Murdering Knowledge

Last night’s nightmare was about car bombs. I was in a well-known street walking among people looking at shops and enjoying a beautiful sunny Friday in Baghdad. It was like a mixture of time. It was normal at first. People were shopping, me walking, cars passing by in the street but all of a sudden I couldn’t feel but glass, shrapnel and flesh falling over my head. I opened my eyes and looked around. A relief sigh. I am not in the emergency room.

I got up and washed my face. It must be one of the streets of Baghdad that I love is attacked, I said within myself. I turned on the computer and read the news. My nightmare didn’t let me down. It was al-Mutannabi Street, one of my favorite places in Baghdad ever.

The Book Market which I spent most of the best times in my childhood, teenage and youth was burned by a car bomb that mixed the blood of readers, buyers and sellers with papers and fire just like Hulago who once burned the Grand Library of Baghdad and threw the books in the Tigris mixing its water with the ink of the books.

Black smoke drifted over central Baghdad from burning shops, cars and book
stalls in the mixed Sunni-Shiite area around al-Mutannabi Street along the
Tigris River. At least 66 people were wounded in the suicide blast, and the
death toll could rise, police said.

"Papers from the book market
were floating through the air like leaflets dropped from a plane," said Naeem
al-Daraji, a Health Ministry worker who was driving about 200 yards from the
blast and was slightly injured by broken glass from his car window.
"Pieces
of flesh and the remains of books were scattered everywhere," he said. Associated Press

My heart is filled with grief for the people who died as they were seeking the path of knowledge and education. I can’t even write anything further here but you can read what I wrote about my memories in this street here.

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