In this post from April 7, 2007 Nabil writes about an incident that he thinks is funny, but admits that we may find disturbing. Living in Baghdad at the time, he was sitting in his room, playing guitar (he's pretty damn good; check out the link on his blog to his recorded songs) and trying to put together a recording of the Cat Stevens song "Peace Train."
[A]nd after about 30 seconds on starting the song, when reaching the first line in the song, which was "Now I've been happy lately," a random bullet entered my room, crashed the window and broke all the glass and a heavy shooting then took place in the street.
With his home suddenly a war zone, Nabil hastily turned off the recording before moving further away from the window to avoid getting hit by stray bullets and marveled at the irony of what had just happened.
It's like no one should be happy in this country, because if you say that you're happy, a bullet will come and smash your head right away.
This is a direct link to the audio file he recorded.
I think it is important that small incidents like this (as well as the huge massacres and atrocities) are not forgotten as we withdraw a significant portion of our troops and the American public moves on from thinking about Iraq. It is our responsibility for what happened there and the blood and tears of millions will always be on our hands. If we can remember this, I believe that it may help in some small way to prevent us from launching another brutal, unnecessary war someday. I can only hope.
