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It like a storm it cuts a path4/24/2023 ![]() We bought two additional water tanks and filled them up because we anticipated a water shortage. We bought several cartons of eggs, bags of flour, and whatever nonperishable beans we could fill the pantry with. My family began stocking up what we could. Sultan Hashim, appeared on TV and confirmed war was coming to us. On March 10, Iraq’s defense minister, Gen. I was aware of the Shiite sect of Islam but knew too little to understand why my father said that this cleric had been forced to appear on national television to defend Saddam and condemn the U.S. I asked my father who this man was and what was meant by the “hawza” (the largest Shiite seminary in Iraq) that he claimed to represent. He called them the “Gog and Magog of our time,” a reference to one of the many end-time prophecies in the Abrahamic religions of cannibalistic creatures that spread chaos and carnage. invaders, should they come, would be met with fury. It started with basic first aid “in case of shrapnel injury.” The next day, it was “how to escape from a fire.” For the first time, a man in a black turban, who looked somehow different from the imam at our local mosque, appeared on TV saying that the U.S. Iraqi state TV - the only TV channels we had under the dictatorship - began broadcasting a new daily public service announcement. The next day, things began looking and feeling gloomy again. Protests erupted worldwide on Valentine’s Day, 2003, and for a fleeting moment it felt that love had shielded us from war. They were sending troops to attack Iraq, and no amount of soft power was sufficient in this scenario to change my perspective. But when the radio stations began speaking of an imminent U.S.-led coalition invasion, America and Britain became my enemies. Yes, during my teens, I would stay up late and listen to the Billboard charts on Voice of America, and I had a centerfold of Depeche Mode that I found in one of my late uncle’s ’80s magazines. By sixth grade, I was cheering for “Baba Saddam” (“Father Saddam”) like every other Iraqi child. My English and love for Western pop culture endured, but my early comprehension of politics gradually faded. ![]() One day, I asked my mother why we had portraits of Saddam in our school, because we had never had pictures of Reagan or former President George H. I also understood that Iraq was different. I don’t remember ever studying for English exams, and I never had a grade in English under 99%. ![]() My family was not in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the resulting Operation Desert Storm, but we returned home to Mosul roughly one year later, in 1992, and remained there until much later.Įquipped with the English vocabulary of an 8-year-old American child, I had an advantage over my Iraqi third grade classmates. This was during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when my father was studying for his doctorate degree. I was born in the northern city of Mosul but spent most of my childhood in a town just outside Denver, Colorado. My childhood was slightly different from that of the average Iraqi. ![]() We had been reduced to quotas, statistics and collateral damage. The irony was that, while Iraq had been in the news cycles 24/7 in that early period, Iraqis ourselves had not. It is sometimes hard to believe that I lived through every second of these seismic years. Much of the subsequent turmoil and unrest in the Middle East (and, eventually, the world) can be traced back directly or indirectly to the invasion of Iraq and the collapse of its institutions. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was arguably the second most significant event in the 21st century so far, surpassed only by the 9/11 attacks. The period from late 2002 until 2008 constitutes a stream of endless flashbulb memories for me. These moments have a lasting impact on the rest of our lives. Not only do we continue to recall these moments, but we also vividly memorize their wider context, down to the most minute details: where we were, what we wore, who we were with, even smells and tastes. “Flashbulb memories” is a term coined by psychologists for moments that stay with us, not just for months or years, but for decades.
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