heart of every true Moslem no matter how much he tells u he condmens these vile acts, cuz we are born and raised on lost glory and the true embodiment of Islam, nevermind the nuke or the misguided Jihad, i'm talking about my own star-spangled banner, these are the only people who put up a fight when everybody's else is in bed with the powers that be.

There is nothing wrong with that pride, but the fault is in that so far there is no outlet for it except by being an outlaw.

And therefore, urgent need is now for another facet of that pride, a facet that is both morally and politically correct - the moderate Islam rising up to counter-act the four years of Islam extremism has done to deform its name.
The cartoons are a blessing in disguise, Islam has a golden opportunity now to present its moderate, forgiving core to the masses at large, at its real heart - Islam is more about free debate and forgiveness. Both the cartoons and Bin Laden are the work of extremists on either sides of the factions, extremists who try to widen the gap between cultures.
The prophet has been routinely kicked and spit upon in his early days, but he was patient, he was patient, he never did what u all did now...witness this quran verse : 'O unbelievers, I do not worship that which u worship...u have your religion and I have mine', nobody cares about it now cuz it promotes freedom of religion and that's incompatible with the common Islam idea in the west...Islam needs to abandon the sword and beard and wear the suit and tie, like Kurt Cobain once said : 'Infiltrate the system, then rot from within'

This post was more hard-hearted and cynical originally, but I watched Amro Khalid's two-centing the topic yesterday and I am ashamed to tell all my rock'n'roll-mentality brothers that tears actually streamed down my face...Islam's a beautiful thing....it's so sad what's going on...

'We have made you into different nations and cultures so that you may know and learn from each other'- Holy Quran

Unpublished NY Post #2 : Comments on Zeyad's Nightmares Post

My mother and 10-year-old brother are standing in the beginning of a busy street, i watch them from a distance, my mother leaves my brother standing behind a corner and goes shopping for something, as soon as she leaves, and as if on cue...an american helicopter whizzes above, and immediately a masked guy with an RPG appears out of nowhere, crouches and fires, I watch all this and I swear I know what will happen next, it is said that every bullet has a name on it, and sometimes u know, God pours some of Nostradamus in you and u see exactly what will happen next.
the rocket flies a short distance upward before the wind pushes it exactly to where my brother stands. I watch all this, frozen by tension and fear despite my precognition, but when the explosion happens, I scream and run to where my little brother was standing, these goddamn bastards, why my little brother? WHY WHY WHy...the most innocent, most beautiful, most loved person in all our family, i pick him up, his neck is severly holed, and is oozing a dark red blood...nobody on the street offers to help me, they have all run for their own lives and is regarding the security of their own loved ones...i lose touch of everything and run home, in wide, panicked steps...all the time looking at my brother : his eyes looking nowhere, coughing a little in sheepish innocence and oozing unbelievable amounts of dark red blood...it all happens very fluidly, as if it's meant to happen or as if i'm in some faded-out movie, i feel like i am running in a world made of jelly, while i hurry home, not knowning why...hoping he will survive, i feel a strange love inside me, i never told you how much I loved u, Mohammed, I'm so sorry, so so sorry...please forgive me....please...i keep on running until our house begins to appear...Mohammed, forgive me....
I wake up.
It's 01 midnight.I close my eyes, it's blackI open my eyes, still black, i flick the light switch in self-parody, as expected:
Still stupid darkness.
i've read Zeyad's post and i think it's a little too grandiose, this is very probably because Zeyad had gotten too involved in the warzone due to his travels, combined with his individual psycho-draft, but i, a more run-of-the-mill college students, have had no dreams of that sort, thankfully.
until the day before i read it, which i was when i had the dream mentioned above.
(shivers)
I remember very little of my dreams, they were nothing out of the ordinary - usually a meaningless mixture of random evetns, plus two recurring dreams of coming to school with an unexpected final exam and having to take a crap with the bathroom door locked.
But yesterday was different, dreams are the mirror of a human being, and maybe it's my increasing interest in politics that has instigated this particuallar dream-
here is a comparison of my dream to a dream i had in Saddam time:

PRE-SADDAM :

I am a little primary school kid, i wake up, dress and go to school...only to find out that today is Judgment Day...people from everywhere are going to my primary school, i meet my teacher on the way, who asks anxiously: Did you pray? Did you pray?
I take a praying position on the street ; it's too late...the bell is ringing.I reach school and take my place in the uniformed queue, a tall dark man in a white suit talks in the microphone, i subconsciously identify him as God, this is what he says in emotionless formality of a mandatory Ba'ath Party speech:
'Good morning, everyone, today is Judgment Day...Long live Saddam, our great leader' everybody cheers.

I wake up, dress and go to school....

this is a simplisitic Iraqi muslim kid's paranoia: there is nothing to fear on Earth, so what remains is a fear of Judgement day, with the primary school representing the center of the world. The image of Saddam : so secluded, strengthened, and haloed in the viewpoint of the people that it's hard to conceive anything ON EARTH could be above the haze he has created, even God. It's a childish nod to the validity of the visions of novels such as 1984, Animal Farm or Brave New World.A stable, secure realm - unhappy, but stable.
My last-night dream is exclusively on Earth as i know it...perhaps some personal touhces : the distance from family, the unexpressed sentimentality of a lying cynic, but other than that : it's very much representative of the general chaos, hopelessness and apathy that prevails, people are helpless, and really, nobody really cares about you but yourself. This is what i have found out a few while back when Haji Amir died. These two dreams could be a metaphorical comparison of Pre & Post Saddam.

Forgive the blasephmy, it was unintentional.

Sorry.

Unpublished NY Post

Hey...

Too busy to write anything of purpose to you, suffice to say that I am undergoing major personal changes in my life and is feeling too awestruck to organize my newfound feelings into ordered sentences.

So, in return for your dedication , I shall give you the first of my two unpublished NY posts, which got omitted for technical reasons.
More details about NY and my new life later, but very soon.

This post was supposed to be published by Eid, but due to tech probs it didn't get there on time.


I woke up. It was cold. The room felt small, decided to sniff out some air in the backyard.
I got out, if I smoked, I would have taken out a cigarette at this point.I looked around, I might as well have stepped in Wak Wak Islands.

'What shall I do now?' The knife in his hand was dirty, but its tip looked effective. He looked at her flexingly with an uneasy will to please.'There are four of them,' I looked around to check - four, all right not knowning what's coming to them, after all they don't speak the language -
'this one is weak - spare it for the last' She said.
'Your words are orders' and with that, he knelt down to slaughter like he's born with a dirty spitshined knife in hand, his face grim and determined, working silently - he held the first from where the hair would be, and passed the knife along the throat easily, blood responded and oozed on the green grass, he kept thrashing, here, there, left, right, center, until there was nothing left to gnash at. I watched curiously as a living thing is being transformed right in front of my eyes into so much strawberry jam, amongst other things.

It was horrible ; He looked at her at last.
'That will do' She observed, with grim satisfaction.
In general, I was unimpressed, I left the garden and went for a wash-up.
She was my grandmother, the four were sheep.

-------------------------------------

Eid Al Adha is the celebration of the fulfillment of the pilgrimige season, Much to the dismay of Bridgette Bardout, one of the Eid's favorite islamic customs is to slaughter a sheep and distriubte the meat on your relatives and the poor people around u. My grandmother slaughtered four sheep, one for her, the other three for my uncles living abroad, who felt that the meat should reach the people who really need it in disaster-stricken Iraq.
Many of my friends didn't slaughter anything, I myself wasn't a very big fan of anything slaughter-wise. But the meat tasted wonderful when i rolled it into my traditional khubuz (bread) and bit into a tasty kebab.
Other than that, it's the usual so & so day in Post-Saddam Iraq (Iran?)

I was in Palestine Street today, it was filled with people, their faces maintained the social distance of a passerby, but look closely and u shall see a hidden will to live and enjoy life at any cost, despite everyone's conspiracy to the opposite. If the carbomb hit u, u r a martyr, if not, u thank god and walk away. THat's how most Iraqis managed to survive the unbearable conditions...

'Saddam is the manhole cover, and once he has been removed, the sewers have flooded'
- My Grandmother

Saddam held the Iraqi by the throat and kept punching him with quick jabs left and right in an everlasting boxing round until the world felt numb and funny ; under the anasethesia of continous delirium ; it is no wonder that we can stand the conditions - they get blacker and blacker and no-one really complains...
all of a sudden, people started to scuttle inside their shops and cars- not from a nearby explosion like u usually see them run away from but this time away from the rainbullets of God. I felt a yellow happiness seep inside me at the sight, rain has come down to wash away the blood that has smeared the sad capital of Al Rasheed. It's tragic that very little of that blood is sheepish in origin.

Happy Eid.

Email

I've put my email on display, you can email me now if u like.
okay?....

okay.

l8erz....

The Kid meets The Rebel

'Blogging, makes the people, come together...
Blogging, makes the konfusedee, and the rebel....'

- Kid, singing karaoke for Madonna


it all started on the day before elections day :

konfused_kid : hi man
iraqi_rebel : hi
konfused_kid : great blog man! u fucked them all up...
iraqi_rebel : thanks a lot dude...
konfused_kid : u present a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners twist on the mundane Iraqi Blog...kudoskinda like me....
iraqi_rebel : yeah, baby
konfused_kid : sure baby, so r u gonna vote tomorrow?
iraqi_rebel : yeah, but i don't wanna come out too early cuz our area is somehow dangerous
kk: why, where do ya live?
ir : (tells him)
kk: huh...that's...where i live too...do u know where so and so is located?
ir : hell no! that's like so close to where i live! tell me more...
kk : (tells him)
ir: well, u're not really next door, but close enough.
kk: so care to meet? i'd really love to see what u'd look like in real life.
ir: um...i guess there's no harm in ya...
kk: c ya tomorrow.

i didn't go tomorrow cuz...well...i don't know...i'm just a kid full of farts.

so a month later, and just short of Eid, i find myself somewhere near Rebel's home....i'm thinking what the heck, i dail in his mobile phone (which he gave me for better reference)

ir: hello
kk: hey, is this Dayez
ir: speaking
kk: it's me, kiddo, i'm at your front door, come outside

and he did, 10 minutes later and full of smoke.

The Rebel was somehow a surprise when i first met him, on his site, he sounded like a torn-jeans long-hair skirthound, but in real life - nothing could be farther from the speculation - Dayez is a very studied, contained man with spectacles, an intelligent face full of potholes and pale green eyes that shone under balding yellow/brown hair. He reminded me a little of an intellectually reclusive, all-powerful villian. his features were made tougher with all the holes, which strangely enough gave him character.

Dayez didn't know me at first, since i was standing at the house next door, and with me was Fawaz, bassist in our no-particular-place-to-go heavy metal band.

I recognized the searching look in the man, and immediately thrust out a hand

'It's good to finally meet ya man'
'Yeah, baby. (laughs)' his voice a bass.

I returned Fawaz home and went for a quick chat with my virtual-now-reallife buddy. Real nice fellow, we talked everything from blogs, politics, girls, music, u name it.

i finally convinced him to take a pic and it was quite a good one too...look down, don't get pumped up though, no naked chicks in there....

but the biggest surprise of all was when he revealed to me that he had previously ran a famous blog that had grown too annoying so he ditched it and decided to do the Rebel one to try and spark some controversy -

If u want to know what that blog was, all u have to do is spell his name backwards....

Rebel, all i have to say to u is please do not give up on ur newborn blog, it smokes! write about anything interesting whatsoever...cuz all u wrote so far is fresh, interesting and innovative upon the sad political closed-circuits of The de facto iraqi blogs....

we need someone like u very much now...

oh, and happy eid to all of ya muslim dudes - though i can't really see where the happy lies.

Ever Wisecracking Kiddo

Distant Tomtoms & Perching Crows

Hallaw...

Googling 'Konfused Kid', i eyeballed when i saw the NY Times piece, nobody told me about it, so i had an extra kick out of finding out myself, people started congratulating me, i read it and i bascially had my rocks off...then i read the other people's turf.
can't tell u i didn't feel a little out of place, what i wrote was basically a spontaneous piece in which i left out any political thoughts and conceptions aside -i especially liked NAJMA's piece - which juxtaposes natrual phenomena, people's tendency to intertwine that with political crap inside an emotional elections frame.
RIVERBEND did her usual. To me, RIVERBEND always represented a serious, respectable news channel (MBC, opposed to say, myself's CBM ; technically, these people beat me hands down, but come again - my viewpoint represented the non-political citizen catching up the proverbial late bus, i better leave the more politically-inclined stuff to the guys in the know. My whole point was to present the world with a no-holds-barred look upon youths in Iraq.

So it has been out in the open, can't be anything other than Official Ruin for this country, as the elections failed --- suppose it gets redone, Shia would get pissed off and here we are headed locked-on the pits of failure ; the abyss of denial ; the catacombs of civil war awaits and the Goru downstairs is the inexplicable Sectavarium. What better way to meet all that than wtih a non-bullshitting yellow smile that half-says 'i knew it all along'
As i inserted my finger into Barney's purple asshole, i recall precisely that - a Barneylike sense of undeniable shitstained joy.
As i am writing this, the purple ink has not yet dried, and as i look down upon it all i can look back is : 'Ignorance is a bliss'
Life was much more easier when i didn't give a feces who ruled the country, but our own government of Ira(n/q - pick one) started a series of practical jokes that crossed over the boundary to the point that it couldn't be anymore ignored, so i had to vote in the hope that something's gotta give.

Today the MURAAM people (the organizaiton consisting of 30-something coalitions that boycotted the elections results, practically everyone but the kurds and the winning triple-5) went out in the streets in demonstrations, i preferred to stay in a much more blissful dreamscape and woke up at 3 PM, i even missed Friday's Prayer (with sadness, i must say) and headed straight towards my ignorant acoustic, earning 'Fade To Black' gives me a splinter of blackened comfort in these Hakim-blessed days.
I miss Totalitarian TV-days a lot, in these days, the people stopped trying to do anything about their fate and kept laughing at themselves, Saddam was a demi-god and the simple rules that u had to follow in order to live in his divinity's holy kingdom was as clear as a pimple in fat lady's derriere. Shout in demonstrations, Deny and curse US in TV investigations, Na3am Na3am Na3am, Lil Qa'id Saddam Hussein. Sometimes when Iraqi TV showed us 3-hour meetings of God Saddam meeting the army officers and have us listen to each and every one give out the undying loyalty scripture sealed and signed, it was one big joke - sometimes it was unbearably funny seeing how such a large mass of people who took themselves so seriously can be reduced to smithering asskissers, i mean, the 'Afya' videoclip, when i first heard this (first day of war - i think) i burst out laughing! HOW COULD THE SINGER GET AWAY WITH THATTT?
You see, 'Afya' is a somewhat slang word that Saddam used in these 3-hour meetings, by default, 'Afya' is usually said by a compassionate elder to a promising child who's helped the old lady cross the street, when each of these hypocritical hypermoustached dudes would finish his worship, the God would interrupt whatever he was doing, usually smoking a big Castro cigar and murmur a cold 'Afya' to him, (legend has it that one Afya meant a million, two meant 2 millions and so forth...i wonder what good old Abu El Laithan would say wanted to give out a 1/2 mil) 'Afya but return 500' or probably a fart-like 'Af'
so anyway one day the radio comes alive with a tribal song named 'Afya' that as was as much sad as it was funny.

AHhhhh, sweet Black Humor, the last defense of the lazyboy who wouldn't give a shit.
Every cynic is actually a sensitive motherfucker who is afraid of his sentimentality and can't really bare to show it.

it seems everybody's who's running for elections these days is a secret heavy metal devotee, aside from the infamous Hakim headbanging incident widely circulated in mobile phones, there's 618's own crazydude :

Q/ Why does the cameraman keep shaking the camera violently in Adnan Dulaymi's speeches?
A/ To keep the picture in sync with Adnan's headbanging.

how about some more of these election jokes ?

A deaf & dumb was asked to whom he would vote for in the coming elections, he bent over three times.
(it is quite helpful to know that in Iraqi, a 5 is an asshole)

Yeah Whatever.....

On a more cheery note, I failed 1 lesson. We celebrated that by going to a kubbah restaurant and having our bellies full of one gaint kubba that could've been one of the Winged Bull's Balls.
My giving up faith in this country is re-vised these days, at least now i can say I TRIED.

i REALLY broke up with my ex-girl and have finally ended 18 months of torture, pain and invisbile love and affection.
Free again.
Now i can honestly feel what these men do when they kill ther wives. She was a pain in the ass, if i stopped worshipping her for a single second she's flip out her Bazooka mouth and shoves all sorts of I Hate You-s down my throat.
we broke up repetitiously, it reached a point that in the last week we broke up twice one day.
i don't know why i kept returning to her, she was my safety net in a manner of speaking but now i made a vow never ever.

but now i am free again - bring out the honies!

BACHELOR, 20, COLLEGE STUDENT. HANDSOME BUT DARK, PREFERS BRUNETTES. LONG LEGS A MUST, SHORT HAIR PREFERRED.
INTELLIGENT, SUAVE/VULGAR OK, SENSITIVE, UNDERSTANDING, RELIGIOUS IN A WAY.
SPANKING TENDENCY A PLUS.

Biography of the fictional band The ABBiS

HI THIS IS MY NEW POST NUMBER 2, please read post number 1 (Dusty Blogspot) BEFORE THIS.....
, all artwork is by Anarki13 (gracious thanks)

THE ABBIS




When it's all said and done, The Abbis were the first English-speaking Arab band to gain international recognition, paving the way for the likes of the first signs of what will be later called the Middle Eastern Heavy Metal (MDEHM - pronounced Medhem) in which Post-War Iraqi heavy metal played a great deal. By fusing the disparate genres of traditional Middle Eastern music and contemporary rock/metal sounds the band crafted an original style only hinted at previously, in the course of four years, they rose from semi-obscure alienated Iraqi kids into superstars of considerable status in the Arab world, only to fall too quickly as they are torn by intra-band frictions, widespread disdain in their Arab homeland and spanking scandals, their short legacy which is comprised of three official albums, is likely to be hugely influential for years to come.

Legend has it that roots of the band are traced back as early as 2005, where Abbas Khudur and Karrar Subhi were joking around on a college picnic, where they first wore their patented 'Wigs' schtick. The two would continue to jam together throughout their college years, however at these tough times of life in Iraq music was generally a spare time habit and a minor distraction from life's
ongoing necessities - the two went their separate ways after college but still maintained contact in one form or another.

By June 2008, in a convention held at Amman, Khudur stumbled by mistake upon his old jamming partner, Kurdish Mohanad Hadi who was playing for an amateur- solo guitarist bill at a Jordanian restaurant/casino at the time, an ambitious and gifted classically-focused guitarist, Khudur saw in him the courage and imagination which would fuel their co-written songs later. It was somewhat difficult for Khudur, an engineer and Mohanad, a doctor, to leave their carriers hanging by the noose whilst they pursued daydreams...but lord has mysterious ways, back in Iraq, they reunited with friends Alaa Samaka (bass) and Abdalla Anwar (drums) and started jamming intensely part-time after working hours in an abandoned garage in Karrada.
Slowly and uncertainly, the sluggish after-hours of practice began to pay due, as the band progressed into serious stuff, and wowing what little audience for rock songs with a rendition of Metallica's 'The Wait' as backup band for AccrasscidA, the country's leading (and only) heavy band. Convinced of having a winner on their hands, the band started looking for a singer.

after several unsatisfactory lineups, what could only be described as a miraculous stroke of fate that the band should inexplicably get a call from longtimenosee colleague Subhi, offering his services to the band, temporarily, as he has to relocate to London where he will work for an exporting company one year later. After hearing him sing, the band was mollified and awed, and he was taken in immediately.
In 2009, the band's first album 'Khosh Teez', was released to a virtually nonexistent market. it was a weird mixture of Khudur's eastern-influenced songwriting, Hadi's classical undertones and general heavy metal cliches that sparked some attention with a lockstep bedouin-rocker, 'What Is There and What Is Not There (Shako Mako)'. Luck played a great amount in this particular story, as the song was heard by Frank Ottuler, a representative of an upstarting recording company in Germany, home to some of metal's unheard of niches. the song was re-released to slightly better airplay, reaching #179 on the Mediterranen Metal Charts.
Following a mysterious, sulky video of 'Shakomako' and a lukewarm reception from worldwide audiences, US media capitulated on the band, writing stories which often strategically places them as models for a newborn democracy in Iraqi soil. The band's reaction was reclusion, working silently on their follow-up album, 'Haji Metal'.
Touring throughout Europe with the slime of the turbulent nu-metal scene relentlessly throughout the years, the hungry, raw energy of their exhaustion was directly plugged in the amps for this album. Seeing that the band yet has to dream of international recognition, the band scaled back their ambition to native middle eastern territory, depending on the US-media outlets to solidify their fragile star power. Signing up for EMI Arabia, and releasing the album 'Haji Metal', the band made history, as the first single from the new album 'Abo John' stormed the charts and sparked a revelation, followed by a slew of popular singles that even reached out toward Europe, being recognized not as novelty art famous because of its Iraqi nationality but for actual radio time : 'Palm Tree Date' dissected Boy/Girl dilemmas in Iraq, 'BiSK/BiSHK' a discussion of Sunni/Shi'ite politics in Iraq, and more importantly 'Mr. G' which discussed gender wars and chicken slaughter in Iraq.
The band's subject matter was new and original, its presentation to the world clever and ambiguous, depending equally on intelligent videos and magical Arabian influences, the band weaved a somewhat original heavy-oriental theme, the band's notoriety increased as bandmembers started giving
outspoken, outlandish comments on national television, to the recurring disdain from such icons as Ilham El Madfai, once on an interview, the band's guitarist Khudur said :

"We chose distorted guitars and the rock'n'roll, wholly American instruments to express our emotions not only because it has the most powerful devices to encapsulate cathartic bliss in not-necessarily vulgar terms in a way that traditional Arabic music simply, cannot, and not only because we believe that in order to infiltrate a system, one must play the fool then start to rot from within, but also because it's admittedly cool. We are very conscious of our image and what it proclaims in the wave of secularism - we are anti-America, but we are also anti-two-slut commercial whores like Haida Wahli'. he was the first performer to swear on a live interview.
Following a successful tour that lasted much of 2010, Subhi started complaining from Khudur's antics, calling him a dictator and a vengeful crusher of people's ideas - to which Khalid retorted by exposing Dohi's reluctance to continue in their mission and calling him a 'snooze'. Tensions between the band reached a point as the recording sessions for their legendary 2011 album 'People Of The Sand' a major leap forward in artistic vision, thematic control and treatment of subject matter - as their mix of influences weave its multi-part way through the album's 70 minutes, almost single-handedly responsible for the popularity of bands like AccrasscidA later in the West. 'Sad Sad Saddam', 'Melodrama' and the title track all proved huge cornerstones for all the Oriental Metal that followed afterwards. shortly afterwards the tour, Khudur and Subhi announced in a conference that there will be no more Abbis, stating with a smile that their 'mission is done.'


Khalid founded the Fire In The Wood association and released a couple of unpopular solo albums, he made money making documentaries and finally joining a TV station in Germany as part-time director, his works are collected in the anthology 'The Abbis : Fad Tifo Waghaf - Chix, Dix and Handbreak'

a religious duet with Sami Yusuf, though, proved to retain some of the band's credibility, as they performed a live version of 'Fils Take aWay!' as a short reunion in 2016.

Follow The Wayward, Subhi's solo album garnered little attention and after its premature death in 2015, the talented vocalist returned to his previous job as a computer engineer.

Hadi was the only ABBi who kept the flame, joining Ilham El Madfai's backup band and at last shot to reclusive stardom as 'Flamboyant Titty Wanker' in the classic 2018 film 'Sheikh Mahshi'.

Little more has been heard from them, but as the years progress, their influence can be heard on countless records that is likely to enliven their vision of laconic proportions for years more.






1. F.T.W. (Khaudur/Subhi/Anarki13) - 4:02
2. Hussein (Khudur/Subhi//Abd El Fatah) - 6:11
3. The Joys of Spanking Kaheel (Khudur) - 2:45
4. BiSK / BiSHK (Khudur/Hadi) - 3:36
5. Waghaf's Song (Khudur/Subhi/Anwar) - 4:58
6. American Haji (Anwar/Hadi) - 3:20
7. Independent Dependent (Khudur/Subhi/Fa'iq) - 4:20
8. My Deity (Khudur/Hadi) - 3:30
9. People Of The Sand (Subhi/Khalid) 6:23
10. Rami (Khudur/Subhi/Hadi/Samaka) - 5:30
11. Mr. G (Khudur/Hadi/Anwar) - 4:21
12. Bandpass (Subhi) - 3:00
13. Your Homemade Lovesongs (Khudur/Hadi) - 4:20
14. Alienation (Khuddur/Subhi/Hadi/Anwar) - 7:01


ABBAS KHUDUR





Rhythm guitarist and songwriter of the Iraqi Heavy Metal band The Abbis, Abbas Khudur was a misunderstood identity which impinged vital tones in Arabrock music.

Born in Baghdad, to a small family - he exhibited signs of a high knowledge aptitude early since he was just six - learning to read/write before going to primary school and learning all the world's capitals, he was also a scrawny, socially awkward and sensitive genius who couldn't really blend in with the kids all around. By the age of 15, he started listening to pop music like many of his peers, eventually switching to hip-hop and finally he discovered heavy metal. The discovery was enormous as he finally found methods to express 'all sorts of devils' in a way he always wanted. His alienation urged him to perform a number of crowd-pleasing antics, the first of which -

writing a dirty word in a class quiz - almost got him suspended. this pattern of non-conforming to authority continued in all his forthcoming life, by the age of 19 Khalid took guitar lessons and progressed through them, he also entered the legendary Nahrain University where The Abbis was first conceived. By then, Khudur has engineered his quiet observations on life into a loose theory for which he coined the term 'FTW', and by which it was interpreted by the public. The philosophical aspects of the FTW movements lies undercurrent in all Abbis albums, FTW can be explained as in general a collection of ideas that borrows as much as can be learned from the depression-soaked, cynical half-eye adolescence culture of the West and remarry it with a more spiritual, religion-based Eastern air, often presenting the latter as a solution to the former, ghosts of everyday dilemmas as inferiority, need to be wanted or especially sexual demons are widely present too. However, none of this is first apparent upon first inspection of the band's lyrical output, meaningfulness of the band's songs only happens when u put the words to the music, a classic Chris Cornell technique.



When The Abbis took off after releasing the classic 'Haji Metal', Khudur seized the moment to steal as much of the limelight as he can, appearing vigorously in several TV shows and interviews where he gave disconnected, unorthodox interviews, he was at times nice and intellectual, others sardonic and rude. Often poised as the menacing, unpredictable part of The Abbis as opposed to Hadi's friendly, emotional music and Dohi's equally bright overtures, Khalid also became an unlikely sex symbol due to his mysterious, intellectual darkness. As a string of Khudur-Hadi hits flooded the Arab charts in the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, one of which 'Mr. G' sparked a controversy upon its dissipation of the a touchy subject as gender wars in Arabian settings, although the song was anti-homosexuality, it wasn't too clear for some people, who were the same people who objected to 'Hussein' citing its disrespect for the holy figure, after which Khudur had to unravel that it was really about Saddam Hussein, with disappointment 'I wanted it to last just a little bit more'.

Khudur had several girlfriends, but in 2012 he married his long-term and first girlfriend Muna Kelo, only to get divorced two months later, he married M. Fish two years later, and had two kids from her.

after The Abbis's disband, Khudur announced that he would explore his unfed directorial talents and started shooting commercials for restaurants on the condition that he be a director of them. In July 2, 2014, a big scandal eschewed as lewd photos of the star violently spanking an unidentified person spread over the Internet. Khudur never denied his identity, saying 'I did something wrong and I am punished for it, it is the mashee2a of Allah. It is my fault, though, I knew I should never have walked near that Jooj'. - the line, 'Never should've walked near that Jooj', was actually a cryptic wording in one of The Abbis' most overanalyzed songs 'The Joys Of Span-King Al Kaheel'. Many people insist that Jooj is the name of an obscure tavern in Bataween. He was severly looked down upon in the Arab world from here on, forcing him to relocate to shooting small-time projects for German television.

The Abbis remained immensely popular, so much that the band reunited for a short interval with multi-selling Sami Yusuf and performing some of their less flamboyant repertoire in a conservative attitude. The change didn't convince some people though, as he was killed days later after an unexpected visit in his homeland.