The Other World...

Get up from bed…finishing the morning routines takes about 30 minutes…grab a quick bite…collect ur car keys…off I go melting into the morning traffic to my place of work some 16 kms away…so what’s new? Nothing, except that I don’t have to worry about where my next meal will come from or whether a stray rocket is going to vaporise my house along with it’s occupants by the time I return home…or wonder why the trash has been collecting on the streets for years on end, so much so that my landmarks are one putrid mound to the next cause all the familiar landmarks have been shelled and bombed to oblivion or shall I be happy that I no longer see rotting and animal feasted bodies on the streets and that the dead need only wait a day to be picked up.

Those of us who live on the other side of the world can’t for a minute imagine the life an ordinary Iraqi lives or what the Afghans had to go through during the vacuum created by the withdrawing Soviet army, the different warlords reducing the Afghan nation to shambles or the misrule of the Talibans…Today’s Iraq is no different nor are the other countless war-torn territories that we don’t have a clue about.

We can only glean the outer visages of this world from the literature that comes our way and can’t help but feel a sweltering mix of emotions…..blessed that our morning routines have remained unchanged in years…horrified that nations and people can wrought such havoc on humanity….helpless…

“After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!”

The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock (T. S. Elliot)

For those of you who would like to visit the fringes of this 'other world' read “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini and dispatches by Anna Badkhen from Iraq on Salon.