This is just so sad and so telling, it is difficult to express. I cannot know this pain nor can any of us who have lived this war without sacrifice.
Three or so years ago, I first read the blog, Baghdad Burning. It wasn't updated as often as most blogs - reality set the pace - but you could get the sense that there was an honest and real strife captured in the writings. If there was no blog for months on end, it was literally because Baghdad was broken. I cannot imagine this of my home.
Today, many blogs - Andrew Sullivan, Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, and others - are covering the story that truly tells us how lost the war is. Riverbend, the author of Baghdad Burning , is leaving. Because it is so personal, yet so representative of hundreds of thousands, this is truly the saddest thing I have ever read connected to this atrocity we have started.
On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet unknown- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?
The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?It's difficult to decide which is more frightening- car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.
I am ashamed.
