NEWSLETTER

Running for your life from fundamentalist bandits, helplessly watching innocent women being shot in the street, and car-bomb explosions that shatter your bedroom window... Just another humdrum day in the life of a student in Baghdad.


Last June, just a few days after I had finished my final exams for the second term of pharmacy school in Baghdad, I traveled to Jordan and stayed there with my family for over three months. Eventually, we had to return to Iraq because it was getting increasingly difficult for Iraqis to remain in Jordan for long periods.

I returned to Baghdad on October 10 via the land route. The trip was the most horrifying experience I’ve ever had in my life—and I’ve taken this route at least twice every year. We were constantly watching out for fake patrols or being chased by bandits. It took us almost 15 hours to reach Baghdad. It usually takes eight hours from Amman.

There were hundreds of army men and vehicles at the gates of Baghdad. They were searching every car that entered the city. After they checked ours and let us in, I looked around the streets. My city was completely changed. It was nothing like the Baghdad I’d left just months before. The streets were packed with US and Iraqi army and police patrols, checkpoints, and concrete blocks. Many buildings were dusty and destroyed, the streets were desolate, piles of garbage were accumulating on sidewalks, and traffic lights were broken.

It looked like the apocalypse had come.

I went to see some of my friends soon after I got home. They told me about the dead bodies lying on the streets because of sectarian violence, and how formerly mixed neighborhoods were turning into Sunni or Shia neighborhoods. People were being forced to leave their homes because they were from the wrong sect for their particular area.

I was very troubled with what I heard and I was afraid to leave the house for over two weeks. As the days passed by, however, I got used to this new situation, and I also grew accustomed to hearing almost every day that one of our relatives, friends, neighbors, or loved ones had been killed due to sectarian violence, car bombs, random shootings, or IED explosions.

After only three weeks back in Baghdad, I witnessed several incidents that have changed my life forever.

NABIL KASIM
Nabil is a 20-year-old student in Baghdad and is the author of nabilsblog.blogspot.com


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