My Daily Life in Iraq

Dear Friends,

Last week, I received a private letter from a member of the Yahoo Armenian group applauding my postings to the group. She asked me to write about my “daily life and routine in Iraq”, as she thought it would be of interest to most of group members.
In fact, this is a subject that I always try to refrain myself from writing about, as it could cause pain to my readers, but I’ll write briefly on this matter as many of you have an idea about.
Iraqis suffer lack of public services and fuel in a country which is supposed to have the second greatest oil reserves in the world!! The most dangerous thing is that they suffer lack of security and increasing sectarian violence. We don’t know when or where a car bomb or a mortar shell will miss or hit us when we come out or whether we’ll go back safely to our homes or not. The way from my home to the University where I work witnessed many car bombings, university students were kidnapped and members of the academic staff were assassinated!! Last week, when I was making my postings to the group, the Iraqi police had closed the main road near the presidency complex of the university for four hours to check two cars being suspected to carry bombs at about 50-60 meters from my office. Yesterday, a car exploded at about 60 meters. A friend from Armenia who was chatting with me said joking. “What an amazing life you are living there!!”.
Thousands of Iraqis from all ethnics, religions and sects flee the country every day. Iraqi Armenians leave the country to Armenia, Syria, Jordan and other countries. The thing we all know is that democracy couldn’t be imposed by occupation and military operations on a people who were under totalitarian rule for about four decades.
I’ll conclude my letter here as I promised to write briefly. God keep you all.

With kindest regards,
Ara S. Ashjian,
An Iraqi Armenian,
Baghdad, Iraq

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