A Star from Mosul

Yes, I used to write in a diary before starting this blog. It was in Arabic and I used to write almost everyday. And then life began to be so boring so I stopped till I started writing in this blog for the whole world instead of for myself.

Yesterday, I read what I've written in the new year's eve for three years (2002, 2003, 2004), and here they are translated in English..

Thursday, the 1st of January, 2002

The year 2001 ended peacefully, many things happened, for example: My sister's engagement, dad bought a Volvo and sold the two TOYOTAs, our journey to Duhok for the first time, and I had a new cousin!
It was a beautiful year that I didn't feel it passing by. May God make 2002 more beautiful and more pleasant!
And by the way, we watched Miss world today, and the queen was the most ugly woman I've ever seen in my life!

Thursday, 31th of December, 2002

It looks liked the year 2003 is finally coming after a long waiting! But, this year wasn't pleasant at all, but it wasn't bad either. I was so depressed today at school that I almost cried [Note; I had problems with my friend at this time ], I started to think that I have no true friend anymore except S**** who I haven't seen for 3 years, but who I still write to.
My program about Iraq finally is finished, and Inshallah I'll give it to the teacher tomorrow..
We went to my aunt's house today and I kind of felt pity for her, she now has five grandchildren who are always running around her and messing up the house, each one is jealous from the other, But, after all, she feels happy and that's what matters.
In 30 minutes, it's going to be 12 o'clock.. Tick tick, and 2003 will come! Oh God, it is really the speed era!
This year, my sis and three of my cousins got married, maybe there are more but I forgot.
I'll go sleep now, I can't wait till 12 o'clock, I'm too sleepy and the day after tomorrow we'll start the mid-year exams!
Happy new year, and may God bless this year!

In 2003, I was so busy with exams and disasters that didn't write on the new year's eve.. Anyway, I did write on the:

27th of December, 2003

Yesterday, there was a big earthquake in Iran, it destroyed a city and a historical castle, and till now, 20 000 are dead! The day before yesterday, a plane fall in its way to Lebanon for Eid. A lot of people died and the scenes we're seeing on TV breaks the heart.
Meaning: sleeping with a clear mind is almost impossible now. Oh, and I forgot to say that Israel built a wall around Tal-Abib and the Palestinians are not happy about it and they're trying to climb it calling to destroy it...

And now, it's the 30th of December 2004.. I won't be able to write tomorrow because the mid-year exams will start on Sunday.

It was a bad, sad, unpleasant year, but as you might expect, Iraqis and I somehow got used to it.. Yes, I keep complaining, but I'm used to complaining too :)
This year passed really slowly, the events that happened are too many, anyway, the most important are: My niece came to this world, Saddam got arrested by the Americans, we're in a war!! The fears of last year about the war came true! Nobody is secure..
We now have mobiles(Cell phones), satellite dishes, Internet.. And I now have lots of new friends!
The electricity in my street is not working properly but our neighbors have gave us a cable from their house and we're using their electricity when needed.
Dad's aunt died today at the age 102, and he's now at the funeral.
Hurricanes in Florida, earthquakes around the world and so many people died!
We bought a digital video camera! Sony, and it looks so great..

Okay, after all this, there's still some hope for a:

First, before starting to complain about things.. I'm going to wish you a merry Christmas. I'm trying to send personal letters to the friends but might forget some of you, or the electricity might turn off before being able to send a letter to everyone (I'm sending a letter to each person because I'm afraid some of you might not like their e-mails to be exposed to others).
So, here's a card for everyone ..
http://www.myfunstart.com/index.cfm?action=ecards&scid=19217085&sub=1

And here is some Christmas music for the soldiers from Chuck Wendt..

Okay, I've sent only 3 letters now and I discovered that the electricity will go off in 30 minutes
so, I won't be able to send more letters I guess!! Sorry..

We went to school today, it was raining heavily, and it didn't make me feel well. But, when we reached school, they sent us back to our houses. I don't know when will we be able to go back to school and start a stable year.
We're running out of bread, and the bakery shops aren't having enough gasoil (I can't distinguish between gasoline, gasoil or anything else), and this is a problem.. Some people are freezing in their houses from the cold weather and they have no gasoil to turn on their heaters (That's something else I'm not sure of its name, I don't think you even use it!). Plus, I was telling mom that I'll need to take a shower today when dad told me that I'll have to wait till Thursday; we're not getting enough electricity to heat the water, and we don't have enough gasoil to heat it on fire.
Yes, it looks like we're going back to the dark ages and mom will soon have to bake the bread by herself..

We still have problems with the electricity, and the unstable power we're getting caused the UPS to break, it's not working anymore.

Some better news; mom and dad are planning to buy us a video digital camera to take videos of the new changes in dear Aya's life. She discovered yesterday that she has feet and was so happy about it like her mother said..

So, Christmas is not promising here.. It looks so dark outside although it's 2PM.. We went out tomorrow for my cousin's birthday (Who became 7 years old) and people are talking about how courageous we are to go out at 4PM!! I felt sorry for this boy, he was so afraid the day before yesterday when plains were throwing rockets from the sky. But I don't blame him, mom was so scared too.

I feel like I'm getting more pessimistic everyday. But I'm more positive than I look like here..
One more new before signing out.. The number of students who died in the bus accident increased to 5, the one who died the other day, and 3 from the bus, and another one (16 years old) from the car infront of them..

Okay, Merry Christmas one more time, and good bye.

Although 200 thousand mosulis signed their names to go to Hajj this year, only 27 thousand people from IRAQ were accepted.

This is the 3rd year mom and dad signed their names to go, and they were not accepted.. My aunt called at night and told us that the names of the people accepted to go were published on a website, we went there and mom grabbed a paper and wrote the names of all the relatives and friends who were accepted, then she started calling and congratulating them. From about 20 persons who signed their names from our family, only one (The youngest) was accepted.

Anyway, mom and dad didn't get as sad as they were the years before, because the situation is not good and they would've had a problem with where to put us if they were accepted. Anyway, my teacher in the first grade in the primary school was accepted; the great woman who taught me to read, to write, and to count, is going to be a Hajjia :)

And something surprised me in the names of the accepted people. A woman called Najma Abdullah was accepted, and she is from Mosul!!! Yes, I am using her identity, and I haven't seen such a coincidence before!

Today, is a day that should be recorded in history. It's the first Thursday that is considered a weekend in Iraq. Nevertheless, if it wasn't a weekend, we wouldn't have gotten to school anyway, because the bridges are still closed. I have a feeling that we won't go to school on Saturday as well, and I feel confused for the Christians in my school, who are now in a state of confusion because we have exams on Saturday, and it's Christmas!! And they couldn't ask about how to take it since we didn't go to school yesterday. And I heard in the news that they won't be celebrating in churches because of the recent situation.

We were having some problems with electricity in my street, and we had about 3 hours a day of electricity only. At the same time, the neighborhood's generator is running out of gasoline, and the neighbor's generator was out of use but is fixed now. Gasoline is a major problem now, which is another reason for students to not be able to get to school. But, I somehow manage to post! I feel so sorry for our UPS, it's not getting enough time to charge itself.

Maddog, believe it or not, I think what Rachel said was too logical:

when things are going well for anyone, they probably want to be treated as adults; but when (as any psychiatrist will tell you) things are going badly, even grownups regress and want to be treated as children.

I allowed myself to replace "them" with anybody. I surely want to be treated as an adult, but I am not ready to be questioned. I don't have the ability, the mood or the knowledge to do it.

And I am sorry, but I had to, or to be more correct, wanted to disable the comments' section. Yes, it's my decision. Yes, I did make polls before and the majority wanted the comments' section but I can't read them all anymore, even if this didn't last too long (Too many comments I mean), anybody can e-mail me though, and if I couldn't reply excuses me. If you wanted to have discussions over anything, you have a forum: www.wordsfromiraq.com which has a section devoted for discussions about posts. And PAPA RAY, a little advise, if you started the post by "You said...", nobody will know what you're saying, the forum is not mine, I'm not the only one who read it or write in it.

I thought TERRORIST is much worse than IRRESPONSIBLE, but you didn't care.. Maybe saying stupid terrorist meant that I'm 100% with them? You tell me, I'm not an expert in this language!

I do put myself in your shoes sometimes, but I can't do it a lot, fighting in my country, against my countrymen! A weird thing to imagine.. I did show respect sometimes, maybe FREE can tell you about it, maybe JustJenn, maybe army wife!! I remember once when I and Faisal were still writing in the story blog, I wrote a short story for the readers to complete and an American came and turned the story upside-down

That's when he knew the story was true. The government had been secretly working with our alien masters to take control of the Middle East using Israeli and South African military technology and funding from the half-lizard hybrid alien Bush family. They also want everyone to go to Yale and get an MBA. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Faisal e-mailed me and asked if I wanted him to remove the story, but I checked the writer's profile, and he was a soldier who is or was in Mosul.. So I told Faisal to just ignore him, he must be under great pressure..

And about the bus story, I don't really care what the media says, because they're rarely honest. But I do care what people in the city, the neighborhood and the bus in which the accident happened said. If I only linked to the news, it won't be my blog anymore.. I was so angry the other day when I wrote the post, and I let myself to use rude words (I'll consider irresponsible a rude word). But, no, how can Najma use the freedom WE gave her to talk BADLY about US? How come she praised the resistance and described them as STUPID TERRORIST, while we were described as IRRESPONSIBLE? Why were we mentioned a lot while the terrorist were only mentioned in 2 words? Feeling jealous? HUH!!

Anyway, news said it was a minibus, while it was actually big, not mini at all.. And it wasn't in Yarmouk neighborhood, and it wasn't near a school. Some more details from the bus:
A car in front of the bus exploded after passing over the bomb placed by the terrorists, the students in the bus lied on the ground , and the Americans then started shooting at them, the windows broke and bullets got to some of the students, and injured a teacher too, while it killed one student.. All the sources say the Americans shot them, that's what I hear, you're free to believe what you want.

While reading through the comments, I had to go back to the post several times to check what I really wrote.. Did I say anything good about the stupid terrorists? NO. Didn't I say that the girl who saw the terrorist couldn't do anything because there were no time? Well, I said:

a girl saw a man putting a bomb at the side of the road and before being able to do anything, a stryker passed.

BEFORE!! Notice. No time for police!
I gave myself few moments to think if I was there and I saw that stupid terrorist, what would I do? I might not do anything because I'll surely be frightened. Or, I might get outside the car and carry that bomb and run away (If I had time to think).. It might not make a difference since the stupid terrorists sometimes use remote controls, but at least I tried.

I somehow feel like the hard work I did on the post about the resistance only gave you the impression that I AM a terrorist! Or at least, it didn't change anything. Anyway, I started to realize that Jihadis don't really exist in Mosul or in Iraq, or at least they're very few and can be ignored due to the large groups of terrorists, Saddam supporters and criminals that exist right now in Mosul.

Yes, I did see the university of Mosul, and it's great. You're right, there are responsible Americans.
Americans who caught Saddam, who rebuilt the university, who are paying for my school's expenses, who close the street to blow up a bomb, who gave the pictures of Abu-Ghraib to the media.. Americans who if I praised, I won't have my relatives to think that I became crazy to think that way, Americans who are giving children in the streets money to get them to study..

But, there are irresponsible Americans too:
Americans who abused Iraqis in Jail, who caught my mom's friend's son in jail because they suspected him, who broke into my cousin's house this Sunday (Full story later), who accidentally blew half of the governments' building up, who accidentally killed half of Falloja,who didn't guard our museums, who don't warn people before blowing up bombs (Try it! Bring a loud speaker and tell people to open their windows or at least get way from them, they'll like you.), Americans who took Saddam's palaces as bases, who while searching two women's houses made them both lie on the ground with guns over their heads (What harm can those two women do to you. BTW: Those two women are relatives), Americans who destroyed a mosque in Mosul, who urinating in the middle of the street cutting the way for tens of Iraqis, who made my poor brother-in-law sit on the bridge with tens of others for more than one and half hour, he was fasting, eager to see his wife and daughter, not knowing the his dad was killed by AMERICANS for no reason..

Well, now irresponsible started to look like a bad word, but that wasn't in mind when I wrote it.. I do make mistakes while writing (Although I don't think I did any in the previous post except shppt yourselves!) This blog is not the Qura'an, you can not take everyword as if I meant one hundred things by it!

And don't even let me start telling you about the irresponsible terrorist who are responsible for everything these days..

Right now, there are 106 comments, most of them are just arguments between you, and now Rachel and John discovered that it's a good time to get involved. I guess till tomorrow there will be another 50 comments!

Responses to some things:

Monkey man said:

the only death that occurred was a result of the bomb...Yes it narowly missed our Stryker..And did hit the School bus..we then recieved small arms fire and an RPG..we returned fire..torwards the attackers..not the school.

The teacher, who was sitting next to the student who died, said that he got a bullet in his neck, she held him towards her and he got another bullet in the back!

Libby said:

Do you think it would be more sensible and fairer to postpone some exams? How can teachers, who are upset themselves, expect the girls who witness these terrible things to think straight?

It'll surely be more sensible. But, if we kept postponing exams, we'll never take them. Things are only getting worse. But, giving us enough time to think or to study.. I can't imagine how they expect us to think straight. My sister was talking the other day and said that a student didn't do her homework and told the teacher that the American soldiers broke into their house and she couldn't study.. The teacher said: "And so what? What does that have to do with your homework".. The same thing happened when Saddam was caught and the teacher made us take the exams we had and didn't even care that a major thing happened that the history will record.

Pat said:

I don't want to see the women in Burkas living

Why shouldn't they live? Anyway, I guess it was just a typo(If it was, please inform me) yesterday, it was the 100s episode from a religious program and it hosted three Islamic scholars, they were discussing the Burkas' thing, and they were arguing whether it was haram or just not mentioned in the Quran!

strykeraunt said:

Why do they pick places where there are innocent Iraqis (especially children) in the area? Perhaps this is part of their plan...they kill and injure innocent children and the people of Iraq blame the American soldier.

Well, I think they do it like this to make the people of America and Iraq blame the Jihadis?

Maddog said:

George W Bush is our president. He is elected by Americans, and is supported by Americans.

You'd be amazed by how people talked about Bush in their e-mails after I said that I rarely see any American who opposes the war. I started to think that he is as bad as Saddam!

Okay, I read ALMOST all the comments. But, to reply to all of them is So hard! You know.
At times like these, true friends really show up.. Thanks to all my friends, thanks Jeff.

Oh, and I just found this in 2Slick's blog:

Today was not a good day in Mosul- there was also a demonstration at the University today. That's not good. Don't worry, though- the US and Iraqi troops will prevail up there- the good guys always win. Everyone knows that...

This reminded me of what mom said about students being checked everytime they get into the university. And they also get warned not to make demonstrations.. Free speech I guess?

And this is a picture of the hole in the wall that the bullet made in my neighbor's house.. The same bullet caused about 12 holes in the windows.. We also had a window broken the day before yesterday after a bomb-car exploded near our house, most of the neighbors' had their windows broken and my uncle's house's windows all broke.

I'm writing an update to the previous post right now, but I had to tell the news first..

We didn't go to school because the bridges are all blocked now, and we think there's a curfew too..
Right now, they say at the news at Mosul TV:

"The bridges are closed, and who won't obey will be punished severely"

While at al-Jazeera, they said:

"The governor of Mosul announced closing all Mosul bridges and is threatening to kill anyone who'll approach to them"..

I'll let you judge!!

Remember the first time I used this title?

This was the picture at that time:


But this time, it's this:


But this is not our window, it's the window of what was once upon a time my grandparents' house (God's mercy be upon them), it's the house next to ours, which is rented now to a nice couple with three kids.. But, how did it become like this?

In the morning, while waiting for the car to come and pick us up for school, loud explosions happened, followed by the beeping of mom's car's alarm, followed by shooting, followed by another loud explosion which shut the car up!!

We went to school after all, not knowing what happened, we only knew that our neighbor's windows broke into pieces, and that my cousin's garage was full of bullets.

We reached school, the first thing I saw was a classmate crying, I hurried asking what happened and she told me "I saw him dying there! We couldn't do anything" I just didn't know what to ask more and hurried to the class, about 3 other girls were crying and the number was increasing, appearantly, a girl saw a man putting a bomb at the side of the road and before being able to do anything, a stryker passed, nothing happened, a bus full of secondary school students passed and the bomb exploded, the American soldiers got frightened and started shooting randomly everywhere.. The students in the bus lied on the ground, one of them shouted for the others to say al-shahada, he got a bullet and died, a teacher got a bullet too but she didn't die..

Sources of the story:
Students who saw the whole thing from their car, Aya's cousin who was in the bus, my cousin who was heading to work by car and my neighbor who was standing infront of his house.. Still, I'll tell you of the updates when I get some..

Our school was a mess, a girl of about every 20 girls was crying, a girl passed out when she heard the news, teachers crying and so on...

Who to blame?
The American irresponsible soldiers (It's true you didn't want the war and Bush did, but it was you who shot that little boy.. Tired of pressure? Shppt yourselves, not other people's kids).. And the stupid terrorist.

And who said the bullet that did all this to the window was American?
The American bullets are too unique, they get exploded after hitting anything. And the eyewitnesses mentioned above.

One good new today, they gave us the new schedule of lessons, it has two days as a week-end (Thursday and Friday), but with 7 periods a day..

And nevertheless, with all the above, we had the examinations we had, no exceptions.. And the ministry of education or whatever still insist that bringing mobiles to school by anyone (Teachers or students) is not allowed, nomatter what the situation was. Stupid or what?

PS: I'm having some problems posting photos tonight, I'll post some more if Ihad time tomorrow.. I have one of the first place the bullet got in and in which it exploded..

I started writing this yesterday evening, but then my cousin started chatting with me and I couldn't complete it.. So, here it is.

An American stryker parked next to my school, I don't know what they did, but it sure took them a lot of time.. The driver who drives us home said that they're paying the expenses of the new school (I hope no one will bomb it after knowing this)..

Our neighbor got back home safely, after his family paid 30,.000 US dollars.. He lives next to the house in the back of ours! I know it's too far, but Islam has ordered us to be good to neighbors till the 4oth door! That was part of my homework today in the religion lesson (Note: Only Muslims take this lesson, but Christians still can attend it)..

At about 5PM today, a car-bomb exploded near the bridge, I don't think anybody got hurt.. Then, two strykers or more blocked the road to our street, they shoot in the sky everytime a car gets near them.. BUT, the purpose was good; I was studying in my room when my everything started shaking, a big explosion occurred somewhere near, the Americans were trying to disable an explosive something, and it exploded (I guess disabling explosives is not possible here).. At this time, mom was waiting eagerly for dad to come back from the clinic, communicating with him by the mobile and telling him where to go. Finally, dad decided to leave the car at our neighbors house (In the back of ours) and he jumped from their house to ours!! Well, thank God he is safe.
***

Today (Thursday) I was informing my friends about my neighbor's coming home, a classmate asked me about his name, but I didn't know it. Then, the BIG surprise, that man was her GRANDFATHER!!!!!! More !!! Okay, he's back and safe but not too healthy, he's a little sick from the cold weather but he's safe now.

The Chemistry teacher, who's so angry at me now, and who told all the classes about my dumb mistake (A single number changed the whole question), told me today that I got 85%, it's a little BAD but with another two 100%, I'll have 95!! So, it won't be a problem.

------------------------------------------------
A little about neighboring in Islam:

Among the duties you owe your neighbor are:
1- To greet him/her when you meet him/her.
2- To ask about him/her.
3- To visit him/her when sick.
4- To console him/her when he/she is afflicted with calamity.
5- To condole him/her when any of his/her relatives passes away.
6- To congratulate him/her on happy occasions.
7- To share him/her his/her joys and pains.
8- To forgive him/her when he/she does wrong to you.
9- To keep away from infringing on his/her privacy.
10- To guide him/her to what he/she is ignorant about.
11- To lower your gaze from his/her female household.
12- Not to bother him/her in any way; for example by putting dirty stuff in front of his/her home.

Source.

The voting ended yesterday, and the results were announced. My blog came in the 5th place and that's NOT BAD. Thanks all for voting.. And thanks for everyone who nominated me, without you, I wouldn't have got into that list in the first place.. Jazz, this is one of the sweetest things I've read! Sorry!

Let's start with some bad news.. A neighbor got kidnapped today at about 7:30AM. I heard the shooting and some shouting in the morning but didn't know what happened, dad heard about the kidnapping in the mosque (That's where all the neighbors exchange their news). He was kidnapped from his BED.. The kidnappers called then asking for money (50 000 US dollars!!)

I had a terrible mistake at the Chemistry exam today, it can cost me from 5 to 20 marks. I almost cried but the students were admiring my courage and how I don't cry at such stuff so I just couldn't cry.. That's better.

A little bomb exploded infront of our car the day before yesterday on our way to school. There were strykers infront of us but the explosion was small and no body was hurt. I turned the mobile on right when the explosion occurred, mom called at once, and said that dad has jumped out of bed and he's looking for us outside! I felt so sorry for them, I can't imagine how they felt when they heard the explosion.

A funny news.. I gave mom the right to have my hair cut, for the first time. I didn't care if she messed it up or not, for two reasons, nobody will see it since we're not getting out of the house, and there's no way that I can't have it cut by a hair dresser, they close their shops early and we can't get out of the house.. I just kept praying that she won't mess it up, and kept laughing of the strange way she held the scissor. Well, the results aren't bad at all!

Now, some good news. Aya's cousin was born today, it's a girl, but we didn't know what they named her. My older sister left Aya at our house and went with her husband to the hospital to take care of her sister-in-law, her husband was in Baghdad and couldn't attend the birth of his first child (Just like his brother).. Those men don't have luck to watch their children's birth.

And as usual, I'm sure there was something else, but I have to go to sleep.. About 13, I'll have to respond to your comments about him later, I don't have time now.

Good night..
Sleep tight..
Don't let the bed bugs bite..
And thank you Jeff for teaching me this! Good friend.
And mom is asking you to pray for us..

There was a big explosion close to school today. When I looked out of the window of the classroom, a moment after the explosion, there was a huge black cloud of smoke!

They say (And that's not a rumor), that we'll have two days off every week, probably Thursday and Friday. That's great, because the Iraqis really need to rest more.

For those of you who are new to this blog, here is a short version of everything here, published on an online magazine. If you had a difficulty keeping track on things, there's a menu of all the archived posts in the sidebar of this blog.

Aya was here yesterday, I was warned from getting close to her because of my flu. That was not easy at all! But, anyhow, I was able to take some photos of her, and here they are in a slideshow.


I might right again today when I finish my homework. To comment on 13's comment, and to ask you to vote again :)
PS: I removed the previous slideshow and replaced it with a link to it because two at one page will slow down the site.

Those are the responses I got from some of the bloggers I e-mailed about the post: "Let the confusion begin!". I made sure to e-mail different people from Iraq.

Kurdo's response:

"I agree with what you wrote...you divided it very good...I think these groups all agree on attacking American and Iraqi forces even if they have different beleifs...

and just one more thing that I am not so sure about, aren't there a group of Iraqi extremist nationalists ?! they might be a very small group but I am not very sure about this one. I know that most people in Iraq are nationalists but I mean those who think that the only way to get rid of the Americans is to use force."

13's response:

"i read what you wrote, i agree with most of you said, i do NOT have objections, but rather some comments of my own..

regarding the last group, i dont think there are americans doing bad things, but rather, people PAID FOR by the americans, mercenaries if you like, such as the first wave of people who came with the americans after the fall of the regime..

the jihadists are another thing entirely, i do NOT agree with their point of view, this is NOT the way to do things.. you said that they were targeting americans, well, most of the times (at least here in bagdhad) Iraqi people are the ones who get killed, either police or bystanders...

i lost two good friends of mine to the jihadists, they had a pharmacy, they sold medicine to EVERYONE because this is what they were supposed to do, they didnt go to US ARMY bases, they didnt have american friends, they were minding their own business..

they (a man and a woman) were killed (their throats were cut) because one day an american hummer stopped by and a soldier bought some headache medicine from them.

i am a sunni, i live in adhamiya, however my parents' hometown is Mosul.

i am NOT with the americans and NEVER will be.

i am NOT against the resistance NOR with them.

i am simply against violence."

Fayrouz's response:

"You did a great job with your article. Many people disagreed with the forth group. Actually, they know so well "the least" about Iran's role in Iraq. You know they're bringing drugs into the country. They distribute it in Kerbala and Najaf. That really pisses me off. I hate drugs and I know if some Iraqi youth get addicted to them, it's the end of their lives. Iraq doesn't have the rehabilitation centers we have here. "

Well, three till now replied (An Arabian Christian, an Arabian Sunni Muslim, and a Kurdish -I don't know his religion-) , another one told me to wait for the response soon.

The voting will end in three days.. You still have 3 days to vote in! I'm not expecting much for myself but I didn't expect Riverbend to get to the 4th place! She was in the 3rd ast night!!

I told you before that I left school at 11:30 yesterday because the teachers had a meeting. Well, one of my classmates' mother is a teacher so she stayed with her. She said that shooting started at one time, and it was so close to school, she started crying and some teachers tried to calm her down.. Then louder shooting started, she looked around and all the teachers hid. Some teachers hid in the WC!! She said that even that she was so terrified and crying, she started laughing at them and couldn't resist!

The Arabic teacher told us to go sign our named at the mistress room, so that she can help us a little bit with our grades. The mistress wasn't at her room, but we'll go again at Saturday.. I hope it'll work!

Okay, I'll go pray, plan my studying time, and see if I have time to make a slideshow like before. Lots of people liked it!

I was sinking in homework. Lots of examinations and no good marks! Well, I'm kind of getting desperate, but I'll try to keep positive. It's too hard to get more than 95% in Arabic this year. The teacher is incompetent and if we were lucky (I and my 2 friends), we'll get 90%! What can I do?
The Biology teacher is getting more loved by me everyday. When I first saw her, I was so scared of her and so were the rest of the students, but she somehow changed and she's always telling us jokes!
The Chemistry teacher still repeats things but she's a little better at teaching. She was telling us today how unfortunate we are for being in this school. Do you know that we haven't been into a lab? We haven't made any experiments? Before the war, we had a very lousy lab, but it was destroyed in the war, everything was stolen or as my Chemistry teacher said today "كل شي حسم"
حسم هو فعل جديد ظهر بعد الحرب التي اسماها صدام معركة الحواسم!!

We'll get out of school at 11:30 tomorrow because there's a meeting for the teachers at that time! So, I have little homework tomorrow, thank God.

apparently, I have flu, and this isn't good. I won't be able to get near Aya! Okay, I was trying this thing today, see if you like these.

PS: I'm getting responses from the bloggers I've emailed about my post "Let the confusion begin!", I'm publish them soon.

It's time to vote in the 2004 Weblog Awards and A Star From Mosul is a finalist in the category of Best Middle East or Africa Blog.

Polls close December 12, 2004.
You may vote once every 24 hours in each poll.
http://2004weblogawards.com/

You can vote from here:
http://2004weblogawards.com/archives/000058.php

More pressure everyday! I'm not talking about the general life of the Iraqi here, although pressure is getting more to him too. It's that if I wanted to pass the year, I'll have to:

1. Finish this year with an average of marks for each subject, more than 95%.
2. Take lessons for the subjects of the 6th grade in the break.
3. Take an IQ test, and another test in all the subjects of the 5th grade in Baghdad. Last year only 10 of 60 made it through this!
   
4. Take a test in all the subjects of the 6th grade, and get an average of grades more than 75%.
5. In few weeks, I'll get my test results.. And then, I'll either make it and go to collage (God's willing. Amen), or I won't make it (God forbids) and then I'll have to go through the nightmare of every student, the 6th grade!

If I chose not to pass the year, I'll have to:

1. Finish this year with an average of marks for each subject, more than 90% so that I won't have to take the final exam.
2. Take lessons of the 6th grade in the break, not all the subjects, just few (2 or 3).
3. Go to school when it starts and take tests and be under great pressure from my teachers.
   
4. Take the final exam :(
   
5. Go to collage next year.

The second one is not much easier, and the first one will surely save me a year! I'm willing to take the chance.. I'll take the pressure but I'll stop watching the news. Speaking of the news! The curfew became from 7PM till 6AM.

I and 2 of my friends are willing to pass the year, 2 others haven't decided yet.. Some people really encourage the idea and say that if I can do it, then I should do it. Some just don't encourage me to do it and say that it's not guaranteed!

We'll go out tomorrow, and I have a mathematics test on Saturday.. I'll start doing some of my homework now. So, bye.