Oblivion

​I don’t know what to write tonight. I’m writing to you then I feel bad because I am sharing my sorrow with you .. you don’t deserve to drop this on you like this, but I feel that sharing my pain with you might help to release some of this stress that sits heavily on my chest and strangles my soul. 

I feel that this war will take longer than I think. We are stranded between Life and Death. We are neither alive, nor dead. I can see death hovering over the city, but it’s not taking lives to declare the end of it, and doesn’t leave the city to let it live in peace. There is no value for death if the dying soul is already dead!

I saw a video where children were dragging along the ground ISIL dead corpses. I cried just for seeing this hideous scene. I was fearing this very moment. It frightens me to see such scenes take place in my city. But I rush to Hannah Arendt as she watches Eichmann and watches the human action and the subjugation to authority. I find my consolation with Hannah Arendt, with all this totalitarianism and atrociousness, how can we restore life and peace to the city? I feel very sad to watch those children play with corpses! They cannot think, they don’t know what thinking means and cannot value it!

Two years of training on savagery and brutality, and I am scared to death of what might unfold during the liberation. People who act with such cruelty and barbarity open the door to upcoming and deep problems in the future. There are hundreds of thousands of children who might have turned into future monsters. ISIL has deformed their minds, and might have deformed their natural genes as well.

I feel that this war will take longer than I think. We are stranded between Life and Death. We are neither alive, nor dead. I can see death hovering over the city, but it’s not taking lives to declare the end of it, and doesn’t leave the city to live in peace. There is no value for death if the dying soul is already dead!

There are people stuck at the eastern neighborhoods of Mosul, short on water and power, surrounded with car bombs, under fire and rockets, stuck between Life and Death.

ISIL is trapping the houses around us with bombs. We live on ticking bombs around us! If airstrikes and gunfire don’t kill us, those car bombs will soon do the job!.

I don’t know why all this total silence? I feel as if this silence is what will end our lives soon. 

I never lost my desire to smile .. I care for everything, and I know that even if I won’t make it, I won’t feel sorry, for I smiled through the worst of circumstances and difficulties, in the depth of fear, there was something deep inside me smiling always.

Today they killed one of my closest friends. They decapitated his head .. They ended his life in a blink of an eye. I have always loved his brain. Oh! How much that brain had argued with me! I just wish I can keep his head at least. I don’t know where his body now, nor his head. May be he still hears, learns, and goes on in discussions! I wonder with who he’s talking to now!

He always told me that he will die before me! I scolded him many times for his thought! I used to tell him why do you think of death? You should be living life and never wait for death to come to you. But, he was very true!

I remember his features very well. I don’t know how he looks like now .. what was his last move when they chopped off his head .. did he smile before he died? I believe he was smiling at that moment! I wish I can see his face at his last living moments, I would have created a full life of it; his spirit can give life to many cosmos, not only one!

Who will I lose next? What else will I see? I have seen and lived more than enough .. I have seen chopped heads, amputated arms, I have seen people thrown from the top of buildings, thrown over stones .. I have seen their souls trying to hold on to their bodies, but their bodies are so torn apart to hold their spirits. I saw those spirits wondering on the allies of this city!

The world isn’t moving; it is stopped, only my soul that is moving, roaming around. Who will save those wondering souls?

The faces of ISIL are no longer scare me; nothing scary about their faces. I see fear in their eyes, I hear their voices shouting through their chests, and I feel tgem say to their selves “what the hell did we got our selves into?” .. At the same time, I see them like dead bodies walking on the ground.

I am very tired of those faces of death around me!

I want to see one face that I can tell it won’t die any time soon!

Flowers have lost their smile around me. I used to wrap my soul with the petals of a flower to keep it safe … Now I don’t want to do that. The entire city is dead. I’m walking among graves occupied by talking dead. I have never seen the dead talking! But I see them now .. May be this is the world of the dead! 

This is Mosul .. a dead city, where its people are living, talking, and moving as well!

This war will take a very long time; it will npt be over any time soon. I share with you my fears, my pain and my sorrow. I know you have not done anything to deserve to hear them .. but I don’t see any good in staying silent. 

This is not about me, it’s about more than 1.5 million people live in the city, stranded between life and death.

At this moment that is unlike any other moment, when you get caught in the middle, and both life and death are fighting over you, and you’re standing right there helplessly waiting .. in a dark tunnel, afraid to move, afraid to stand still, afraid to breathe, afraid to speak, even afraid to stay silent!
This is Mosul!
My warm kisses and hugs to you all
The founder of Mosul Eye