My Guardian Angel

My mom is one of the greatest women you’ll ever have the honor to meet , I owe everything I am today to the way she raised me. She’s only 4’9 but she has a way with words than can terrorize the shit out of anyone if she wants to and it was with that attitude that she raised me and my 4 siblings.

The reason why I’m writing this is kind of a long story, but long story short a family member had a heart attack and Ali and I went to visit him, while we were there and as he started telling us the story of what happened to him his wife brought him a cup (istikan) of tea and bread, Iraqi bread is a piece of round flat bread that has thicker edges and a thinner crispier center, so he started eating his bread starting so close to the edge and working his way around it carefully tearing pieces and eating them without breaking the edge which was gradually turning  into a bread circle, now you should know that I absolutely love that man and I was genuinely concerned for his health but I could swear to god that I could not hear a single word he was saying all I could hear was mom’s voice telling 6 year old me that it’s wrong to eat bread from the center out without breaking the edges! 

I have no idea why she considered that to be wrong but no one in my family, includig dad, ever dared to eat bread without breaking the edges or eat from a plate other than the one right in front of them or be rude to anyone or raise their voice to anyone older or treat someone different just because they had or didn’t have money, "drivers and cleaners are human just like you so you better be nice to them!" she used to say, always smile and say thank you, be thankful for what you have one day you might not have anything left!

 Some of her advice became corner stones in my grownup character others made zero sense to me back then and even now, but they stuck in my brain for years and I plan on passing most of them to my son and although our relationship have had its ups and downs and changed significantly over the years I still know that no matter what happens she will always be there for me and that the phone will ring every single day at 11 am and again at 7 pm  and Mom will be on the other end checking on me, I also know that no matter how old or independent  I get I will always be her little girl and she will always see me that way and ask me if I'm wearing socks in winter and remind me to cover my self with a blanket when I sleep and most important no matter what I do or how stupid I get she will always be there for me. I appreciate everything she did for us more and more everyday and I have absolutely no idea how she managed to stay sane with 5 kids! I know I don't say this nearly as often as I should but thank you mom for always pushing me to be the best, for giving me tough love when I needed it and for holding always my hand no matter what.

"When I die, I hope you teach how to fly
All my life you've been that angel in disguise"

She's back

It has been two years since I last published something here and ALOT has happened during this period, my life has changed and my priorities have shifted in a major way, I'm still creepy though and I'm a bit more sarcastic if that's possible.

I've been having really nice dreams lately, I don't know if it's a sign of anything! inner piece maybe? although I'm as far from that as can be or maybe Hubby's dreaminess have finally rubbed on and since I have no time during the day to day dream what soever I'm making up for loss time at night! I'm sticking to that explanation!! any way, my latest dream was last night when I dreamed I had a successful online business ,you know one of those things that look so effortless and brings in huge checks (it's a dream people don't judge!) so in the dream I was sitting in my car in a traffic light daydreaming about how wonderful my life was and someone started honking and not only disrupted my dream-daydream but also wok me up, no one was honking, the baby was up screaming his lungs out and it was 4:30 in the morning and all I could think about while picking him up with my eyes half opened was where on earth did I put his nail cutter, I'm up so I might as well cut his nails! so I did! and I went back to sleep and woke up, late again, to my much less glamorous reality.

On the bright side my family threw me and awesome early surprise birthday party and got me a massive chocolate cake which is sitting in my fridge calling me ...

Note to self, I've got to stop for milk and diapers on the way home....

Reality :1
Dream: 0

When My Father Didn't Have My Hand, He Had My Back

Ever since Ali started working late so much I've been spending lots of time at my parents, which could be really fun with Mom completely spoiling me and making me feel like I'm five again, but then can get really exhausting with all the driving and the maniacs of drivers yelling on the streets.

Dad has been asking me to buy him shoes from amazon for ages and I keep forgetting, finally I remembered! only I remembered at midnight and we started looking at shoes and ended buying seven pairs for him and mom and at some point we started talking about drilling (Petroleum wells that is), I probably never mentioned this before but my dad is one of the smartest people I've ever known,he knows everything there is to know about anything Petroleum related and he's so passionate about it and loooooooves it when someone asks him anything and although I didn't understand half the things he said I was smiling the whole time because as the time goes by the times that i see that twinkle in his eyes becomes less and less, so when i do see it I just want to sit there and smile, I don't want to interrupt him I just want to take a mental picture of how happy he looks while talking.

The other day I was telling Ali about this, are we ever going to do something we're passionate about? Am I ever going to have a job where I feel accomplished? Will my kids ever see that twinkle in my eyes?? and will they ever feel the same way I feel about my father? I always have this overwhelming sense of joy when I so proudly say "I'm Abdulilah Al-Zubaidy's daughter" despite the fact that I've always been against him helping me, carrier wise, and I even go by a different last name so that no one recognizes me, but for some reason it's always interesting to see the look on people's face when I do tell them.

The never ending sense of security that he and mom always managed to keep us under even during the worst of times is something I will forever be grateful for and I just hope that one day when I have my own kids I get to make them feel like no matter what happens I will always be there for them, because that's how I felt growing up. I was always ready to be challenged and was never scared to jump into anything because I knew that the minute I fall someone will be there to catch me, hold my hand and walk me through anything if I ask,  correct me when I'm wrong and will never care if I thought I was too old for advice.

He Turns 71 next month and despite how much we argue and how much we drive each other crazy, (which by the way I think it's only because we're so similar) he will always be my first love, my hero, my friend and confidant and by far the coolest guys I've ever met and he accomplished everything without Google or Wikipedia!

The Land of the Poor, the Government and the Inconsiderate

In a country where 60+ and even 70+ years old men clean the streets for living! In a country where a 50+ Years old woman with four grown up girls make a living from selling pins and combs on the side walk of one of the busiest streets in the city out of a pushed cart which she pushes for at least 6 kilometers from and to her spot every single day! In country where a person who was born with a birth defect is called crazy and left for the streets to raise them! In a country where countless families make less than 10 dollars a day! In a country where breaking the law is applaud and where thieves are respected and feared! In a country where the locals are considered second class citizens and foreigners are treated as royalty! In a country where people are deprived of the simplest rights, Iraq, that's where I live.

A country that has been through so many wars and so much destruction and never managed to quite rise back and now after almost eleven years of the so called liberation we still haven't managed to carry on a conversation without going back to the same old story of kidnapping, ransoms, killing, bombs and, destruction, all kinds of it! this is until lately where The Voice the Arabic version started airing in the Middle East and every conversation I've heared ever since has got to have something to with the show. Every Friday my Facebook news feed would be filled with nothing but status messages and pictures of the contestants and the coaches and lots of passionate words and prayers each person for their favorite.

If a bomb goes off and hundreds of people die only a few people will write about it but when neither the Iraqi contestant nor the Iraqi coach won a bomb of cursing and name calling exploded on my Facebook news feed, I was amazed by the number of people that were affected by the show and the final results! Those people have spent hundreds of dollars voting through text messages for their favorites! those are the same people that never even bother to look at the lady's cart on the street in this cold weather and I bet they never even noticed the old men cleaning the streets!

The only explanation I can come up with is that we have become numb to anything and everything around us and after having bloody-every-day- of the week days and after all we've been through we'd rather not talk about it, not think about the people who's lives have been completely shattered, go and spend so much money voting for some one who will never acknowledge the effort rather than helping a person who will probably remember it for as long as they shall live! and the middle of this storm of superficiality the Iraqi government have donated FORTY MILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS for the Syrian refugees and not a single person has wrote about it today! Of course they would, I mean the country is clearly well taken care of so why shouldn't we take care of our neighbors and be the first to do so, right?

And don't you worry about the poor, the have Allah ...

نامي جياعَ الشَّعْـبِ نامي حَرَسَتْكِ آلِهـة ُالطَّعـامِ

Are You Happy?

Last Night while trying to fall asleep and wondering threw the endless boards of my new found addiction, Pinterist I stumbled across this:

 I felt like the world stopped for a second when I read it and I finally understood that AHA moment that Oprah has been yapping about for years, although my moment was more of a HA moment rather than aha! I just sat there and wondered if it was actually that easy? I know that complicating things and over thinking only means you're human, right? but what if life actually is easier than what we make it? what if being happy requires no more than setting your foot and saying, you know what today I'm going to be happy? I felt like it was a wake up call, you know those moments in movies where a heavenly light shines over the lead actor from somewhere above with all the fire flies that appear out of nowhere complete with that Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa music-carol like sound? Yeah that's how I felt! it was spooky although it would have been cooler if the old wise Japanese guy made an appearance whispering words of wisdom into my head with his majestic voice, wouldn't it?

I came to a realize that I have all I need to be happy but I tend to dwell in all the horrible things that are happening around me. So with this attitude I woke up this morning with my mind set on Happiness and I feel good, well so far at least. So Whoever said that happiness is a state of mind was right, I woke up with a positive attitude and the day ended fine!

So there you have it if you want to be happy, BE.

Have a nice day
T.