What happened to riverbend?

Sometime after the Iraq war started I read on the BBC website about these Iraqi bloggers that were telling their experiences during the invasion. I clicked on some of the links, and read a few of the blogs mentioned in the article. There was only one that I kept going back to as the war went on and on. It became such a part of my daily routine that it is bookmarked in the same folder as yahoomail, gmail, my blog, and a few friends/family's blogs.

It was written by a very literate Iraqi girl. I can't imagine her being older than me and probably is younger. She cited Emily Dickinson once in a while and wrote with painful clarity about the descent of Iraq after the invasion. She was very well educated.

She hasn't posted now for over a year.

Her last posts were about her family's escape to Syria. In her words:

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
Leaving Home...

Two months ago, the suitcases were packed. My lone, large suitcase sat in my bedroom for nearly six weeks, so full of clothes and personal items, that it took me, E. and our six year old neighbor to zip it closed.

Packing that suitcase was one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. It was Mission Impossible: Your mission, R., should you choose to accept it is to go through the items you’ve accumulated over nearly three decades and decide which ones you cannot do without. The difficulty of your mission, R., is that you must contain these items in a space totaling 1 m by 0.7 m by 0.4 m. This, of course, includes the clothes you will be wearing for the next months, as well as any personal memorabilia- photos, diaries, stuffed animals, CDs and the like.

I packed and unpacked it four times. Each time I unpacked it, I swore I’d eliminate some of the items that were not absolutely necessary. Each time I packed it again, I would add more ‘stuff’ than the time before. E. finally came in a month and a half later and insisted we zip up the bag so I wouldn’t be tempted to update its contents constantly.

The decision that we would each take one suitcase was made by my father. He took one look at the box of assorted memories we were beginning to prepare and it was final: Four large identical suitcases were purchased- one for each member of the family and a fifth smaller one was dug out of a closet for the documentation we’d collectively need- graduation certificates, personal identification papers, etc.


. . . .

The last few hours in the house were a blur. It was time to go and I went from room to room saying goodbye to everything. I said goodbye to my desk- the one I’d used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we’d gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls, because the pictures have long since been taken down and stored away- but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over- the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away.

I knew then as I know now that these were all just items- people are so much more important. Still, a house is like a museum in that it tells a certain history. You look at a cup or stuffed toy and a chapter of memories opens up before your very eyes. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to leave so much less than I thought I did.

. . .


The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.

We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.

The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?

How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe- even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.

I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest…

How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?

In her last post they are in Syria, refugees in a building with other Iraqi's. Unified by their exile.

Sometimes I click on her blog to see if anything has changed. I wonder if they are still there in Syria, if they returned to Iraq. If she died.

The internet has made the world a small place. Because with a click I can check on how my family is doing, see pictures of my nephews playing in Florida, and peek into the computers of someone a world away. But it is still an anonymous world in many ways. I don't know the girl's name that wrote as riverbend. She doesn't know me at all, but I felt like I knew her and E.

As she said, How is it that all of this lies just a mouse click away?

We have new internet

For the last two years we have had the slowest internet on the planet. It was PeoplePC and if you sign up they were willing to give me one month free, but I beg you not to. I think they called it People PC because it was run like a Soviet Cooperative with rusting equipment and none of the right parts. It could have been run by the Company from the Hearts of Darkness. Mr. Kurtz probably heads the phone bank in the depths of the jungle somewhere.

We have new internet that is more like a sports car in comparison. Leila is now online and has started her own blog. She will steal all my readers no doubt, but since she is my wife I felt like I should give her free ad space here.

Sam and Snow

From Drop Box

Saturday was like a kidney punch.

Emily and I went to the store to buy wood and parts for my eternal cabinet project, no it's still not done. While we were gone the wind picked up and the snow began to drift. We didn't get any new snow, but the old snow assaulted the roads and pushed cars into the ditches. It was easy to see the snow was winning. As we turned onto 1200 South we got stuck in a drift in the middle of the road. I got out to see how bad it was and if we could push it out. Emily jumped out too and somehow the car keys were locked inside. So there were were, now above knee deep in snow with the car running, locked. Stuck.

A guy in a truck stopped and offered to help us get out. It turns out he is a plant breeder too, what a wierd coincidence. He just moved back to town and is opening a new research center for Monsanto just miles from my house. He drove us home over the field - which was free of snow now that it was piled against my car. We drove around looking for chains and ended up at my neighbor's house, his second or third cousin (everyone from Indiana is related to all the other Hoosiers somehow, the ward pedigree is like that too). My neighbor got his bobcat and we all set out, loaded with chains, tow straps, and snow shovels to counterattack.

As we were driving over there, the bobcat got stuck. Then we were going around in the field and got stuck trying to get out on the road. A police officer in another 4 wheel drive pulled the good samaritan that was helping me. Then we dug out the bobcat, then we dug out my car. Just as we finished and I pulled my car back onto the blacktop, the snowplow came through, followed by a white truck going way too fast.

The white truck had just come from my house where he had run over my dog and killed Sam. Sam had chased something into the road and right in front of the truck. Leila watched it from the window and remembered thinking, "He is going to get killed if he runs in the road like that someday." Then the truck appeared, and Sam died pretty much on impact.

When I got home, Leila said something about Sam and I thought he had gotten into the neighbors garbage cans or something. But no, he was on the side of the road and she needed help to move him. We got him into the car and then wrapped him in a sheet in the garage.

The ground is frozen solid. We haven't been able to bury him yet so there he still is. I still can't believe it.

Then Sunday, my cows got out and I spent the whole morning at the same neighbor whose Bobcat got stuck trying to get my cows away from his cows and back in our pasture. What a weekend.

I had a dream that I was feeding the pig and Sam kept chasing it round and around the barn. I chased them, always just out of sight. When I turned around to yell at him, I realized that he wasn't there and then I was alone in the field with the snow swirling around me in the dark.