Baghdad Burning

The novel Baghdad Burning is the story through the eyes of a 24-year-old blogger from Iraq who goes by the anonymous name, Riverbend. She writes blogs about everyday life occurrences, which are very different from America when there is a war going on in your backyard.  Riverbend was raised several years aboard as a child and never stop studying English when she moved back to Baghdad. Reading the novel through a woman’s perspective for this experience is very unique for this story because as a woman, you tend to notice many more details and see the different emotions others go through.  She explains in detail the trauma that Iraq goes through during the war with America. It is shocking to realize that while we were off living our lives almost forgetting about the war while people in Iraq were going through such grueling circumstances and had their world turned upside down. In Iraq, electricity was scarce forcing her family to have one generator for 5 houses, the area was going through a drought, and people were constantly living in fear. Not only were the men fighting, women and children were being dragged out of their homes where their possessions would be burnt or damaged. Many people are dragged from their home or school and are never found again; they just disappear. Others are caught in the causalities of bombs or guns because they live in a warzone. Fear is constantly present instilled in every Iraqi of the unknown. Riverbend repeatedly describes the way certain women are handling this war. She speaks of women who have lost someone to have eyes of sorrow or vague and lifeless look in her gaze. Her blogs just prove that it is more than a war to these people it is tearing apart and ending their families. A woman lost her children and husband and when Riverbend looked at her she was ¼ of a person.  Riverbend explains the holiday, Eid, which is the ending of the fast of Ramadan. The purpose of the holiday is to bring the family together which they do to celebrate but they are scared to be seen in a large group because they could be mistaken for a terrorist group.  The war was affecting family traditions

The president of America, George W. Bush apparently came to visit Iraq for approximately two hours and he made it seem as if he liberated Iraq. When Bush came to Iraq, his arrival trumped the story on how two girls were killed allegedly by American soldiers. Riverbend showed how there were two different stories the ones that Iraq believed happened and the Americans trying to prove they were not blame for this casualty. It made me question all the information we got from the news over the years about what was going on in Iraq during the war.  Most people picture the detained Iraqis to be men in 30s or 40s but there are women who get dragged off to prison as well as their children. There is this stereotype in other coutnries heads that it is just the men that are being tortured by the hostility but it is everyone. Compared to what I thought at the time of this war was not the same idea I was getting from this blog. The news was creating a different image of how the war was impacting the people of Iraq but Riverbend’s blog gives a new incite to how a person from Iraq views the circumstances and the realities of what was going on. I heard about many of the causualities but was  unaware of how taxing and large they were but there were also many that were not reported.

Something that put the entire circumstance into perspective was when Riverbend said, “ we started the year of 2004 preparing for war while other countries were making their lists of resolutions” (180). The war changed their lives while the rest of the world was living in a fantasy that all was well in the world.  It has held them back from moving on from their life and developing into the person the strive to be. Riverbend stopped keeping track of time when the war started in March.  She started to view war as, “its not that you no longer feel rage or sadness, it just becomes a part of life and you grow to expect it like you expect rain in March and sun in June” (181). Because of this war not only was Iraq in a financial crisis; there were ideas that Iraq would be separated into several different sections based on ethnicity and religion.

The closing pages are about 9/11 and how in Iraq this occurrence happens on at least a monthly basis.  How we felt using the airports after 9/11 is how the Iraqi people felt doing anything normal.  Weddings, stores, resturants, and many everyday places were used as the target. They live in a land of no safety with a ton of fear.