Today is my fifth day in the United States and I am still not getting it. I don’t fit. I don’t know why. I always thought it would be easier for me to settle here. But, No. Not now. Leaving a whole family behind and dear ones doesn’t feel right. The strongest I feel now is guilt!

I have been accepted to one of the best universities in the U.S. I am studying journalism now. I am a graduate student of a journalism school. Just what I always wanted since I’ve involved in this journalism thing. I am lucky, I guess.

But what about my mother? Father? Brothers and sister-in-aw? What about Habibti [my dear] niece? They are not safe living in Iraq. I hate being lucky. I don’t know what to make of myself. I can’t accept the idea of living an normal life and just watching my family and friends suffer all the time. I should be suffering. That’s just how I feel.

Tens of thousands of Iraqi youth would envy me now for having a chance of a life time. I know that. I realize how great it is to have the ability to study in the States. But…….. I don’t know. It’s not easy to say. But I am not happy. It’s been five days only and I already started to isolate myself from the community. I know that is not healthy, but I can’t help it.

You know what.. maybe I can’t listen to people talking about their problems when I come from Iraq. It is really hard for me to listen to someone who would say he or she “suffered a lot” before getting a place to stay in. just the word “suffer” it is not for such a “problem.”

In one of the planes I took to get to where I am, I overheard a girl talking to her boyfriend after we landed. “Really! Eeeeew, I love you.” And she kept doing it. Then she started telling him how much she missed him over the last “few days” and that she couldn’t sleep well because she was away from him. I couldn’t understand that and you know why? Because I will be away from my family and beloved ones for more than two years. And who knows. Maybe when I go back, I will find most of them already left. Left forever I mean!

People are still nice here. Just like how I remember them from the last time I was here. I can’t believe how comfortable I feel when I start talking to someone here. Not only Americans, but everyone. It is like there is magic in this land: if you put a foot in the U.S., you get “niceness” for free!

I miss the old Omar. If it was safe for me to go back to Iraq, I would leave tomorrow. But I know, if they don’t kill me because I am a journalist, they will torture me to death because my name is Omar.

Feeh!

[The picture above shows one foot of each of Then Some, Morbid Smile, Attawi, Micho, Healing Iraq, Baghdad Treasure, Twenty Four Steps To Liberty and a friend.]

We have met again, last night. It was even more fun last night because we had some activity going on. One of the bloggers played guitar.

I don’t usually listen to English language songs. I just like the Arabic ones more. But all the guys sang on Nabeel’s tunes. It was fun. People walked around us gazing on our group. They liked the scene.

The weather was marvelous. The breeze was just perfect. It was kind of chilling even. It is August, which means the bottom of hell-like weather in Baghdad. The first thing popped in our mind was that “poor Iraqis. They are living in hell now and we are enjoying the weather here.”

In Baghdad now, it is easy over 50 c degree, no breeze, no shades [because they had to cut many trees to replace them by cement barriers], no electricity, no water, and no diesel or gasoline to operate generators. Imagine how could people live in these circumstances. And they wonder “why Iraqis are violent”!!!

While I was enjoying the time with my new friends last night, I got a call from an Iraqi friend here in Amman. he told me that the prices of oil products in Baghdad have reached a point where when it’s become impossible for the average Iraqi to buy them. A liter of gasoline is now for 1000 Iraqi dinars [when a while ago it became 230 Iraqi dinars, generators owners complained that they had to lessen the hours of electricity because “the prices of gasoline have jumped to the peak” !!!! ] Poor Iraqis, it is written in the book of destiny that they have to suffer for all the living creatures in this stupid world!

Last night, we went to a park. We walked around and wandered in the streets. We laughed a lot. I am possessed with “Friends” the show. BT doesn’t like that, because I usually ignore him in the apartment and watch the show on DVDs. But last night, I proved him wrong. Other bloggers like the show a lot. We quoted Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and of course the glue that holds them together, Phoebe. With a guitar playing around us, we couldn’t help ourselves. We had to ding the famous “Smelly Cat.” Of Phoebe!!

When it was the time, we wanted to go visit a cars exhibition close to where we were. we walked about 30 minutes to the exhibition to just find that it is opened six days a week, but not Tuesday [yesterday]!!

“Of course, Iraqi bloggers want to visit the exhibition. What are our chances,” I told the guys.

Finally, we wanted to introduce ourselves to our readers. So, we decided to take a picture for you guys so you could put faces to our names. Well, not faces exactly. They are more of backs in fact! Can you tell who is who?

A thousand miles away from home, but I still could smell the flat, round Iraqi bread. Although I don’t drink tea, I could smell the spiced tea they make back home. It was an Iraqi night. I was happy last night. I wasn’t alone, but Iraq was!

As usual nowadays in Amman, Jordan, you cannot enter a shop or a café without hearing a group of Iraqis chatting or joking or even whining. Last night it was our group, laughing. Ten young Iraqis gathered to talk about their lives and plans after they had to flee Iraq escaping the madness and violence that is killing at least 150 of their fellow countrymen every day.

I met Then Some, The Kid, Morbid Smile, Attawie, Micho, Healing Iraq, Nabil and of course Baghdad Treasure was there. It was the first time I meet those people. It is nice to put faces to the words I read regularly.

I was disappointed! There is a reason.

I always was afraid of leaving Iraq alone. With the flowing of turbans into Iraq, it is very dangerous for us to leave. Iraq is being turbanized. We have to fight this back.

Here are some of the best young men and women in Iraq, educated and open-minded and ready to start a future, which should be full if hope. But instead, they are sitting in Amman talking about how lucky they are to be out of Iraq, which has become just a word to describe how hell would be, if there is one.

We discussed politics and community issues and our thoughts of the future of Iraq and suggested solutions to the situation in Iraq now like an Iraqi politician never did and with open minds that Iraq is in a very need for. But for some reason or another, we had to leave. Iraq lost us and I don’t think it would ever get us back, not all of us!

Micho proudly wore the Iraqi map around her neck. It gave the group its identity. In addition to our loud Iraqi jokes and laughs, the necklace said “yes, we are Iraqis.” I liked it.

The discussion went very smooth. Even when we discussed critical issues, like the invasion or Shiites and Sunnis, we were very friendly-talking and exchanged thoughts. All the time I was thinking: Why aren’t we leading Iraq? Maybe I am too into the idea of youth leading their country, but I think this is the best solution to what we are going through. We are the most victimized portion of the community and we know what we want.

It ached me to listen to those blogers and realize how much of a loss they are to Iraq. Why should we leave? Who is going to build the “new Iraq”?

Baghdad Treasure mentioned, and of course I declared agreement with him, that “those left in the streets of Iraq are the uncivilized and uneducated people.” We agreed that those who are educated and civilized prefer to either leave the country or, like some of our families, stay inside their houses. They cannot compete with thugs and men-in-black!

But I also blame Iraq for losing its leaders-of-the-future. Iraq was never for Iraqis. The rule was always “non-Iraqis come first and second and last. Iraqis can go to hell.” I don’t remember ever being proud of being an Iraqi inside Iraq. I always had to throw my family’s name to people’s faces to gain respect. Being an Iraqi was not, and still is not, a privilege. Since Saddam Hussein’s time, foreigners were always privileged. Palestinians, Jordanians, Sudanese, and other Arab nationals could get seats in our universities with no competition and when I applied to the College of Fine Arts, I wasn’t accepted because I “wasn’t a baathist,” they told me.

We don’t feel this connection to the country, I think. Not all of us. What’s a country if I don’t feel respected and comfortable in? Of course we miss our families and friends, most of whom are already outside Iraq. But I don’t think we miss a country. I miss my work back home, but I don’t miss the streets or the buildings because I don’t think cement-barriers stuffed streets are that tempting to miss, or buildings with bullet holes and destroyed façades are very moving to yearn for. We lost Iraq ages ago and we thought we could stay and change reality. Nope, we were wrong.
Nevertheless, I am leaving for a while, but will go back. Definitely. I hope everyone does. The coming generations will blame us for not being “true Iraqis.”

Today, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who heads the biggest and one of the most influential Shiite group in Iraq, appeared before a mob of thousands of Shiites and provoked more ethnic and sectarian-based assassinations and urged the sheep flock to arm themselves and kill Iraqis in the streets. All this was aired on the Iraqi government’s official TV station.

Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told the jobless, uneducated and vulgar mob that gathered around him that the main “battle” in Iraq now is the one against the baathists. The baathists should be killed, he told the mob, and then Iraqi will stabilize. The last problem left in Iraq now is what is left of baathists!!

“The battle today is against the remnants of baathists,” he barked in speakers reading with difficulty from a paper [because he didn’t write it maybe!] “it is a critical battle. It is either to be or not to be,” he said quoting someone he never read or heard of, Shakespeare.

“We should never forget that the baathists killed hundreds of thousands of people,” he reminded the audience. In this time, when the government, which basically is led by Hakim and his kind, calls for a “national reconciliation,” Hakim appears on TV provoking people to kill each other. ‘the battle now is against them. They issued orders to kill you.”

Thousands of Iraqis were assassinated on ethnic and sectarian basis since the civil war started in Iraq back in May 2005. Since the former Iraqi prime minister soft spoken, devil-minded Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was seated, Iraq ha never rested. Since then, death squads started working openly in the streets and killed more than 100,000 Iraqis.

A few days ago, the current minister of interior, Jawad al-Bolani, came on TV telling his story [or as he called it “the security plan”]

The minister said:
- We will issue badges for the police men [I don’t know what were they waiting all these three years. Why didn’t they issue badges before? Or they thought there was no need because we are all Iraqis and we don’t need identification? At least 150 Iraqis are killed every month now, half of them assassinated by men dressed in Iraqi forces uniforms and the minister just now realizes that “wooops, they need badges.”

- We will give the police new uniforms and will paint the cars new colors [I was in a press conference held by the former interior minister Bayan Jabr, in which he said exactly the same thing. But I never saw the :”new uniforms” and “the new color of the police vehicles” I don’t know why they just say things. Bolani is the third interior minister in three years, who said these tings. But we never see them. You know what is funny; if you go to the ministry of interior records, you will find contracts for millions of dollars spent on “new uniforms and new cars.” !!!

- Issue a new law for carrying weapons in the streets and confiscate any weapon with no permission. [not until now you realized that it is important to control weapons in the street?

- We will punish those who violate the law and operate terrorist actions. We will announce the procedures at the end of August. [Why end of August? Doesn’t the government believe that Iraqis are being killed? Does it need to make sure that there are criminals and terrorists free in the streets killing people and after it made sure, it issues announces the punishments? At least 150 Iraqis are killed everyday. That is 4500 Iraqis to be killed this month until the interior minister realizes that he should announces the punishments. Is it new that terrorists are in the streets? They’ve been operating more freely than then the government forces and for three years. Why would it take until end of August to organize the plan? Is it like “ohhhh, we have terrorism in the country. woooops. We never new that. Lets plan” ???!!!!

The current government is designed to flame the civil war that is going in Iraq for more than a year now. the way it deals with the daily killings just shows how successful this government is in what it came for, killing more Iraqis. Until now, no Iraqi government official was honest and clear enough to go in public and say “we have a civil war in the country” although all indications show that we passed the suitable time for such a sentence. The right sentence a government official should say now is “HELP. We cannot stop the civil war in the country.” And then he should commit a suicide because he couldn’t help the people who elected him live a better life. That’s the right thing to do.

Hakim today urged the vulgar, uncivilized mob to carry weapons and wander around in the street. He repeated what al his kind of poisonous Mullahs always said: People should have weapons to defend themselves. The point is not to “defend” but to kill. With the lawless land of Iraq, using these weapons is just the easiest thing to do. And you can imagine people with weapons in a civil-war zone!

“We urge a rapid formation of the popular committees to be the backup for the government forces,” he barked. Hakim’s group runs a military wing called the Badr brigade and it is blamed for at least half of the assassinations in Iraq.

The “popular committees” are groups of jobless, blood-thirsty and stinky people who would carry weapons and shoot whoever they see. The point, Hakim and this kind of snakes said, is that those people could “defend” themselves against strangers or people disguising as police or Iraqi soldiers. But how would they know who is a real policemen or a soldier? It doesn’t matter as long as more Iraqis are killed!

But Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, is still insisting that Iraq “will not witness a civil war” and that the instability is only in a “limited part of the country” and that “provinces other than Baghdad are living normal and peaceful life.” President George Bush on the other hand was somehow more frank when last week he admitted that the situation in Iraq is critical and not colorful, but nevertheless he also said that “progress is being made.” I think the Iraqis, all the Iraqis, need spectacles because we cant see the progress Maliki and Bush are seeing. It is not possible that 25 million Iraqi are right and Maliki and Bush are wrong!

But……… a good evidence that progress is being made is that more U.S. troops are called in to Baghdad and more Iraqis forces are deployed in Baghdad. I think just to spend the summer holidays?!