Thursday, February 22, 2007

Postcard from Abeer (posted by gottlieb on another forum)


Hi. You don’t know me by my name. I am Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi. You may call me Abeer. This picture is old. Just a little, little girl then. But that is all that is left of me on this earth.
You don’t know my name. But you know who I am. I have shamed you. You can only be shamed by me. It was not my intention. I did not intend to shame you. I only intended to live my life and marry and have children and make my family proud; and Allah.
But I shamed you instead. That is my legacy. It is ignoble, not what I would have chosen given the choice. But, I was not given the choice. The choice was taken from me. The great God, Allah, praise be his name, gave human beings, all of us, the gift of free will.
We aren’t supposed to use it, says my father and my mother, we are to honor the Almighty by withholding the gift, to show our obedience to His will, but free will, the will to choose, is ours by birthright.
They used their free will to deny mine. I did not choose to be raped. I did not choose to be murdered, my body desecrated and burnt. I did not choose to shame you.
My name is Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi. And I offer my sincerest apology for what your boys did to me.
I saw them looking at me for many days before anything happened; the soldiers.It began…
Wait.
There are some things I want to say first.
I am fourteen. It is true. But it is also true I am a woman. I know, because here I can know, how some have reacted and lied because they were afraid of the reaction the reaction to my age would cause in your society. Some thought it was better to lie about my age. Some said I was 20 or 25. But any fool would know I would be married with children, enjoying a wondrous family of my own by that age.
I am fourteen, but I am a woman. I understand in your culture, the culture and the country I have shamed, that a fourteen year old female is considered a child. But I also know, because I have seen American television, please, do not tell my mother and father, but I have seen American television, and I know that your fourteen year old “girls” often dress as whores. Forgive me; I do not mean to offend, but we both know it is true. Young girls in your culture dress in a way to seduce and entice the opposite sex even though they may not understand what that means.
It is not that way in my world. In my world a man is attracted by the essence, not the flesh.
I did nothing to attract those boys. They attracted themselves to me.
But, I must admit, in all fairness, before Allah, praise be, I did smile once ever so slightly.
If I am guilty because of my smile, ever so slight, then the shame is mine.
But that one small, ever so small, nervous, smile at the checkpoint turned your boys into monsters. It was from then on, they couldn’t take their eyes off me.
I never, I swear on my soul to Allah, I never meant to allure, but only to show I meant no harm. Your boys are very frightened and I smiled to tell them I was not an enemy.
One more thing before I go on.
I am a Sunni, though my town, Mahmudiyah, where we had only recently moved is a “mixed” town. I notice now, in this place where so much is known, that like “the massacre in Haditha,” I am now known as the “rape in Mahmudiyah.” It is easier for you I guess not to know the people behind the massacre, the rape, the kidnapping, the burning. It is better the crime remain impersonal. But behind every massacre, rape kidnapping and burning there are people just like you. Just like you, who have been made to suffer the torments and the shame of hell on earth.
The “rape in Mahmudiyah” is me; Abeer Hamza.
As I was saying, your boys are frightened all the time. They have no friends among us. To befriend one of your boys is to surrender your life. But though your boys have no friends, it does not mean everyone is an enemy. Yet, and who can blame them for they are young and inexperienced in human matters, and frightened, as I said, like puppies weaned too early from their mother, to your boys we are all enemies.
My smile, my one small smile was not meant to beguile or trick. I have heard stories of the fighters using women, women older than me to lure your boys into traps. That is not who I am or what happened. My smile, my one ever so slight smile, with my eyes averted to the ground, was to say, “do not be afraid.” The words of the angels when they come into our dreams.
I never smiled at your boys again because when I passed through the checkpoint, they began to whistle and holler as I walked to my house. They called me “baby” and words that sounded like the shrieks of animals in the night.
From then on, if you could look backwards in time, my destiny, or my fate I should say, as my destiny is still unfolding, was set. As soon as I stepped foot out of the house the leering and taunting and wanting, the desperate wanting of lonesome, frightened boys would begin.
My mother so worried she sent me to spend the nights at other houses with other mothers, women, elders to watch over me while I slept. But each day, the tensions rose. One of your boys was frenzied, out of control, obsessed and enraged. My neighborhood knew what was going on. It was not a secret and it was not a surprise when it happened.
Finally, your boys could not stand it anymore. They had been driven insane by their fear and anger and obsession and, I don’t know the words to describe a heart of horror; a heart broken to the point of…heartlessness.
They came to my house, your boys. And forever I will be thankful to Allah, the merciful, the beneficent, I will always forever be grateful for His understanding and wisdom. He, the one who had surrendered his heart and his reason and his humanity, the one filled to the brim with emptiness, he took my mother and father and baby sister, Hadeel, who is only six years old; he took them and shot them all dead first before he took me.
I will always be thankful to your boy for not forcing my father and mother and little sister, Hadeel, who is here with me now, to watch what he did.
And because Hadeel my sister is here with me now and she is still a girl and not a woman, and does not know of these things, I will not say all of what was done to me. You know.
I did not mean to shame you, but shamed you are. Your choice was taken away as mine was by boys, lost and confused, alone and scared, wounded, hurt, with no mother’s touch to comfort and heal them.
It is ironic, after all, that so many believe the horror of what happened is the rape of a “girl,” but the real horror is the lost soul of your boys; and perhaps the soul of your nation.
So, finally, again, I offer my apology. I never meant to harm you or your boys. I never meant to bring shame to your country. None of us can ever know our fate until it is too late and time is a one way street; for you. I can see it both ways now.
And your shame is only just beginning.
I am Abeer Hamza and I am a woman.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

why are you posting AS THE dead child. That is not right!

8.8.13  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The license you take to speak for Abeer - to speak AS her - is shameful and offensive. Has this poor girl not been desecrated enough? Please remove this.

4.4.14  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I notice you still haven't had the decency to remove this pile of ordure. How very DARE you use this child's ordeal as an exercise in cheap fiction.

Made you feel all good inside and self righteous, did it, getting on your ignorant high horse on this girl's behalf?

Do you have the remotest notion how disrespectful this self indulgent rubbish is to her memory? As for the effrontery to use all that sentimentalised blond angelic imagery - she was a MOSLEM, for pity's sake. But then I don't suppose it even occurred to you how insulting and inappropriate it is to associate her with all that crass mawkish baggage from a culture that was not only NOT hers, but was that of her murderers.

SHAME ON YOU!!!

12.6.14  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I notice you still haven't had the decency to remove this pile of ordure. How very DARE you use this child's ordeal as an exercise in cheap fiction.

Made you feel all good inside and self righteous, did it, getting on your ignorant high horse on this girl's behalf?

Do you have the remotest notion how disrespectful this self indulgent rubbish is to her memory? As for the effrontery to use all that sentimentalised blond angelic imagery - she was a MOSLEM, for pity's sake. But then I don't suppose it even occurred to you how insulting and inappropriate it is to associate her with all that crass mawkish baggage from a culture that was not only NOT hers, but was that of her murderers.

SHAME ON YOU!!!

12.6.14  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Please do not remove this because the barbaric Al-cracka savages are up in arms about it. I read every word and think it is one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read. I loved it because it shows the world the barbarity of the American savage.

6.11.14  

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