It's been a long time since I've been fascinated with a specific book. I am an avid reader, and I typically have 2-3 fav authors. However, I predominantly like to visit the library or Indigo's and browse through the shelves, until I find a few I want to read. Today, I read this blurb about Abu Ghraib, froma book written by Lewis Alsamari, and am fascinated:
"...
The notoriety of Abu Ghraib was enough to chill the fervor of even the most revolutionary citizens. It was said that thousands of men and women were crammed into tiny cells and that abuse, torture, and executions were daily occurrences. The regime tested chemicals and biological weapons on the inmates, and some prisoners were given nothing but scraps of shredded plastic to eat. Chunks of flesh were torn from the bodies of some prisoners and then force-fed to others. Gruesome tortures involving power tools and hungry dogs were routine, and thousands of people who entered the doors of that fearsome place were never heard from again. It was known that mass graves existed around the country, and it was known in general terms where they were situated; but of course nobody dared to hunt out the final resting places of those poor men and women who had become victims of the enthusiastic guards at Abu Ghraib, for fear of becoming one of their number.
The four AIDS-stricken women were dealt with in a fashion brutal even by the standards of the prison. Stripped of their clothes, they were placed, alive and screaming, into an incinerator so that they and their “vile disease” could be utterly destroyed. In this way Saddam “delivered” our country from the horrific infections of the West and from the inequities of the “evil Zionist state.” I kept quiet about my maternal grandmother’s Jewish heritage. She was one of only a handful of Jews who remained in Iraq during the great exodus of 1950. Before that time there were about 150,000 Jews living in Iraq; now there were fewer than a hundred, and it would have done me no favors if anyone suspected that I might embrace Zionism.
Other atrocities took place more openly. As living conditions became increasingly intolerable, many women were forced into prostitution in order to make enough money to feed themselves and their families. It was an occupation deemed unacceptable by the state, punishable by death. The swift hand of justice was left to officials of the Ba’ath party, who were given orders to seek and behead all those suspected of prostitution. The standard of proof required was low, but the enthusiasm with which these officials carried out their work was high. Accompanied by two “witnesses” from the local community, they forced their way into the house of a suspect then dragged her out into the street, where a specialist executioner was waiting with a sword. He sliced off the head of the screaming women with one deft, well-practiced stroke. The head hung outside the woman’s house for two days, and her front door was branded with the warning “Hathihee Al-Qahba’a.” “This is the Whore.”
I remember a parade down one of the main thoroughfares of Baghdad when I was a child. The road was closed to traffic, and thousands of people joined in the march, which was intended to celebrate the glory of Saddam. As the day wore on, however, a small group of insurgents became vocal in their criticisms of the regime and started to shout anti-Saddam slogans. There weren’t very many—certainly only a small proportion of the crowd—but the Republican Guard was quick to react. A helicopter immediately flew overhead, and white paint was poured over the entire crowd—insurgents and noninsurgents alike. Heavily armed soldiers were then dispatched with orders to shoot anyone stained with white paint. The whole operation took less than an hour. A few lucky souls with paint only on their clothes managed to escape the crowd and change, but people with paint in their hair or bodies, where it was more difficult to remove, fared less well. The military scoured the area and shot dead anybody suspected of being part of the “uprising.”
..."
The brutality is mind boggling. Amit's comments about this book are insightful (as usual)...
"It underscores something that many of us seem to have forgotten in our idealogical zeal: Iraq under Saddam was a hellish land. Yes, the Americans bungled their invasion, and with their arrogance created more enemies than the friends they expected. (I foolishly supported the invasion at the time.) But I’m not sure they made Iraq any worse off. "
I will end my ravings tonight with a link to another article. This one is by Akshay Ahuja from India/MD, USA, and reflects his journey in the Indian Death Metal music-o-sphere (does that word even exist? too tired to check dictionary.com now)...here is a brief section:
"...
On the mp3 page, the band said that they wished to compose pieces that combined “melody and brutality.” The three songs on the website were named “Shattered Shield”, “Perceiving Resurrection”, and “Removal of the Fetus”. I tried “Shattered Shield”, which was identified as being about police and government corruption.
The song loaded. A single guitar played arpeggios on a slow, dark three-chord progression. The drums came in, and then some fairly complicated ornamentation from a second guitar. Wow, I thought, they’re pretty good. Then the drums started pounding bapbapbapbap, the guitars raged, and the vocals came in—grunts, growls, screams, all emerging from some place deep in the back of the throat. I couldn’t imagine what connection the words had to the Indian police force.
...
We got back in the car and drove through the empty streets, the blue coming into the sky. We reached my home just as dawn was breaking on Independence Day. I gave Pradyum a hug, and we promised to see each other again soon.
When we did, more than a year later, Gorified had broken up—the others weren’t serious enough about it, Pradyum said—and Pradyum had formed a new band called Infinite Dreams; their music was softer, more melodic. His band mate was headed to London for a six-month course in audio recording, and Pradyum would hopefully follow him there. Then they would try to really make it abroad. He and Anitha were married now, and she was moving up the Alamo chain. Pradyum was making good money too; he had started a real estate company that, he told me in an email, dealt in “total real estate solutions.” The rural land around the city was being bought up for office buildings, and Pradyum brokered deals with the farmers and secured the land for the companies, making sure, he assured me, that no one was cheated.
From the calls he took on his cell phone, I could already tell that he had the necessary combination of forcefulness and charm. I told him that he must be good at his job and he seemed offended. Music was his life, he said; this was just temporary.
We drove in his new car around this stretch of land, beautiful and green after the monsoon. We were heading towards the Nandi Hills, an hour outside Bangalore. There were buildings going up everywhere.
I asked him about the guitar, and he told me, half sheepishly and then with a smile when he saw that I didn’t mind, that he had sold it. It wasn’t right for his new band, he said. He had made a rather sizable profit on its sale.
I remembered what he had said about identity music, and wondered how much of your life you had to give to something before you could claim it as identity, and how you could measure the level of that allegiance. Was it in clothes and nose rings and how many hours a day you spent doing each thing? Or maybe all of that was irrelevant, and it was purely how you looked at your life, even while selling real estate or being an engineer or taking midnights calls from Americans.
Pradyum turned the stereo up—it was Judas Priest—and we headed towards the mountains.
..."
