I was there..

Any news? And I replied, No news today, no one killed!!

I realized when I answered my colleague that I said it in a way just like I was saying ‘sorry, no one was killed today so there will be no news’, I felt bad and sad.

It is so difficult to work as a reporter for any newspaper when you have to cover a story of a car bomb or any violence that killed many of your people.

When you see all this Iraqi blood and peaces of flesh every where around you at the scene, how could your story be neutral and balanced?

Your readers could be Iraqis or non-Iraqis and you still have to put your feelings away when you write for them so your story will be neutral.

Every time I go out to cover these kind of stories which they are most of the stories in Iraq now, I remain quiet in the car all the way back to the office thinking of all those Iraqis dieing every day and I always feel that I will not be able to write any thing about it but when I look at it as how valuable those Iraqis were, dieing for no reason, it makes me write, and here when I have to be neutral to have a balanced story.

My father who was a military man and worked with politics until he was thrown in jail for some years and kicked out of the military, told me a story long time ago,

“There was a Bedouin who loved a woman for so many years; he couldn’t marry her because her family refused him, finely he did.

One day, a wolf came and killed her while she was sleeping in her tent,

When the Bedouin came back and saw her drowned in her own blood in the tent he didn’t know what to do and because he was a poet he made a poem and start wander the desert singing it then made another one and another and the people liked his songs and they cried when they listened to him; then people started calling him to their villages to tell them his story and sing for them, later, they started paying for his expenses to come to their places, then, they started paying him every time he sings about her.

He made a lot of many, but one day when he was sleeping in his tent, a wolf came, he woke up, left the money and run out of the tent.

Outside the tent he thought about the money and said, “This wolf made me rich because he ate my beloved one, or my beloved one made me rich because she was eaten by this wolf”.

He realized, later, how bad he was to become rich out of the death of his beloved one.”

So we have to cover the story as it is for those people who are dieing to make the whole world understand what is going on and why those Iraqis are dieing not to become famous out of it..

And to those who did not understand my point they can ask me,
I can tell them all about it because,

I was there..

whowasthere@gmail.com