A Picture Can Narrate One Thousand Words

-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A reality from Hawler

-
Image
Add caption This photo was taken in 2004 in Hawler. Please note the sign behind him.   A man his age should be telling stories to grand kids at home, not sell rosaries on some sidewalk :( This photo taken in 2010 of the same guy in the same exact spot in Hawler I asked if he remembered me buying rosaries from him in 2004? After a long conversation, I learned more about his personal life.  I decided to buy a few more rosaries, however, he refused to accept anything in return despite his poverty!
Read more

The Start of an Academic Year in Kurdistan

-
Image
The Start of an Academic Year in Kurdistan,  Students hanging out in the college yard before class starts As you walk through the bazaars and along the streets here in Kurdistan, you will see parents with their kids, busy buying school supplies, sewing school uniforms, and getting ready to have whatever it takes for a successful academic year. College students are also busy buying new clothes, thinking of how they should dress and what to expect out of their courses this year. As for myself, I am a lecturer and being brought up in America, other things are of bigger concern to me. I am worried more about the expectations students have of me. I am worried about the first day. What should I expect? I called every friend I have to explain my worries about the first day of teaching. Will they understand my English, I asked? Will we have a nice professor-student relationship? Will they respect my class rules and regulations? Afternoon traffic in the Duhok city The first thing I put
Read more

A Look at the Conflict as it Unfolds in the Middle East

-
Image
A Proud Palestinian Teta Defending her Land At the top of my mind, as it is for so many of you, is the renewed bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians. I can’t help but see weapons for one side, and band-aids for the other. The question that is worth asking amid this conflict is how can the United States ever be trusted on human rights and peace building when it is giving more money for bombs than for cease-fire solutions?  As I watch the news and the see the double standards, I can’t help but relive the life of that young girl running along a dusty dirt road in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm who thought that the quicker she moved the less of a target she would be. All the sudden I am also that young girl of mass exodus living in a sanctioned country without enough to survive, whose family fled to the sheltering mountains to escape mass murder from Saddam Hussein’s regime. My dormant PTSD symptoms are immediately triggered, and I am shaken to my core in a fight-or-flight survi
Read more