NYT: Riverbend, A Prominent Iraqi Blogger Flees

[Rose Siding]

A young Iraqi woman who chronicled the daily struggles of life in Baghdad is fleeing with her family.
The blogger, who posted anonymously as Riverbend, tacked the announcement to the end of a post about the Adhamiya wall, starting off politely: “On a personal note….”.....

In her last post, she was totally certain that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was better:

I remember Baghdad before the war - one could live anywhere. We didn’t know what our neighbors were - we didn’t care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it - depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

Riverbend’s writing was published in a book, which won an award in Britain, and adapted for several plays.

Her family joins about two million Iraqis who have fled, according to a U.N. estimate quoted by The Times in February. The next stop was Jordan or Syria, but after that, she didn’t know.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/a-prominent-iraqi-blogger-flees/

So tragic. This isn't news -the NYT's "Notes On The News" is "reporting" on a post from the end of April. I'm glad to see this remarked upon at all at the site of a prominent US paper. But it made me remember how badly the US media failed to humanize Iraqis. The fact is that they had lives that they cherished before the invasion. Michael Moore dared to show us footage of an amusement park there and he was branded as a traitor and a liar.

So tragic.

In case you missed it, here's the April post on her site
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#8633937213645733275#8633937213645733275

[Captain Hilts]

1. Maybe Judith Miller can put them up at one of her houses. nt

[Roland99]

2. Or even help clear some brush down in Crawford. There's apparently quite a bit down there.

[Canuckistanian]

3. Nope, Wolfowitz has already been hired for that n/t

[Hissyspit]

4. Thanks. I had just gone to her blog earlier this morning to see if there was any new posting

and there wasn't. Hope she updates it soon.

[seafan]

5. Godspeed to Riverbend and her family.

More from Riverbend, at Baghdad Burning blog, from April 26, 2007:

The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look- we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.

The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas".

I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet unknown- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?

The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?

It's difficult to decide which is more frightening- car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.

[stellanoir]

6. Am so praying for her and her family's safety.

Have been reading her stuff since she did a cameo post on Salam Pax's site back in March of '03. And whatever happened to him. . .?

He started a new blog and hasn't posted since last summer.

It was grueling to see in all the Iraqi blogs I read their tentative hopefulness in '03 deteriorate into complete and utter dispair and now flight.

This was the kicker from riverbend posted several months ago.

". . .She’s just one of tens, possibly hundreds, of Iraqi women who are violated in their own homes and in Iraqi prisons. She looks like cousins I have. She looks like friends. She looks like a neighbor I sometimes used to pause to gossip with in the street. Every Iraqi who looks at her will see a cousin, a friend, a sister, a mother, an aunt…

Humanitarian organizations are warning that three Iraqi women are to be executed next month. The women are Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad. They are being accused of 'terrorism', i.e. having ties to the Iraqi resistance. It could mean they are relatives of people suspected of being in the resistance. Or it could mean they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of them gave birth in the prison. I wonder what kind of torture they've endured. Let no one say Iraqi women didn't get at least SOME equality under the American occupation- we are now equally as likely to get executed.

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse.

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile."

[madrchsod]

7. she may have left but there`s other s filling in the void

she became a high profile target for someone so to protect her family and friends she left. there are several well known iraqi bloggers who are going to school in the states and whether or not they`ll ever be able to return only time will tell.

[krkaufman]

8. Ha! Yeah, it's not like this is a front page story in the NYT ...

... or even a significant comment on their OpEd pages. Rather, it's an even more insignificant mention than what was given to the stories refuting the front page WMD claims of Miller and Gordon. If you ever wondered how a story could be more buried than A14, now you know... the NYT will mention it in an online blog.