No Longer Shocked Or Awed

I look forward to reading this blog - even if the posts are generally a depressing view of what it is like to live in Iraq as an Iraqi citizen. We can listen to the dribble about how we're building schools and hospitals (as we should since we blew them up - some favor!). Just as Bushco was doing the Sunday talk show circuit to tell everyone, once again, that we'd done the right thing by invading a sovereign nation two years ago, Iraqis noted the occupation milestone as well.

A seemingly endless 40 minutes later, there was a slight lull in the bombing- it seemed to have gotten further away. I took advantage of the relative calm and went to find the telephone. The house was cold because the windows were open to keep them from shattering. I reached for the telephone, fully expecting to find it dead but I was amazed to find a dial tone. I began dialing numbers- friends and relatives. We contacted an aunt and an uncle in other parts of Baghdad and the voices on the other end were shaky and wary. Are you OK? Is everyone OK? Was all I could ask on the phone. They were ok but the bombing was heavy all over Baghdad. Shock and awe had begun.

Two years ago this week.

What followed was almost a month of heavy bombing. That chaotic night became the intro to endless chaotic days and long, sleepless nights. You get to a point during extended air-raids where you lose track of the days. You lose track of time. The week stops being Friday, Saturday, Sunday, etc. The days stop being about hours. You begin to measure time with the number of bombs that fell, the number of minutes the terror lasted and the number of times you wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of gunfire and explosions.

We try to put it out of our heads, but it comes back anyway. We sit around sometimes, when there's no electricity, or when were gathered for lunch or dinner and someone will say, Remember two years ago when ... Remember when they bombed Mansur, a residential area When they started burning the cars in the streets with Apaches when they hit the airport with that bomb that lit up half of the city when the American tanks started rolling into Baghdad?

Remember when the fear was still fresh- and the terror was relatively new- and it was possible to be shocked and awed in Iraq?