Flavor

Since 2003, there was an implicit accord between us, my generation of Iraqi youth, that what they had told us about our history in school is not accurate. After 2003 we started to be exposed to some new theories and facts about our country, about our history, about our identity.
I can say that the most of the “new facts” about us were coming from ignorant extremist. An Iraqi would know suddenly that his neighbor since ages must be his enemy, a fact based on religious purposes, but that neighbor may seem nice and respective. Hate would be postponed and replaced by some suspicious waiting.

“The Jewish Market Quarter” by Jamal Abdul-Razaq Al Bedri is not a novel, like the cover says, but is an autobiography of the writer who was born in Samarra early in this century in a Muslim family. He told us about his mother friend “Sit (=Teacher) Najeya” who is also their neighbor. Every time she visited them she would bring candies to the children who liked her very much. Sit Najeya and her family suddenly said one day that they would leave to Baghdad. They went in 1951 and never came back. They went to Israel because they were Jewish.

The book didn’t tell us about the cause of the leaving but it is clear from other references: “Al Farhood” and the governmental new law of withdrawing the Iraqi nationality from all the Jews.
Maybe the book was described as a novel because of its lovable non-systematic narration, something more close to a novel than to an autobiography. The book tells us many things that were really a revelation for me like the origin of the name “Samarra”. They told us in our schools that it is the abbreviation of “Surra Man Ra’aa (= who saw it became happy)” and that it was built by an Abbasid Khalifa. But the writer goes more deep in history and stated that the Abbasid Khalifa who is said to built Samarra to make it as his capital didn’t built it actually from nothing. There was already there an old city inhabitant mainly by Christians and Jews. He move to it, made it larger, and made it as his ruling capital. The book told us also that Shem, son of Noah was born in that same place and from his name came the name of the city since in Arabic he is called “Sam”.

I felt that what he says is strange, I googled the origin of the name of Samarra and found that it is ancient in origin, and came from the Aramaic language, and there are many theories about its meaning and root.

The writer told us also about the founding of an original Torah by German group of excavation in Samarra in the 1930s, a version which belongs to 2000 years ago.
The writer told us that he is a Sunni Muslim, but at the same time, his city of origin, contains the graves of two of the Imams of the 12 imams of Shia. His childhood had been spent around those big monuments and his prayers and Quran reading was done under their domes (Those are the same domes that were exploded in 2006).
The writer got some interest in the history of Jewish people and he told us that he believes what Hertzel said in his book “the Jewish State” in that the Jewish people are like salt and the world cannot live without them, is true.
The book is written with love, here is a translation of some part of it:

“….and there is nothing strange about that since the holy Quran tells us in three quarters of its suras (=chapters) about Moses, the Israelites, and the Jews. When I meditate about that fact I saw it is in resonance with the water to ground ratio, three quarters of water, and one quarter of land. And from this point of view I understand the relation of Moses the prophet and the Jews with the sea.. since the sea contain the salt which protect its water from getting rotten”.

Decades after Sit Najeya family left, the writer and one of Najeya’s son, Yousif (=Joseph) met. The second half of the book tell us what happened to Najeya family.
It was a pleasure to see that “new facts” about us are being told by some few educated men filled with love and acceptance. Iraq is still under the influence of the some bad cooks who forgot essential elements and Iraq is getting more and more tasteless. Hope Iraq would gain its original flavor someday.

The book is published by
Dar Al Hikam Publishing and Distribution in 2004 in its first edition

"Khidr Qad and the Olive-green Era" a novel by Naseef Falaq

The king with the goat ear got the habit of killing any barber that cut his hair for him so that people would not know about his ears. The last barber was imprisoned in the king’s castle but they let him only to have a walk in the king’s castle garden. In his walk he told the ground. Reeds grew up from the ground. A shepherd came one day and they asked him to cut the reeds away. The shepherd made reed-pipes from them and sold them. Every time one of the villagers plays with the reed-pipe, the pipe would sing: the king got ears of a goat. The king made a speech to his villager: “all honest people must got goat ears”. Since then and the villagers got goat ears.

That was the synopsis of Khidr piece of theatre he made while he was a student that drove troubles after him. That day of the act he had to jump over the wall of his college and run away. He was not able to go back to his college unless he sign on a paper stating that he would never write a piece of theatre. He started to write small notes and insert them in his big wooden table of writing that he made for his self. He made some secret hidden area in the table where he can insert papers. They would not go out unless by breaking the table.

It seems to me a nightmare becomes reality
The last days of the paradise are gone for you and me
We're living in the crossfire
And we'll be killed at first
Why cannot people that we made the leaders of the world
Understand that we don't wanna fight
Understand that we are mush too young to die
Understand no one will survive
Understand that we love our life

Khidr was a student in Baghdad Beaux Art Academy. He cannot kill somebody. But the regime wanted him to join the army, it was war with Iran and all men of his age must fight. He left his table to his friend Kareem and told him about its secret. He took two books with him to war, one of Albert Camus “The Plaque” and the other of Taher Ben Jalloun “The Sacred Night”. He spent most of the time in reading to the surprise of his different bosses who all punished him. He was shifted to Baghdad big prison and was tortured there till they thought someday he had died. They put him with the dead cadavers. He farted. Somebody heard his fart and came and rescued him from being buried alive.

He loved Sallama who refused to marry somebody but he. But they took him again to the front of the war. She decided to wait but her family found her a man and forced her to accept. She ran away to her widow aunt in the south who runs her farm by herself.

Khidr, seen as of no benefit, had been sent to serve in a mountain in the north as a guardian of the Iraq- Iran border and to report any Iranian troop that may cross the border. Khidr, one night, took his two books and run down the mountain and crossed the borders to Iran.

Can I trust the meaning of the life line in my hand
Which is as long as exciting hundred years
I could be a lucky man
But I'm living in the crossfire
Of a time that starts to burn
Why cannot people that we made the leaders of the world
Understand that we don't wanna fight
Understand that we are mush too young to die
Understand no one will survive
Understand that we love our life

He didn’t like Iran though he spent some years till 1991. The regime invaded Kuwait. They started to be defeated by the coalition forces and Khidr thought that they are getting weaker. He crossed the border again, back to Iraq and joined the armed men from the south who were fighting to liberate the south of Iraq from Saddam’s regime and were heading for Baghdad. Khidr joined them but he forgot the fire arm they give it to him. Suddenly the coalition forces withdraw themselves, Saddam’s regime starts again taking by force the cities of the south killing everybody who fight or may fight. Khidr was caught easily. They started kicking him till they thought he died. His body had been taken with other dead bodies in a big car and they started digging a big hole in the ground. A shepherd with few goats and a dog was watching from a distance. They put them in the hole and was about to start to bury them. Somebody saw the shepherd. No witness is allowed. They brought her by force and threw her in the hole. Sallama fall on Khidr. They looked at each other but before they can identify each other soil started entering their noses, mouths, and eyes. They were buried together.
Kareem still doesn’t know that Khidr is dead but time is going and there is nothing about him. Kareem broke the table and published this book, a novel named: “Khidr Qad and the Olive-green Era”, written by Naseef Falaq.

The song is by Scorpions and called “Crossfire” form the Album “Love At First Sting 1984”
The painting is by Faisal Laibi and named “The Funeral” 1976.

Anxious Journey

It was said that this song is about a war. Some specify more and said that it was about Vietnam war. But I have put it some way from its proposed contest, this post is not about war, it is more about a journey. It seems that writing a post while hearing a song over and over again is working for me But it is not always linked together, sometimes the link get loose, and words flow like the resolution of a grey clowd into a budding tree. This is my trip, to and back from, Damascus. I went there to take my final year written exam in psychiatry.




Us and Them


And after all we're only ordinary men


Me, and you


God only knows it's not what we would choose to do



I was in my spaceship wearing my oxygenated human-contact-proof helmet playing some kind of mental solitaire in the waiting space to take a bus to Syria. An elderly lady wearing a necklace with a cross, entered to the waiting area with a slow pace, with all her historical charm, slimness, short hair, and walking stick talked to me. I didn’t hear. My helmet is noise-proof. She held her stick up high in the heavens and with the weight of all the different Gods that people once dreamt of she centered the tip of her stick on my contact-proof helmet and break it like breaking a cover of a nut for her grandson: “young man, take this prescription, bring me this drug from a nearby pharmacy, I cannot walk anymore”. I went roaming around and around and the pharmacologists were giving me paranoid looks since that prescription got opioids in it. I went to her back without the drug. “Sorry, they don’t have it”. She took the prescription and for 12 hours of the road from Baghdad to Damascus she kept giving me sandwiches, candies, and nuts.

Forward he cried from the rear


and the front rank died


And the General sat, as the lines on the map


moved from side to side



Al Saleheya explosion was a black dot that didn’t dry I held on the back of my head. I tried not to touch the back of my head. On the day of the explosion I was going to that same area but I quitted. I was still at the street when I heard a sound of explosion. I thought it is so near. All people started looking to the direction of the sound. After one minute we heard another one. We looked down and walked in our way, each one to his way. I took a bus to my home. The radio was off. We were silent. Two men came up in the bus and told us about the site of the explosion. We sank in our silence. On the night of that same day of the explosion, I decided that I should send her a message telling her how much I like her, and that I want to be her friend. In Syria, almost all the taxi men asked me about the cause of the explosions and what is going on. I knew no more than them.

Black and Blue


And who knows which is which and who is who


Up and Down


And in the end it's only round and round and round



In the exam there was a question about Digoxin and whether it causes confusion or not. I wondered for some few seconds and then wrote: “yes, it causes confusion”. Then came another question: “by what mechanism?”. Oh God, and what the hell I know. Ask him, ask the Digoxin why he causes all that confusion and by what mechanism I am little tired for this. They told me that it was me who asked to be examined. “Really?”, I said “I cannot remember, my memory is tired, I want something to drink please”. Godot opened the door of the examination room and offered me a walk in Damascus.



Haven't you heard it's a battle of words


the poster bearer cried


Listen son, said the man with the gun


There's room for you inside

Damascus was rainy but Godot put a rule if I want to stay with him then I must go silent for a while. We walked till we reached Al Hamedya market. He stood and looked at me. I knew he was examining me: will I chose to enter the market or walk by the old walls.
I walked by the wall. He followed me with a smile of victory. By the wall we saw that statue of Salah Al Deen Al Ayoubi. Godot stopped and started talking: “Al Ayoubi was born in Iraq, went to Syria, then Egypt. In Egypt he had to enter the war with the crusaders. Many Egyptians are Christians and they were not sure what to do. Should they fight with Al Ayoubi against the crusaders, or should they welcome their brothers in religion. Al Ayoubi said his famous saying to them: “Religion is for God, and nation is for everyone”.”
“Godot,…” I said and looked in his eyes seriously. He held his breath. “Get lost!” I said. He disappeared at once while I was trying to fixate my attention and to maintain my concentration in resolving some other questions. With time, I felt I am more into the game of answering questions. With time, my divergent squint into a convergent one.

Down and Out


It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about


With, without


And who'll deny that's what the fightings all about



I took the bus back to Baghdad. Gladys Matar took it with me and told me that story of that valley of the Ash she thinks worth to talk about. People living there were called “the Grayish People” and their society was “Unsuitable for Adults” as she said, and she seemed to liken it to a circus, as the circus was mentioned in each chapter of her narration. They were having constant war without a clear cause with people who came from the desert who finally invaded their city, the Grayish Valley. The invaders were of a different religion. She told me about Thu Al Hak (=Of the Right Justice) who is shy, suspicious, and impulsive. Who loved an ex-prostitute and married her. Told me about their city sultan who every time he overtopped the pulpit and starts talking, a crowd of dinosaurs invade the city in a chaotic running shaking the earth beneath them and swaying their bodies. She is good in some parts of her narration but I was lost in some of her circumstantialities and tangentialities. While she was talking I remembered some of my dreams and wondered about their meanings. She kept talking her thousand and one night while I slept in the chair of that bus. I woke up with a neck pain. She was still talking. “Gladys, listen”, I said while she stopped talking stunned, “your novel got some unnecessary details and some of them are misleading, you called your novel as “Velvet Revolution” and there is no Velvet, nor Revolution, and somebody had put Delacroix painting of “Algerian women in their apartment” on the cover of your novel but why?”. I said that to her in some anger. I got the sense that I was rough on her, in spite of the fact that her narration is one of the few Arabic female narration that doesn't feel "female". I felt I should show her some respect. But I added with some calm and a smile while my eyes were looking at the desert from the window of the bus: “Woody Allen got a film named Shadows and Fog, it is of the same theme of your novel”, then I looked at her and said while my smile turned into laughter: “but it is much better”. She stood up, pulled her shirt down with anger and went to the desert alone leaving me to my neck pain and fading smile.




Get out of the way, it's a busy day


And I've got things on my mind


For want of the price of tea and a slice


The old man died

I reached Baghdad to know that I failed to pass the Iraqi board exam. I was so tired so I preferred to take a deep sleep and spent some time in yawning. My friend phoned me and asked me about the result of my exam. “I failed” I said. The other day he phoned me again and said: “Sami I decided to give you a present because you failed.” We went by a taxi, the taxi man was talking too much. We went back home by two new bicycles. I reached home very tired. I took a very hot water bath that washed the dead leaves from my growing tree.





"Velvet Revolution" is a novel by the Syrian Gladys Mattar.

Jack Abboudi Shabi, between an Eggplant and a Squash

".... and he told me have you drunk Shabi before? yes it was own by them, it was their family name, such a long time... he looked sadly at his wife. She was smiling widely..."

I don't know how much my neighbour was right in his recall of Baghdad history. What I was sure of was that Jack Abboudi Shabi was very famous and known to all the elderlies that I have mentioned his name to. His mention to my neighbours tempted them to tell me more about their old Baghdad and their peacful quarters. They would argue with each other on tiny details

"... the bakery shop was next to the barber and you are the one who got dementia, not me...what was his name?....that one with that nice car..."
"... what are you talking about... barber and a car and what else?....a love story?.."

Al Mada Paper had re-published an interview with Jack Abboudi Shabi, the Iraq first psychiatrist. It was originally done in 1957. Al Mada paper published weekly a bulletin entitled "Iraqi Memory" and is given freely to any one who buys a Mada Newspaper. It is available to be downloaded freely on its site: http://almadapaper.net/

Thank you Al Mada, you are one of a kind.

With the doctor that lived a half century with the insane

By: Saeed Al Rubaie

I entered Doctor Jack Abboudi’s hospital (house of Al Rasheed) and I had intended to ask many questions to him, but he started to raise a question and answering it there after, the questions he raised and his answers were up to the point and as I hoped it would be.

Treating disease by a disease
Words started flowing fluently from the doctor’s mouth and I found it difficult to follow him writing everything he was saying. He talked comprehensively about history of psychiatry in Iraq and abroad especially he had had a scholarship to the UK in 1932 hence he said:
At that time there was no true treatment for mental illnesses in the world but on type of treatment of the General Paresis of the Insane which is the resut of brain infection with siphilus and that treatment was injecting the patient with the microorganisms that causes Malaria, causing malaria in the patient, increasing his temperature hence cured from his original disease, then malaria is treated thereafter, hence it is treating one disease by another.
While other treatments were concentrating on putting the aggitated patient in a small room lined by soft tissues so that he won’t hurt himself if he hit the wall, or he put in a hot bath continuously, or he is tied by the strait jacket.

Sheikhs and the water of squash
The doctor came back to Iraq in 1934, and the patients, were under the mercy of Sheikhs like Al Tuayjuri and Sheik Gumar, who were treating their patients with violent hitting, because they believed that the illness is caused by a Jenni inside the patients body, and they were using what was called as “water of cheese” and it is a big dose of milk mixed with a laxative, and there was another widely used treatment and it is the “Squash oil” which was used after the patient head is shaved totally and then oiled, and the believe was that Squash is cold and hence decreasing the heat of the head, while the eggplant is hot and it causes the mental illnesses.

Advences in treatment
In the year 1935 some medical journals started publishing articles about new treatments among which was treatment by seizure, a seizure was induced in the patient by injecting epileptogenic substance and soon there was evidence that it helps in treating acute depression, mania, and schizophrenia.

Other treatments
In the year 1936 another treatment was discovered and it was by insulin coma in which the patient is injected with insulin that is used normally to patients with diabetes. The patient is injected with huge amounts till his body contains no more carbohydrates and he would be in a vegetative state, then he would be given glucose intavenously, and this operation would be repeated 30 times, after which the patient condition improves and he regain insight.

After the appearance of these new treatments, doctor Jack thought about going to the UK to get the experience of applying these new treatments because it wasn’t a good idea that he starts applying them from merely reading journals, but with the coming of professor Hoff to Iraq in 1938 doctor Jack cancelled his idea of travelling abroad and they started together to apply the new treatments in Iraq.
There were many other advences in psychiatric treatments in Iraq since then and the doctor thought about opening a new treatment centre and it was opened in 1943, in which over 3000 patients were treated.

Cutting brain fibers
In 1964 an iraqi doctor named Najeeb Al Yakoubi had done the first operation in brain in Iraq and in all the Middle East and that was by cutting the nerve fibers that connect the emotion centre to the brain cortex hence abolishing the effects of aggitated emotions on the brain and mind and doctor Al Yakoubi is still doing this operation to the treatment resistant patients.
And lately new tranquilizing drugs were discovered in the USA and its use is widely spread these days like the spead of using Aspirin.

New association…
Doctor Jack Aboudi then opened a subject rarely opened by other doctors and that was when he started talking about the Associations and Organizations that is present in great number in Iraq and they are about many physical diseases and social problems and the doctor raises a question why don’t we in Iraq start an association of mental illness prevention? Since the Iraqi law has stated how much mental illness recognition is important to the criminal laws and the government had recruited a psychiatrist as a member in the court of the adolescents but still there are no efforts to prevent mental illness.

Faking madness..
Till now it was doctor Jack raising questions to himself and answering them thereafter. Now I have asked a question:
How can you differentiate between a really mad one and someone who is faking. The doctor smiled wide and answered:
Some fake madness when they are confronted by a crime of homicide since the patient with mental illness is not guilty. Since the person who tries to fake does not know much about the types and classification of the mental illnesses he would act different roles from different illnesses and he would exagurate things and act as if a mentally retard hence if asked what is the sum of one pluse one he would answer eight.
And that way we would know who is faking.
In rare cases we inject the person with a drug making him loosing control over his deliberation and hence his faking.

Women more affected
I asked him another question:
Who are affected more with mental illnesses men or women?
He answered: women… due to social causes related to culture and tranditions, and in many times the women is affected by a mental illness during pregnancy and delivery.

Al Usboo’a magazine
1957

That was my translation. Forgive me for my ever lasting bad english.

A Kiss to Mankind

I decided to took a rest, opened the T.V. on the BBC ARABIC channel where there was a document about some religions and beliefs of some tribes living in Philippines. They were really strange. The man making the travel and documenting for us is a Christian feeling so estranged, and sometimes he passes us the feeling of how funny their beliefs were, in spite of the respect he is trying to show. The document then started to go south to tell us about the aboriginal people of Australia. He left the aboriginal people after seeing how they put their children in a smoke they made from setting fire in some herbs so that their children become stronge. He left them to go to Sydney. What he saw there made him look so serious.

I hesitated to buy his book. Malik Al Mutalibi is a well known poet, university professor, and a literary critic that writes in a very classic Arabic. I don’t understand most of his writings but that old man of that small library near the garage told me with his husky voice: “you should have it, it is a pleasure to read”. He rarely says that to me. I looked at the book and it is so elegant and with a clever cover and what a title: “the Abandoned Excavations of the Unconscious”.
In the minibus, I didn’t enjoy the first chapter which was a letter to both Gunter Grass and Kenzaburo Oe telling them about Iraq. I didn’t like the beginning much.

I put the book aside for some days.

I went back to the book in an afternoon. Malik Al Mutalibi tells us in one of his excavations about that Mandaean teacher they got at school in Al Mushrah (a city in the south of Iraq in the governorate of Umara\ Meesan). Malik Al Mutalibi was a student making a speech to welcome the visit of minister of interior to their school:

“
- God send our prophet Mohammed to Quraish in Mecca to invite them to Islam. Few believed in him, most did not at first. The apostates tried to abort his mission. The apostates…
- Are there apostates in Al Mushara (asked the minister of interior)
- Yes!

The minister of interior looked then looked at me with a waiting smile:
- Yes?
- Yes
- Now?

I shook my head with: “yes”.
- Who?
- Al Sub’ba (= the Mandaean)

On the next day the English teacher who was a Mandaean was upset. I raised my hand and asked him:

- How can we say minter of interior in English?

He sulked. Took some time then turned to the black board and wrote in bold letters: MAN KIND. I copied that in my copybook. After years, I understood what he meant.”

The trip went to Australia and suddenly the face of the man making the travel changed. He looked serious while looking at the Mandaeans making their baptizing in Sydney. They told him with the most kindness about their beliefs and about John the Baptist among other things.


They were having a marriage and the BBC was invited. In spite of my sadness that such peaceful people are away from their land, I felt happy for the peace they found in that far continent. Love and Respect for you Mandaeans.



Pictures taken from the T.V. (the first is taken from the Mandaeans marriage and is of the kiss of the new husband and wife , the second a young lady making some explanation about her religion, and the third is a scene from the mariage). The words in rosy color are my trial to translate some of the lines from Malik Al Mutalibi latest book: "the Writing Memory: the Excavation of the Abandoned Unconsious".

What is Art For?

“O village songs,
You kinship bridge between generations!
Nation hides in you
Its threads of destiny,
And its arms of victory.
O village songs,
O guardian of memories.”
Adam Mickiewicz

I was just a teenage and he was tall and old and he chose one day to sit next to me and I felt so happy for that. He asked me: “what book are you reading these days?” I liked that kind of question. I opened my mouth proudly to say: “a Russian novel of… (I forgot the writer) entitled the white dog with the black ear”. I was surprised by his sarcastic smile which was turned a little by little into a sardonic smile and he told me with anger that I should read something worthy!!
During my life, I have faced recurrently the question of why do I read novels, and why do I hear music. What is art, in general, is for. And what do I gain from it.

Have seen the film “the pianist”? How the Nazis occupied Poland and what they did to the Jewish population there in World War II? That was the main theme of the film, but what was in between the lines? What was the soul of the film?

Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jewish pianist survived till a Nazi soldier found him wandering in aplace he should not be. Clearly, the fate of the pianist was to be killed. A question slipped from the lips of the Nazi like a slow black serpent about to kill:

- Who are you?
- I was a pianist.
- Play something, the Nazi said challenging.

Szpilman answered him by Chopin’s Ballad no. one. It is music. A human thing. It is why animals feel small next to human. It is beauty mixed with smartness, wisdom mixed with childhood. It is communication travels through space and time summarizing our history into a sweet song. It is why animals feel small next us, it was why the Nazi felt small next to Szpilman:

- What will you do when it is all over? Asked the Nazi.
- I’ll play the piano again. On the Polish radio.

So what do we gain from art. We gain our dignity. We tell our story. We share existance. We pass by the reason of why we are humans, and what we are doing here, on this earth.

Photos taken from the film, music is Chopin's Grande Polonais Op. 22 which was played in the film in two scenes. Mickiewicz is a Polish poet and the lines above were tranlated by Kudri Kalachi to Arabic, and by me, to english cause I didn't found it in English and I don't know the name of the peom these lines taken from, so pardon me.

A Day Dream

I walked to the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, went to a neglected area, felt frightened from the possibility that a snake would come and bite me, went back, felt tired then walked aimlessly and I was suddenly next to Marduk who gave me energy to go for a second walk and I found that neglected building.
It seems like that it is of the temples of Ishtar worship. Its neglected gate got iron sticks that prohibit entrance in a very primitive way. I looked right and left, nobody was there. All this neglect from those in charge and they still feel that they should prohibit me from entering the temple, Ishtar temple, my love temple?
From the first steps and I regained my nostalgic breathlessness, a kind of shortness of breath that I wantted it to last long. My ears caught a piece of music played at a very low intensity, as if for a child to sleep. The old brick floor, the silence, and the sun light were inviting me to a dream. The walls were so old and I wondered what they were made from. I looked close at them and found a writing on one of the walls: “Hassan”. Hassan is an Arabic name written in Arabic on one of the walls. So it seems that people are free to write on these walls. It is neglected and abused. I felt sad. The music stopped.
Walked few steps and I saw a dim corridor with a source of light at the end of it. As I was walking in with cautious steps I started feeling in love again with Babel and smelled the glory of Ishtar. The music started again. I reached the end of the corridor and it was a room with a destroyed ceiling and the sunlight is coming from above. A new unexpected wave of disappointment hit me. The music stopped again.

I wanted to leave but I heard a whisper: “wait”.
I stopped stunned and saw Ishtar coming from the sky. Her feet were about to touch the floor but she stayed still in the air and said: “you can feel sad and can get disappointed although I want you to make it, to make it…. um, how is the exact word?” She lost her words. I was stunned that a Goddess could lose her words. “How could you lose your words and you are a Goddess?” I asked her.
“I am an old fashion Goddess you know, and my age has gone too far, reached 7000 maybe? So ..look don’t interrupt me when I talk ok?” she pointed her index finger at me in an act that made me smile. She looked like my primary school teacher. “Hey be aware I can read your thoughts!” she said. My smile vaporized but the scene was full of comedy. She looked so funny.
“Ehm ehm.. temporary, . make your sadness” she opened her eyes widely, moved her head in front and to a side, make a smile of proud of the philosophy she was teaching me pointed her finger again and added “and disappointment temporary!”.
“That is it?” I said feeling disappointed of what Ishtar can say.
“You didn’t like what I have said?” she said sadly with a childish tone.
“It seems easy for you to say it while you live in the sky with your deep purple custom. After all I think our problem is that we forget. We forget too much. How many explosions have hit Iraq? How many crimes? We were never sure who did them. We ask for a day or a week. Then we forget our sadness as you say and quit asking. Our souls had become ambiguous political letters from one ambiguous sender to an ambiguous receiver.” I lost my temper and I noticed my hands shivering.
She froze. She looked down for a while. Raised her head and said: “but don’t lose your faith in me, cause I love you and I do believe in you.” She put a kiss in her hand and through the kiss to me. I took it and put it in my heart. Ishtar started her journey back to the sky. I went back to my bed after that daydream. The music started again.

The music is of Marcel Khalifa named "King from Times Past". The description of "our souls had become an ambiguous messages from ambiguous sender to an ambigious reciever" is taken from an article of Haider Sa'ad on the occation of assassination of Kamil Shya'a