Young!

Using the phone is the only hobby I’ve got nowadays; 00964 is my favorite code, and then I start calling other codes as my Iraqi friends are distributed allover this world, and since I start calling I don’t stop till I hear the operator saying: “You have insufficient credit for this call”, which means I have to postponed a call to the next week.

“M” is just another young doctor with another story; he was in love with “B” since 2002, they were always together, they used to represent how love looks like!
Days went; sometimes hard, but eventually; we finished our studies and their dream came true as they got engaged as soon as they got their qualifications.

He immediately went to Kurdistan (as well as most of our classmates) and to Syria, to find a place for them there.

While struggling between Syria and Kurdistan to find a place, and while trying to find another exit to Australia encouraged by his family who live there; life didn’t go well at all.
He became agitated; as Al-Mahdi army started looking for him accusing him of being “Sunni”!
Few days later, and I’m sure while he was mad; they couldn’t go on together, so; they broke up!

He lost the love he lived for 5 years, and he lost the girl who sacrificed a lot for him, he lost the dream for which he sacrificed joining his family to Australia.

It’s going to be a year now, and still he hardly control his tears whenever we talk, many times he cried loudly on the phone, many times he begged me to help him, yet, what is lost will never come back.

The last time we had a chat he told me that being far away from Iraq didn’t help him, he feels unwell and living with guilt as he lost her, he has been away from his family for seven years now, and he is quite confused as his uncle was killed by “Omer army” while his house was taken by Al-Mahdi army!!

And of course he is not the only one with such story as his closest friend, whose father was killed a year ago by Shiit’s militia, went back to Iraq to be arrested by Sunnis insurgents accusing him to be Shiit as his grandfather’s name sounds Shiit!!!

I’m not here to defend “M” or to show sympathy, as I’ve said he is just another one of us, a young doctor who could achieve nothing or probably lost a lot in the democratic new Iraq.
Another young, another lost and another hopeless guy; that all what I see about him.
What categorizes the ones I phone is; all of them are young; or apparently they are!
Whoever I call has a sad event, whoever I have a chat with is having a bad time.
In fact; nothing tells that they’re young apart from their age; not more than 35 years, but the way they talk or behave is quite different; they all sound like elderly people who lost their hope and ambition.

Inside each one of them there is a deep wound, when they talk, they show sorrow, hopelessness, anger and weakness!

Even when we are away; those feelings never leave us, we just feel unwell and unable to cope.

While walking around, I asked myself this question: Do I or anyone of my friends behave or think like young people? I really doubt it!
All what we discuss is politics, the best way to run away from Iraq, how to deal with the new regulations for getting a job and the visa problems, how hard it is to go to Jordan, how horrible the life inside Iraq is and how it’s getting worse everyday, and a lot of sorrow and sadness.

For along time we’ve never talked about love, about beauty or about happiness, I can’t even differentiate who is beautiful and who is not!
We never tried to ask ourselves what happiness means as we haven’t tasted it yet.

Being unable to enjoy the life, being unable to communicate well and being unable to sit with a friend without arguing about the situation in my country, are things happen to me and many others.

Thinking about such problem makes me convinced that we don’t live the most important and beautiful period in our life properly.
We really don’t have the sense of being young or we’re really not, or in a proper word; we don’t know what youth means.

I'm getting my first gold tooth,a bold sooner or later, and I won't be suprised if I'll have to walk with a stick shortly.

While walking with my new consultant whose age is as twice as mine or even few years more, he was complaining that he is worried of dying here and no one notice his death, he was complaining of being lonely; I tried to comfort him while assuring myself that I’m not the only one who feels so.

I turned to my consultant saying: “your problem will be solved by finding a new wife, but mine will not as I'm living this life”.