I faced a number of unexpected things in the bay area in the last couple of weeks, but the most unexpected thing for me is that it feels like “home”. I didn’t particularly like the car jams and the very slow and expensive BART. But I liked many other things; many of them were already a part of my life in the “globalized” layer of the Middle East.
Well… “home” is such a complicated concept for me. I used to envy some of my Iraqi colleagues who lived all of their lives in the same houses they were born in, while I come from a family that moved 6 times around different countries in the Middle East, and moved around some houses in each country too.
I was wasting my time on Google Earth looking at some old “homes” in Iraq and Jordan, and I nearly cried when I saw that satellite image of a tree that Majed, my youngest brother, planted it when he was still a little boy. I remember him dropping the little seed from his little hand, then covering it by dirt, then taking care of the little plant that was called after him. It’s a huge tree that covers the entire garden now! I don’t know whether I’ll have a chance to see that tree again, and it makes me think about all of the other millions who were made to leave their homes in Iraq because of this war, and how much harder it will be on them to leave the only home they knew.
I guess I have a lot of ex-homes after all, which makes it easier not to miss either of them.
Most of the people I know were shocked when I told them how nice and welcoming everyone at the airport of SF was! It was a bit surprising to me too; I got used to the rude behavior of the US troops in Iraq, which made me expect some unpleasant events at the airport of San Francisco.
The war on Iraq seems to be one of the most active public topics around here. You can see a huge number of stickers and pins all around the place for pro-war and anti-war people, and it seems that many meetings and demonstrations happen all the time, the last one was a big anti-war rally yesterday organized in the city. Even other important local topics, as in Katrina and Rita, are being discussed in relation to Iraq’s war in a way or another (i.e. stop funding the war and fund Katrina victims, fund people’s needs not the war machine, etc).
You can feel the war everywhere, even more than you can feel it in some Middle Eastern cities. There are even some governmental leaflets telling people how to point out suicide bombers in the subway or around the streets! The stickers read “We’re all in this together”!
In what together?! In killing other people and occupying their countries, then living in fear of revenge acts, and spending our time searching for suicide bombers around us?
Who wants to be a part of this?!
There are two scenes that were kind of funny, but sad at the same time. A girl chasing us to ask “are you against the war on Iraq?”. Niki answered with a big smile “I guess!”. The girl asked us again “do you know who George Galloway is?” we both laughed and said “yes!”. Then the girl goes like: “here is a leaflet, Galloway will be in SF this Tuesday speaking about the war”.
If we were against the war on Iraq, and we knew who Galloway is, why in the hell would we need to go see him tell us more about the war!!! Just to listen to him repeat the same things we agree with?!
Then we listened to Galloway speaking on KPFA (one of the anti-war stations) every other program, saying the things he always said, and asking us to go listen to him say them again in San Francisco, and read his new book.
I mean… pro-war people should come to listen to Galloway, and “we” should go to the republican’s meetings to see why they’re planning to kill more people. Maybe we can change their minds, maybe they can change ours! There is a lot to do to change the situation in Iraq more than just repeating what “we” all agree on.
The other funny scene was in a bookstore. We heard the cashier speaking about some Free Palestine rally that happened some time last week. We asked about more details and the answer was “it was so cool, the drummer was super and the music was great”
It’s funny to see how some things that are actually my life are nothing more than yet another pin or drum for others, but it’s really good and happy to see all the momentum many people in the bay area have towards Iraq and Palestine.
I just came some weeks ago, but it feels like I was living in the bay area for years!
It feels like home, but it’s very far away from Majed’s tree.
