Six teachers were assassinated in Iraq in the course of the past week.
The toll, according to Saturday's issue of The Guardian:
Balad Ruz: Gunmen kill 4 primary school teachers. (Monday)
Kerbala: Gunmen on a motorcycle shoot a school teacher dead. (Thursday)
Kirkuk: Gunmen shoot dead a school teacher and a student. (Thursday)
(And in another attack on teachers and learners, a bomb at al-Mustansiriya University killed one and injured eleven...) (last Sunday)
How can the children ever feel safe again?
Where is humanity?
7 comments:
Hey, you were busy since you e-mailed me your first post. I hope you don't stop blogging now that you started.
I like the background your chose. It's very calm.
Fayrouz, how kind of you to check this out. It is also encouraging because it's the first comment I've had. To tell you the truth, I have been thinking the whole idea of this blog was naive.
The background I chose deliberately because, as a teacher, I know that students with dyslexia find it easier if the background to text is a pale cream. I struggled a bit to find where to put it in the template, once I found the code for the colour.
I'm glad you think it's calm. That has to be a bonus!
Hi there Em
I read about your project "Kindness in war" on another site.
Oh, don't worry too much about not (yet)getting many comments--the most I get these days are hatemail--but only when I was attacked on-line for my moral authority on a related subject did a bunch of long-term lurkers come out and defend me! That was very heart-threngtening, so I know usually people just read, unless you make things very controversial or ask questions.
Below are where I posted my story bits, even if the fact that I don't consider myself an enemy of any sort to the people who were kind to me in the situation you asked about sort of makes it uneligible. I think if you talk about enemies helping enemies, you have to differentiate that there are "politically declared" enemies and people personally known and available to you who have only just willlfully, heinously hurt you or murdered your next of kin with you as a witness--or else you could never even be sure about that ands nobody has an omnicient view.
As to the earlier it's much easier (at least for me)to lift oneself above the publicly prescribed perception of the other person and be kind or open to the "others". For example much to my surprise I found I have gained a close friend from a country that also produced one of the murderers of someone I loved fiercely and I went to a supposedly "evil" place and found people so kind it made the horrible atrocities committed there all the worse. Thanks to those that opened my heart with their kindness I have a tiny open door in my heart that I'm keeping open for anybody until they prove an "enemy" in some way: The love that was created by good people from diverse backgrounds is also ready to "attack".
Unfortunately many people have the opposite experience, not too much human kindness and love in their lives from a variety of backgrounds (ethnic, social etc.)to remember that this is so.
I also read a lot about people who stayed good in war and times of evil, swam against the current, and the only conclusion the researchers had was that all these people had had a hard time in their lives (to understand suffering) and a role model at some part in their lives who was courageous and good and to whom they had looked up.
But in the latter case it is very very hard to withhold hatred, pain and co., especially when people who you think you should forgive don't at all see the evil of what they have done inside themselves, what they have done to somebody else and it is clear they will go on like that, the cruel, the selfish, the brainwashed: these types without a conscience or any kind of emotional explanation.I have had such encounters and I don't even want to be kind to such people and the thought of revenge aka justice (in a very personal context, theoretically)has since been lurking in the back of my mind. Forgiving is not a state of mind, you have to force yourself not to hate, everytime that the sense of injustive hits you, if you want that. You have to decide that, if that is what you want, while you are suffering from something other people are happily doing to you or someone you love, or the consequences thereof. It's a very Christian thing to just "put away" and not mention it anymore because nobody is perfect, but it's still right there sitting and boiling in your blood when you get to think about it, sort of the same brainwash shrinks subject you to "don't allow yourself to think about it" while really it's all sitting there making you angry. I know people who are in such denial, and they just direct their anger at other people rather than the original perpetrators. If your life is rubbish because of what somebody did to you and they are having kids and family and laughing about what they did to you and you are ill and lonely thanx to them, how can you say "I forgive you"? I think in that sense it's more satisfying to believe in a spiritual entity who will punish such evil.
On the other side I found that absolutely unexpected kindnesses of people who have no reason to reach out to you touched me in a way that makes it possible to always be open--individually. But if someone was butchered right next to me by someone who had no gun held to his or her head--I don't think I would even want to be kind to that person whom I actually WITNESSED committing a heinous, cold or senseless act.
You can read the bits at my site: www.thekindnessofastranger.com
Thank you, Kind Stranger, for your encouragement which came at just the right time!
I've checked out your web site and I was intrigued by your account of your time in the Lebanon, a country which has suffered greatly. I have been working my way through Robert Fisk's "Pity the Nation" for months now...I can't read more than about three pages at a time. It's the same wit "Country of my skull".
I salute you for your insight, coutage and passion and for caring enough to search for understanding, to reach out instead of curling up and withholding, and to unlock positive ways of coping with your loss and with the pain that "is sitting there and boiling in your blood".
Thank you for visiting my blog and for taking the time to share your thoughts here.
Em, did you know about this story. I think it will warm you :)
http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/04/28
/experience-of-female-soldier-in-iraq/
Em, did you know about this story. I think it will warm you :)
http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/04/28
/experience-of-female-soldier-in-iraq/
Thanks Nowvoyager! Your timing is perfect in that I've been feeling overwhelmed by the awfulness and futility of war lately and wondering where I will ever find generous acts like the offering of tea that GinMarie describes. She makes the exchange come to life - and that generosity is on both sides. (It doesn't help that I'm currently teaching a group of war poems to 15 year olds!) I sometimes check out blogs from Iraq, but the ones I know just make me feel gloomier when I read them. So many many thanks for taking the trouble to pass on a glimmer of light.
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