Sleeping in The Rain

5-5-2006 Thursday

Summer has begun in Baghdad, and all the troubles began with it! Yesterday was one of those bad days for me, everything was bad especially the weather. At 2 P.M. we were waiting for the neighborhood's generator to be on like everyday on this time. But a few minutes after switching it on, it suddenly got off. Everyone in our streets went out asking what had happened, and they all started to swear and insult the man who is responsible for switching it on and off!! The weather was hot, sandy and humid yet we all were having our after-lunch hot and dark tea.

At afternoon dad decided to go check for the generator and ask the man incharge whether he was going to turn it on at night or not. We had to do some preparations in case there would be no electricity at night. And the news came: gasoline had fallen on the engine while it was on and burned the generator!!!!

Hot weather, sandstorm, humidity, lots of bugs in the air with only four hours aday of electricity and no water! How cool and comfortable is it to sleep in such conditions! Well, it didn't end this way. At night my family decided that we should sleep on the roof. We were thinking of the flying gunshots at night but we had no other choice. At 12:30 my parents, my sister and i went up to the roof and settled ourselves to sleep. The weather was still very humid and there were some clouds in the sky.. and some lightening.

I took my new laptop with me up to the roof in order to try the wireless connection. After less than five minutes it rained heavily on us!! We all started to run and laugh trying to get our stuff inside the house. The gasoline was already finished in the small house's generator, so we had to convince ourselves to sleep in the living room with no fan, no airconditioner and no nothing. Well, i've spent countless nights like this, so it doesn't seem that bad to me. the rain kept falling so heavily for some time, and then a sandstorm started right afte the rain. I don't know how can there be rain and sandstorm in one place at the same time! But it's been this way since spring statred, and for the first time it's still raining here in May! Everything has changed in this country, even the weather. Sandstorms in spring, and rains in summer. Won't there be any snow??!! I watched Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, but i couldn't finish it cuz the batteries charge was over. I finished it this afternoon.

I woke up this morning feeling that as if i had fallen from a very high building. All my bones are aching, even my nose's bones!!

Two months are left for me here, and i sure don't want to spend it this way. I want to sleep in my room during this final time, but it seems that i have to abandon it as i do every summer!

I hate it this way. When is it going to end!!


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From the Roof of an Iraqi House!
6-5-2006 Friday night

This is the first post I write from the roof of my house. It's unusual to do such thing, but i decided that everything can be possible in iraq! There is a wireless LAN in the laptop but i'm not getting any signal. So now i'm just typing this and listening to the sounds around me and some songs for Abdul Haleem Hafith.

This is our second night without electricity. The national electricity comes for one hour every six or eight hours, and we ran out of gasoline now, so we decided to go up on the roof and sleep there. The weather tonight is better than last night. The sky is clear and i can see the stars. There is a slight gentle wind that brings all the smells of the burning gasoline from the generators around the neighborhood. There are some fierce bombings in a near by region. It's probably in Adhamiya, but i'm not sure of this of course. I can only hear the explosions and gunshots.

I've been trying to get online fot the past couple of days but all my efforts went in vain! There is something crazy happenes to the internet server everytime i try to get online. I'm started to get to my wits' end.

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i woke up before 8 o'clock in the morning. Bugs were eating me all night long, and now flies are everyehere. The bombings continued till the morning.

Sleepy Morbido!