Reading Iraqi Newspaper (22 Oct 2013)

Well, I got to admit that now that I am writing this I still don’t know who is Charles Theron, and I don’t know if Hogu Chavez had died or not and if so, when that did happen. The article by Nazzar Abdul-Sattar entitled “Are You Okay?” in today’s issue of Al-Sabah talks about a couple, a female lying watching T.V. and a man who when brought her a glass of orange juice found her contemplating Charles Theron’s face appearing on the screen. They talked about Oscar prices. She told him that acting is difficult and he told her that asking questions is difficult too. She told him that Hugo Chafez had died just before one hour and he said he wanted to ask him a question.

The article goes well on that “they did this, they did that” narration. The woman seems ill since he put his hand on her forehead while she was lying. You get the idea that she had fever. While he was finally about to leave to the garden to smoke a cigarette she asked him about the question he had for Hugo Chafez.

The man said that he wanted to ask Chafez about where he did buy his blue shirt which he wear in February  1999. She told him that he couldn’t be ablt to remember that. He said that he knows he couldn’t remember but these are the kind of questions in Venezuela, you ask somebody about his shirt and he will curse liberalism, criticize the US foreign policy, and will declare his support for the poor. They like stupid questions, he said.

Next to the article was a picture of Witney Huston statue surrounded by a The London Gospel Factory.

A translated article from “Le Nouvel Observateur” written by Lorin Lumiere and translated by Jaudat Jali, talks about the books and journals that were read by the French soldiers in the ditches in the first World War. The newspapers were read the most, then comes Zola’s novel “The Defeat” which talks about the war of 1870 and says that that defeat will not occur again. Another novel is “Varter’s Pains” by Gothe. But when the war started American novels reached the peak like novels by Mark Twain and stories of Edgar Allen Poe.

I wouldn’t have read any political news if that picture was not there, the picture of that man making something with his hands, some traditional work that we don’t hear much about it nor see the products of it. I thought there should be some news about it and that was how I read that Iraq is making proposals of how to end the Syrian conflict.

It is night now. I will go to my room and will spend the night reading American Modern Poetry. Will read John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara. Will contemplate why O’Hara wrote “Why I am Not a Painter” in referring to Mike Goldberg’s painting “Sardine” while he was trying to write a poem named “Orange”. Sounds silly?

The life that we, ordinary Iraqi people, deserve is a life that is normal. A life that we care in for sardines and oranges. We long for a life that is so normal, that is so silly.