Friday, May 13, 2005

Diary of Rosebaghdad

Hi everyone, sorry for not writing for along time. Well we finally settled down and moved to our new home (apartment). I was waiting to write when we have full time internet at home but today we discovered that it will take us more than a month till we could get an internet access due to some construction works in our area and our area is still new so they have to install new cables for the DSL internet. Anyway I was thinking what shall I name my blog after I had left Iraq and I will name it Dairy of Rosebaghdad till I found a more suitable name for it. The last month was so tiring because we had to look for an apartment and then started furnishing it from zero and all without a car and with a child. It is very difficult when you have to do all things alone and without help from anyone and in a strange country. We found an apartment somewhere between Sharjah and Dubai but it is considered to be in Sharjah. I prefer to live in Dubai but the rents there became so expensive as they said during the last six months and in Sharjah life is cheaper and we could save money more than in Dubai. Our apartment is big and very nice but the building is still new so we don't know our neighbors yet.

Let me talk about Sharjah and Dubai as the way I see it : Dubai is cleaner and contains large green places with flowers which I miss very much here, in Sharjah all you see is sand and when I say sand I mean exactly like desert with minimum amount of green grass. Sharjah is very small and crowdy most of the population here are Arabs and Indians or from Pakistan while in Dubai you see Indians besides the other nationalities. If you want an intertainment you have to go Dubai. For me I did not like Sharjah at all it is very different than Dubai. Anyway my apartment is opposite to a new large mall which is the biggest in Sharjah. It is very nice and very elegant, my area did not exist till the last couple of years until this mall was built ,but still all the streets are under construction which means lots of sand everywhere.

The way to dubai from our place takes about 15 minutes but not at the rush hours of course and I can easily reach many places in Dubai faster than if I was in Dubai itself. My husband's work is rather far away from our house it takes him about more than an hour to reach his work and to return back.
One thing is very noticeable here is the amount of Indains in Emirates, you can say I consider my self living in India more than in an Arabic country, most or you can say all the taxi drivers are Indians, most of the sellers in shops and supermarkets are Indians or from Philippine but the majority from India even you can find their food is more familiar in markets than Arabic food. Now I have 3 Indian neighbors in my floor and of course you can find different levels from Indians, the highly educations to the poor ones. (It is said that Indians form about 67% of the population in Emirates)!!!

For me I still feel lonely, and every time I sit alone and think of my parents my eyes are filled with tears, I hope they were with me to stay safe. Life here is so simple and you can get everything simply, we lived in a very hard conditions that made me have a shock the first few days, I was even afraid to cross the road alone, I was scared!!! I was acting like the movie (Blast from the past). Sometimes I say to myself oh my God how did we bare all this in Iraq, look how those people live. This should be our life too we are also human beings and deserve to live the way others live. My mother asked me in her letter how does life without bombs look like? Do you know this sentence made my eyes full of tears, we don’t deserve this and I can't find a new hope for peace in the near future. Things in Baghdad are still the same as I left or maybe worse. Last week there was a battle in a street near close to my house and in the middle of the day, today my sister in law called to say they are safe because a car bomb exploded near their house which is also near mine. Everyday I hear about a car bomb that exploded in Baghdad or Mosul, do you know what I do? I send an SMS to my mother asking her if everyone is ok, and wait for a reply. I'm still here but my thoughts and heart are still in Iraq because all my beloved ones are there, my family my friends and my relatives. I feel lucky to leave because I think I was going to lose my nerves if I had stayed in Iraq anymore worried about my husband when he is out, can't send my daughter to school and can't look for a job. Now here we are looking for a school for my daughter so she can join in a new term which starts in September. And after she will join the school I will start to look for a job or a part time job.
By the way my niece started her own blog. She lives in Mosul and most of my news about Mosul where from my sister. I talked a lot about them before now I let her talk about her life and her family's life in Mosul. She is 14 years old. The URL for her blog is :

http://www.livesstrong.blogspot.com/


Thank you for sharing my thoughts. I really hope to stay in touch with you all. Bye for now.