A Star from Mosul

Hi readers,
I've previously posted a picture of the Iraqi flag hanged on one of the buildings in Mosul..
And as a Muslim, I didn't like the comments some people wrote, so I went to Faisal, who's Muslim too, and asked him for some help considering that he's older than me...
He promised me to give me his answer but because of his work he couldn't e-mail it earlier. But he e-mailed it to me now, and here I am, posting his opinion about the Iraqi flag...

"Allahou Akbar" means God is great.
Since Iraq is a country were almost everyone speaks Arabic, it can not cause any harm at all. Surely these are words of praise to Allah for all believers (Muslim, Christians, Jews or any people of any other religion) Even though Saddam added these on the Iraqi flag, these are by no means his words. The name of God is there on the emblems of even in some secular states:
*United Kingdom: "Dieu et Mon droit" - written in French, meaning "God and my right" (funny because the French were for a very long time there enemies)
*USA - "God Bless You" (I am not totally sure about this one but will have to check).

The way I see the Iraqi flag nowadays is as follows:
Three stripes - Three Major Groups in unity Three Stars - All three groups consist of star citizens.
I believe that the flag can only be changed by the people of Iraq residing in Iraq. A fully elected government can only make such decision through a referendum. That's my opinion anyway.

Thank you Faisal

Nice title! I keep impressing myself! Just kidding.

Dad received his salary today, and it keeps getting lower and lower. Although it didn't get to the amount of salary he used to get in SH times, but it's getting low... I mean, after paying for the generators, (the clinic's and the house's generators) the clinic's rent, the phone bill, the internet and the mobile bills, the assistant's salary and OUR salary which is also getting low. The remaining money will be about 70$ which is hardly enough for the shopping of the normal month (vegetables, fruit, meat.... Etc).

Well in case you are wondering, dad is a specialist doctor with 32 years of service to the hospital. He gets the same salary as my mother's who has by the way, an MSC in the civil engineering, and she's also a lecturer with 25 years of serving in the university.
And the salary was about:

400$ .... In January
385$ .... In May
355$ .... July

Obviously, it's getting low.... In the beginning of the war, we dreamt of being able to go out side the country, visit some beautiful places outside Iraq, visit my uncle in Australia. But now, with these salaries, it seems almost impossible.

That's it for today..
Bye and take care

I'm thinking of changing the template of my blog. Will that be ok? Or is it better the way it is now. What's so special with Haloscan? Why is everybody using it? I have an account in it, but I didn't like the way it shows the comments.
I also took a quiz named "Does your blog own you?", after my sister and Fayrouz did, and it seems like my blog owns 50% of me. I don't know if it's good, but that's how things are.

50 %

My weblog owns 50 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?
And about my neighbor who died yesterday, it looks like she didn't even touch the air-cooler. She was cleaning the garage of the house with water and she wasn't even close to the air-cooler, but the electricity transmitted to her through the water from the air-cooler.
Another neighbour, an old woman, heard the news about the first one, remembered her daughter's death (It seems like she died the same way), and died today.... Scary, isn't it?
 Today, dad went to two funerals. He told mom to take care of herself coz the women of the neighbourhood are dying. I don't even want to think about it.

Today, Ziad from the healing Iraq blog, wrote a post about the new Iraqi bloggers, including me. I linked to most of them, but I thought you might like to see the ones he linked to them...

UPDATE: Bad news, we lost the football game with China. This is the first time I watch a football game and we lost in it :(  I didn't expect that but things started to happen really fast.

 

Bye bye

First of all, I'd like to thank Fayrouz for giving me that very fantastic and useful site (www.w3schools.com).

Ok, let's start with the news. My big sister, (the pregnant one), her blood type is negative; This means that she might need an Anti-D dose; But we've heard from the satellite and from the news that the AIDS has recently appeared for women who were given those Anti-D doses available in the Iraqi hospitals. My parents are really worried, they asked a relative who's going out of the country to bring us the Anti-D dose that my sister might need to take after the delivery.

Thanks god that we knew about these news before the delivery; thanks god my parents are educated and we knew that there is a possibility that she might need the Anti-D dose; thanks god we have the money to bring her the dose from outside the country and the person to bring it. Only god know how many women were infected by this terrible disease.

Today, we heard bad news, and I discovered that I may be heartless. One of our neighbors, a 30-year-old woman, a doctor, a mother of two, got electrocuted when she touched the air-cooler with her wet hands. She died at once. I didn't have any feelings when I heard the news, I knew that I should be sad when I heard it but I didn't become sad. I'm trying to convince myself that I have feelings but I have no evidence. I haven't met this woman, I haven't heard of her either but mam did and she's praying for god to help her family.

Every year, we hear such stories about being electrocuted and die because of it. Is it because of the bad electricity we have, maybe it affects the electric devices we have? Or maybe because we just have so many things in mind that we don't think that we might die because of the electricity, there's so many other ways to die these days.

A picture in Baghdad.... Nothing special, just to let you know what you'll see from your car's window in Baghdad.

This is nasb al-lika'a. A statue that presents two hands holding one another. The first for Saddam, the second for the people of Iraq. It was built and presented to the world in Saddam's birthday, on 1992... It pretty much looks like the word No in Arabic.

Hi, I'm sure you'll like those jokes, I'm not responsible for the contents, but I like them a lot...

* If an American went to the moon, what will happen?
The Americans will be decreased by one.
*If a Russian went to the moon, what will happen?
He will meet the American.

* A man drove into traffic jam. Another man knocked the car's window, and told him that the president Bush was kidnapped, the kidnappers want 50,000,000 $ in order to release him, otherwise they'll burn him to death. he asked him if he wants to participate in the donations people are making...
-The first man asked the second: What's the average of the donations people are giving?
-The 2nd man answered: Well, about 5-10 liters of gasoline.

* A man (X) hit two men by car. One was dead, the other (Y) was injured. Y stood up and started screaming and shouting at X.
-X said to him : " Why are you screaming at me, you're just injured, look at your friend, he died and he didn't say anything."

* A man almost hit a woman with his car.
- so the woman said angrily : " Didn't you see me?"
-the man answered: " Yes, sure I've seen you. But, I can't remember where"

* -A teacher asked one of the students: "Which animal shouts in the morning and wakes us up?"
-The student answers: "My dad"

*A thief was holding a knife, he was planning to kill a man and his wife, but first he wanted to know their names. -He asked the woman: " What's your name?"
-She answered: " Monera."
- He said: " I think I won't kill you, you and my mother have the same name"
-He turned to the man and asked: " And you, What's your name?"
-He said: " Salem, but you can call me Monera".

* A young man was driving the car with his father near him.
-His father said: "Turn to the right, son".
-The man answered: " You turn to the right, can't you see that I'm driving".

* A man's tooth was aching him, so he we to the dentist and said:
-"Take all my teeth off, and leave this one alone, just like a dog" .

The bullets way through our living-room. 1st: the window. 2nd: the curtain. 3rd: the air. 4th: the wall, and it is green. 

I'm sleepy, it's 12:30PM, I was answering Fayrouz's comment, and suddenly, we heard the sounds of lots of bullets near our house. Dad went up to the living-room immediately to get a clear view of the situation, then he hurried down. We didn't know that dad was upstairs, the only thing we knew was that a bullet must have entered our house, somewhere in our house, probably upstairs. Dad told us that it definitely went into the living-room, but we were not sure.

After the stopping of the sound that lasts for about 5 minutes, I was working on the computer, I heard mother shouting for me to come up and look. I hurried up, the window was broken in two places, it looks like the bullet moved 11 meters in the living-room to reach the wall. It went into the wall, to cause a small hole in it.
We didn't find the bullet. The lamp which was hanged over the hole of the bullet was broken, I don't know why? Maybe the pressure.
The scary thing about it was that dad was in the living room, near the window, looking from it to the street, he saw the bullet breaking the window and he hurried down without telling us.

Note: It's not really the living-room. Do you have what it's called visitor's room, not for sleeping or something, just for receiving visitors?

I'll take some pictures for everything tomorrow in the morning, when there's enough light to take clear pictures..

Good night

I don't know if it worths it to post this announcement, but I will....
Ok, dear readers, I finally answered your comments on the "about me" post..
Bye

My grandparents dates-tree. Nice view.. 

Hello readers,

I'm back and I'm happy. I had a nice time in Baghdad but we had to come back...

On Sunday, 17/7/2004 we started our journey to Baghdad, I thought that we didn't forget anything but I was wrong, I forgot to say good-bye to dad, and we forgot all our shoes, and that was bad. Going to Baghdad without shoes is something I don't want to think about. But fortunately, my aunt brought me one of her shoes and it fit.

Baghdad with all the things that happened in it in the last few months, is still nice. It really deserves to be the capital of Iraq. I took some pictures but I won't post them all at once so that the blog don't slow down.

We went to a restaurant on Friday for dinner, we were five families, so the waiters didn't bring the food fast, we waited and waited. At 11 o'clock, my grandma called to my uncle's mobile telling him to come coz it's late, but he convinced her hoping that the food will come soon. But it didn't. At 11:30PM, and finally, the waiters brought us food, whispering in each others ears about something we knew when they served us the food. It wasn't what we ordered, but that's fine, we have to eat it, it's late and grandma is worried. We ate our food and immediately left for our houses..... We had lots of fun, but apparently, grandma didn't, she yelled at us, but then she forgave us. She had the right to be worried, we came back at 12 o'clock, and at the house they heard sounds of bullets.

There's something people in Baghdad talk about all the time, it's a song, and it's really bad. I can't watch it, the singer has no voice, the dancers dance a very strange dance. The song is called "purtocala" which means "orange" in English. It's something really disgusting, really.

The electricity is funny there, it keeps coming and going that they started to say that it's been operated with the Traffic-light. The first night in Baghdad, I and my sister slept in the living-room, on the couch. The air-condition was turned on, so I was freezing.

We came back today, the journey took us 4 hours, and there was no complications, I slept all the way long coz I slept late yesterday. Well, I watched "Zorro" on TV, and it didn't end till 1:30AM. At  6:54AM, the car that will take us to Mosul arrived, and we were still sleeping. We hurried with our bags and books, and here I am in Mosul, writing a post at 3PM after I helped mom unpacking, and cleaning the house...

Now, i'm learning the HTML language, the first step is putting the footer to my blog, and I did it... : ) , after completing HTML, I'll start with Java script.

That's it for today
 bye bye

Hi, I'm still in Baghdad, but I thought it would be nice to post some pictures of Baghdad after the war.... That was a restaurant called Saddam's tower, and it was really nice before the war.  

I'm going to Baghdad tomorrow. So, I might not be able to post for few days. Therefore, I’m writing a long post...

(Updated on the 12th of February, 2007)

Name:
My name is not Najma. I prefere writing anonymously for security reasons. I hope that I will one day be able to use my real name, since I'm really hating Najma for getting all the credit!

Birth:
I was born in Baghdad: 1988, April, 23rd. But I'm originally from Mosul. All of my mother's family members were living in Baghdad since my grandpa moved to Baghdad in 1967 until 2003. I'm proud of being a Moslawi, but like the fact that I was born in Baghdad, beautiful (or was beautiful) Baghdad..

Education:
I was in Al-Fotowa primary school, finished with an average of marks of 99.7.. Had an IQ test, came 7th on Mosul, got qualified therefore to enter Al-motamaiezat secondary school, which is no longer as it was.. I completed the first three years with an average of marks of 98, and got an average of 97.29% (99.32 adding French, and 100.7 adding the additional 10 marks that each student gets for not failing at the sixth grade, which is the average of marks that really counts) at the BIG final exams on the sixth grade, allowing me to get into any university I want in Iraq.
I am currently studying Communication engineering at the University of Mosul.

Blogging:
Started blogging on the 10th of June, 2004, encouraged and inspired by my uncle.. Blogging turned to be the best way to fill time, and taught me more than I thought anything would, although I am writing less and less by time, but I'm not willing to stop any time soon.

Following me were 8 relative bloggers: Truth Teller (Dad), Rose (My aunt), HNK (My sister), Raghda (My cousin), Hassan (My cousin), Dalia, Mama, Sunshine.

Quick info:
* Many decisions undone, many dreams unaccomplished.
* Very demanding about food.
* Some people say I'm too calm, others say I move too much.
* I tend to like humerous people, but sometimes a wise one is way better.
* "That short girl with glasses" is how I think people describe me.
* My sister (Aya) had a daughter in 2004, and a son (Ayman) in 2006, making me an aunt.. They both give me too much to look for every day.

I have been to both Syria and Jordan in 2005.. It was great being outside Iraq, seeing the world, and the way people live (the way we barely lived) without war. Just seeing Hafidh Al-Asad's photo at the border gave me a feeling I've lost for so long, secure..

It gives me a strong feeling just to sing the national anthem, the word "watan" means a lot to me, and for some reason, I never hear it now..

Yours,
Najma

PS:I try to calm down before writing a reply to your e-mails, though some readers might not be lucky.. I just called a reader a fool for calling me stupid, so be careful!

I wrote this post two yesterday and I forgot to post it, so you might find old news in it, execuse me. but I think you should hear the new news first. My father and eleven more doctors started a society to help cancer patients, they didn't find an office yet, but they'll start working soon.
 
Here's my old post: 

Today, I'm so negative. Well, I wasn't negative in the morning, but we went to my aunt's house, and there they watch the Mosul TV, so they've seen our governor, they liked him and became attached to him just from seeing him on TV, and while we were there, the funeral of the governor who was killed yesterday was televised on TV. At that moment my cousin started crying, I didn't know how good he was till I saw my cousin crying on him, my tears tried to come out, but I didn't let them, I just wished him to go to heaven.

We stayed at my aunt's house for an hour till her daughter called her on the telephone and told her to open the windows, because the police found a car they suspected that it's bombed, she told her to open the windows because they will break otherwise, they have already replaced them twice... we went in the car, wished them a peaceful day, and left for our safe house.

Because of what happened yesterday, I had horrible dreams today....

Well, I've got an e-mail from Michael Tullberg telling me about this article, and he said that he would like to hear my opinion. I don't like this, what do you think? Women can't go well with boxing. But if the female boxers liked it, what can I say, I'm a woman and I didn't like it, what about men?


BBC NEWS | Middle East | Jordan's female boxers go for glory

That was the project we had to do this week, and we here are the audience of an Islamic herald whose name is "Amrkhaled", I have a link to his official website in my favorite sites list.

Well, we did it, we wrote what we dreamt of, but he said that he wants Arabs and foreigners, Muslims and non Muslims, he wants everybody to participate in order to complete the project.
And here I am telling you.

Anyone who wants to help can write how he imagines his country, his home, his school, etc to be in 20 years... And I'll give your dreams to him. He said that we should have detailed dreams, dreams that can be true, so please, I already sent him mine, but yours....

I saw the "what finding memo charachter are you?" in Fayrouz's break room and I liked it, I took it but I didn't like the results; I HAVE NO CONFIDENT IN MY SELF :(
So I took this test, try it, and if you have a blog, show the people your results..


Peace. You Truly Desire Peace. Just relaxing
somewhere calm with a light breeze against your
cheecks is our ideal of pefect. You don't like
to start fights, but instead, end them without
using violence.


What Do You Truly Desire? *PICS*

Nice view, isn't it? I took this picture in the north of Iraq. This is the Tigris river...


Technorati Tags: Tigris, Kurdistan, Iraq

Yesterday, at 7 in the morning, we started a journey to the north of Iraq. Just the four of us (mom, dad, my sister and I), we didn't take my older sister because she's pregnant and the journey would be long and hard for her and for the baby.

The view from the windowwas wonderful, lots and lots of mountains, the car went up and down on the street and there were lots of vehicles in the road, we had lots of fun.

On the way back to home I slept about two hours and woke up to find myself in the garage of our house, I missed the road :( I have seen it before, but it would've been nice to see it again.
I took lots of pictures, most of them are personal, I have a wonderful picture that I'll post later.

Note: you might find a new Iraqi blogger, who writes subjects similar to mine. Well, she's my sister, she hasn't started posting yet, but I think she'll post today, check out her blog.

Technorati Tags: Kurdistan, Iraq, Mosul, jouney

This is the baby's cradle. Mom changed its design, and made its cover.and it's so beautiful.


Technorati Tags: baby, cradle

The old clothes 

I'm happy today, not because things are getting better, not because I've got out of the house several times this week, not because I found 2 shirts fit on me and that's very rare, not because I'm not killed yet, I am happy because all of these but today.. I'm happy because in two months, I'm going to be an AUNT, great, isn't it?? Well, we don't know if the baby's a girl or a boy, but we prepared too many baby's clothes, the old ones only are enough but this is a new baby and the clothes should be new.

I'm happy, this is the first time for me to be an aunt, having a nephew or a niece must be fun, although I can already imagine myself screaming and not being able to study...But that's OK.

Mom was trying to sew some clothes for the new born but they're all so large, that's what everybody told mom when she proudly showed them the clothes, I felt sorry for her but she was really happy when she sewed those tiny little clothes.

My sister -who is a doctor, won't be able to take care of the baby all the time because of her work, her husband won't be able to do that either coz he's a doctor too, we will take care of the baby, even if we couldn't, we have to.

Technorati Tags: baby, happiness

After the decision to change the Iraqi flag, all the owners of buildings, shops, schools, ect.. put the Iraqi flag over their buildings. The students in the schools and the universities wore patches with the Iraqi flag drown on them, those days were really great.


Technorati Tags: Iraq, flag, mosul

This is Al-nabi Yonus mosque, one of the most famous mosques in Mosul.


Technorati Tags: mosque, mosul, iraq, ancient, history

I took this picture without knowing what it really was, but then mom told me, it's the police center...


Technorati Tags: police, mosul, iraq

This is one of the historical places in Mosul.

It's one of the gates in Ninevah's fence, it contains two statues called the winged bulls. The Assyrian winged bulls are a massive monumental sculptures of a crowned human head carved from blocks of limestone, they were discovered in Khorsabad, Nineveh and Nimrod, they represent spiritual guardians "Sheedu Lamassu" translated as the "Repellent of Evil".

These are being renewed apparently, which I didn't like. It doesn't look that ancient any more.




Technorati Tags: history, ancient, mosul, iraq

Today, and finally, I got out of the house, and of course I took the camera with me and took some pictures.
This is a picture of a mosque under construction since about 2 years. Saddam decided to build one like it in each Iraqi city, and also, he decided to name each one "Saddam's great mosque".



Technorati Tags: mosque, saddam, iraq

I use a variety of e-mail services, I have an MSN account, it's 2 megabytes, not enough, I know.

I have a Yahoo! account, and this one has been recently enlarged to 100MB, nice I think, you can send messages up to 10MB in size.

And I have a Gmail account, great 1000MB, but you can't get one without an invitation and I've got one, through a forum I think.

But you still can have 1000MB free with Maktoob, it's an arabian e-mail, I don't have a maktoob account but I think it's great, you might like to try it, it's free, and you can install a messenger too, just click on the link and then choose your country, change the language into English, and then you'll know your way.

I like Yahoo! best, simple and good enough. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: e-mail, yahoo, gmail, hotmail, maktoob

I don't know what to say, I'm shaking, all my body is shaking.
But, it's only video, no sound.
if you wanted more information, visit this