People’s Souls

Photo Credit: Hadi Mizban, Associated Press, via The New York Times

I was with my mother in the back seat of a taxi cab, heading back home from the market, when the driver said something that still rings in my ears. I was eleven years-old then and it was 1991, right after the U.S.-led coalition forces ended their Desert Storm operation.

The streets were alive with people going back to work, shopping and retrieving a bit of their normal lives as cease fire was announced. Then, a few months before Baghdad’s infrastructure was rebuilt, Baghdad looked like a broken skeleton.

“We’re destroyed,” said the taxi driver, as he started a conversation with my mother.

“Inshallah, everything will be rebuilt and return to normal,” my mother said in a very hopeful and positive tone.

“They sure will,” he replied. “But who will rebuild the people’s souls?”

Nineteen years later, those words cannot but make me think of what happened, still happening and will happen. For a while I got carried away with the busy life in America, until the last few days’ terror attacks that rocked Baghdad brought me back to my senses. They reminded me that Iraqis’ wounds are far from healing, and that it will take generations to overcome this trauma.