A moving piece by
Nesreen Melek
21 December, 2012
I was truly touched by the tears your
president shed during his speech because of the killing the twenty beautiful
children and the six remarkable adults as he called them. He reminded me of the
tears I shed watching my country ruined by the shock and awe bombing during the
last war on Iraq almost ten years ago.
You gathered to mourn the death of those kids but when the war
was launched, my sister who lived in the states that time and I cried alone as
our family members were still in Iraq and we didn’t know what happened to them.
The American missiles didn’t differentiate between children and adults during
the war, all Iraqis were exposed to death all days long.
No one offered us condolences for the loss of our country, our
dreams and our hopes for good days to come. We were alone with our grief; the
whole world watched the continuous bombing in silence. Some people protested but
their voices weren’t heard. The leaders of the Middle East watched their
brothers and sisters killed, your military bases were on their lands yet they
did nothing to stop you from the war.
Your President called the kids who were killed at the school by
names. Our children who were killed by the American bombs had no names. I
remember a picture of bodies of small kids covered with blood and piled on the
back of a truck, those kids were killed during the bombing of a small city in
Iraq. No apologies where given to their parents or to the Iraqis for taking the
lives of these kids... there were no teddy bears and no candles...
Do you know Abeer? Abeer is the Iraqi kid who was fifteen when
she was raped in front of her family members by the American soldiers. The
soldiers burnt the house to hide their atrocities. How many of the American
people know the story of Abeer?
The depleted uranium your troops used in Fallujah caused higher
rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality? Young women in Fallujah in Iraq
are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies
being born deformed, with no heads, two heads, and a single eye in the foreheads
or missing limbs. Do you know that young children in Fallujah are now
experiencing cancers and leukemia?
We had endless shooting across my country by the American troops
during the war and even after Iraq surrounded, many of your soldiers kept
shooting at the civilians they thought were a threat. My relative’s wife was
shot by your soldier in a checkpoint when her husband didn’t hear the soldier
asking him to stop. The cause of the violence in Iraq wasn’t complex as you
concluded for your country. The cause was the brutality of the troops.
Yet in Iraq we don’t hear someone walks in a shopping centre or
in a school and start shooting people. But we heard that innocent people were
killed by your troops, I wonder why?
As your president said in Connecticut a few days ago: “Let the
little children come to me” Jesus said, “and do not hinder them, for to such
belongs to kingdom of heaven”.
For the Iraqi children who are alive after experiencing the war,
they will watch the news and will feel for your children. Those who died and no
one acknowledged their death they will belong to kingdom of heaven like the
American children who lost their lives during the shooting and they will be one.
Children are children and they deserve to be given the opportunity to live
whether they are Iraqis or American.
One man took the life of the twenty beautiful children and the
six remarkable adults, but your government took the life of thousands of
beautiful children and remarkable adults in Iraq during the ugly war on
Iraq.
Why does the death of the twenty children affect you so much
when the death of the thousands of the Iraqi children was ignored?
Your loss is big but our loss is greater...
Nesreen Melek lives in Canada but with an
abiding love and devotion to her homeland, Iraq. She can be contacted
at: n_melek@hotmail.com
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