The Usual Double-Faced Coin

In Baghdad, life is going on the fast lane.
The amount of work makes up the counterpart of the lazy time I spend in my room, alone.

The TV becomes the greatest way to dumb down your brain. The moment I moved from the hotel to our allocated location -on campus, there was no more space for intellectual leisure.
With its presence in my room, across my bed, beside the door, it became practically impossible to read, write or even to think.

I am now addicted to a food channel: Fatafeat. It may seem funny, but it's not. Of course, with my stay here, I have to rely on my cooking skills for food. I have learned to make new recipes. I have learned to organize my time between school work and house work.

Sometimes, i feel like I've become a robot; timed and chained to chores and daily living skills. I am no longer the crazy creative one. I've become what i feared most of my life: one of them.

Them... Those who crave life as a linear equation y=mx+b. No matter what variables may arise. the result is always a straight line. A friend of mine once suggested that the world has turned into "Romibes": Zombie Robots.  I think, that friend, was one hell of a insightful person.

Coming to terms with my wasted times in Baghdad, I decided to join a gym. That place is a representation of a closed space (windows always covered and walls thickened by curtains). The gym i visit daily is only for women. In Iraq, many of the ladies I've met so far were forced to veil themselves. They told me that after the Great Fall (2006 - Iraq War and American Invasion), it was nearly impossible for girls and women to go out on the streets without getting harassed. Hence, the one solution presented itself with the veil.

Oh, the many things I witnessed here.

One day, the school held a Game day for the whole school. Surely, we had many veiled girls (ages between 7 to 15). The most surprising on that day was not the feeling of loss among the students who were not able to team up for team building activities. The most surprising was not the kids inability to play without violence. No! The most surprising were the girls who showed up to school unveiled, in their most beautiful attire. Yes! it was very surprising to see them. I could not recognize one.

Everybody asks me how life is in Baghdad. My mother mostly inquires about the basics of life: food and water. My father asks about security issues. Is it safe? Any happenings around? Friends think I have moved to a jungle.

Isn't the world itself a jungle?

The Middle East is a war zone. Eastern Europe is a war zone. Northern Africa is the war zone itself. The rest of the world just follows in this circus of checkmates.

The world's just an infinite reproduction of violence. And I am in the eye of the storm. Wherever I go, be it Beirut or Baghdad, is just the other face of the same coin.