My Gun is My Law

I thought I was having a nightmare of someone shooting outside my house. “Wake up,” my mother shook me off. “Don’t panic,” she said. “Some one is shooting at the corner of the street.” I then realized that it wasn’t a nightmare; it was real.

In my night clothes, I ran grapping my jeans pants and my cell phone. I thought I may need them in case we run away from the house. In these few moments dozens of thoughts came to mind. I first thought these were the “men in black” breaking into the houses of my Sunni neighbors trying to kill them, then I thought these might be Sunni insurgent trying to break into the houses of the few Shiite families that live in the same street, including ours. In all cases, we were scared but calm. Well, of course, we are used to these things.

My father cocked his rifle. “Looking at you doing this scares me more than the ones shooting outside,” my shaking mother told my father. “Calm down. It’s not the first time I do it,” he said.

It was so dark, no electricity as usual. I had to use my cell phone’s tiny light to reach the oil-lamp that we use when power goes off. “Quickly,” my mother shouted. I ran to get the lamp which was in the kitchen. “Don’t be close to the windows she repeated several times fearing a bullet might break the windows and kill me or at least wound me.

I had to find the match to light the lamp. I couldn’t ask my parents where the match was because they were inside and I did not want to make any of the shooters outside know that there is someone in the kitchen. Finally, I found the match.

In the corridor in the back of the house, I lighted the lamp. I unlocked the back door of the house which we keep as an emergency exit in case someone breaks into the house. it was our only option to escape through and not let the armed men follows us by the time we lock it. The shooting in our street continued for about five minutes and then continued in another street that is a little bit farther than ours. It was completely unclear who is shooting at whom.

“At least we didn’t hear any one wailing. So everyone in our street seems alive,” I told my parents to cool them down. “Let’s go back to sleep. We have work to do tomorrow,” I said in a calm way as if nothing happened and so we did!

Later, I couldn’t sleep well. I remembered how we, except my father who wasn’t in Iraq, tried to sleep in our shelter room in 2003 during the invasion. It was also dark and we were all scared but calm.

It is now that I am sure of a state that has no law looks like Iraq. The only law is your gun. If you shoot, I will shoot too.

Since I put my head on the pillow, I started thinking of many things: things that we had and we didn’t, things we were deprived from, things that we have now but not enjoying them, the chaos and the collapse of Iraq. I kept asking myself, Was the war worth it? I found no answer.