Saturday, January 21, 2006

Iraqis boycott the American goods!!

Hi everyone, I know you are going to say where I have been hiding all this time?
Well, I don't know, the time is passing so quickly. I took a driving license, I found a good job but I had to quit after a few days, many problems faced me including that I could not find some nursery suitable for my daughter and don't ask me why and how. Because we have many problems here in this country that I am sure you did not hear about in any other country. Anyway I did not write this post to discus this issue but to let you know my news.

As for the news of Iraq, all I can say "I pray that God can protect it from civil war, I can see the tension now between sunnis and shiaas.
Between you and me, the leaders now are doing exactly what Saddam had done to them, kidnapping, illegal arrests and torturing, and nobody could proof who is doing this and why. A few months ago a friend of my husband was arrested from his work by some people who came and said they are from police and they want him for few questions, they took him and till now more than two months no one knows anything about him even his family. They went to interior ministry who denied that. And many others who don't know their fate yet. If this was not done by the government, at least they should start looking for them or start to make investigation about that but not to shut their mouths and sit without doing anything especially it is done with the name of the government , and if those people were guilty why don't they submit them to the court. this is not only my question but from all the angry people I meet every day here and there, In Iraq and in UAE and from chats all around the world.

I made some friends now, all are Iraqis. Not very much compatible with me but are better than sitting alone. The problem that I faced here and found it very weird is that all the Iraqis that I met, are very different than the real Iraqis, or the Iraqis that I used to meet before, many of them I knew them before but they have changed. A strange phenomenon that I found among Iraqis and I find it very worrying is the increase of extremist Muslims between Iraqis. I know many Iraqis in Iraq started to become extremist after the war due to the circumstances we have, but I never thought that I found more here in UAE especially those people are here for along time, and in UAE you can find from all the nationalities in the world. The rate of hijab between Iraqi women has increased here also, and some of them are covering their faces which I found very strange because we don't have this in the Iraqi culture even with these circumstances. In Iraq you can see the women only wearing the hijab but not covering there faces. Few days ago we went out with my husband's friend for a picnic it was the first time we went out together, and there were another family that we met there. I was very astonished when one of the men asked us (the women) to sit alone and a little far away from the men. Me and my husband put our chairs together but then we sat separately and when we started to eat our lunch we had to separate the food into two halves, I did not understand the way these men think, they see women every where. why we can not eat anything in front of them. Anyway this picnic will be the last with them definitely. We have another normal group that we will go out with whenever we want to go out for a picnic. But I was very angry that day not because of me but for the other women who accept this from their husbands to treat them as nobody.
Another thing that I found very common among the Iraqis here in UAE is that they has boycotted all the American goods. I asked many people why they do that and when they started doing this, they said they started before 9-11 due to the American position with Israel and the number of people who boycott increased after Baghdad's fall. I told some of them that in Iraq I have never heard anyone boycott the American goods, so why you do so? They said we have many alternatives here unlike Iraq and in this way we can express our anger to their policy in Iraq!! Their boycott also includes not eating in American restaurants or drinking cola or pepsi they drink something similar to it made in Saudi Arabia I think. And even they go to tiny details and ask for it, for example they don't make shopping from some shops that are not American but they cooperate somehow with Isreal, I don't want to give the names of the shops .I think the boycott idea started first among the Egyptians against the American policy towards the Palestinians and then the Iraqis started do the same thing, I don't know if other nationalities are doing the same thing or not.
We know 6 Iraqi families here,3 of them has been boycotting, and when I asked how many Iraqis are doing so, they answer me, too many!!. Maybe this will not affect the economy of the United states but it should send a certain sign to the US government.