Iraq's deadly attacks kill 65 people
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The most deadly attack on Thursday was in Baghdad's southern district of Doura when a suicide bomber detonated at the crowded popular market of Athoriyin, killing 12 civilians and wounding 25 others, a police source said. The bomber targeted U.S. soldiers on patrol at the entrance of the marketplace, the source said, quoting police reports as saying that three U.S. soldiers were killed in the attack and five others wounded. Thursday's attacks followed a deadly car bombing near a popular restaurant in Baghdad's northwestern neighborhood of Shualaa on Wednesday evening, killing up to 40 people and wounding 83 others, the police said.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-05/21/content_11414917.htm


Back to Black...by Layla Anwar
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Useless... Totally useless... How fast I move back into black...it always amazes me. The only comfortable color, the only color I feel safe in, ever since you liberated me, ever since you liberated us... Summer is at our doorstep, all colorful. I go through the yearly motions. Hide the Winter, bring out the Summer...clothes. A task I have been postponing for ever. A ritual I have been postponing for ever... Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Mark the seasons, I tell myself...mark them. Make that passage...it's Summer knocking on your door. I stare out of my window and I say - yes it is summer knocking... Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall...the seasons have become all the same...a question of variation of temperature. That's it. Some days are colder and some are hotter...But they're all the same. I gathered all the good will I could muster, I opened my wardrobe and was aghast to see the amount of black clothes I had. Black sweaters, black trousers, black dresses, black jeans, black skirts, black...black, black and black... Is that why I dress up my blog in colors ? I thought to myself. Is that why I splash it with colors, trying to give it Life ? Hello, we are still here. Hello there is a living voice here. Hello can you hear me ? Can you hear me ? Can you hear me through megabytes of cyberspace ? Can you hear me in the Black ? Do you ? Am I coming loud and clear ? Or are you like the clothes hanging in my wardrobe, dusty with the passing days, stuck in the Winter of your minds ? It's Summer knocking on my door...Bring me the colors. Let them in, one by one...Pink, Yellow, Green, Lilac, Blue...Carry them in baskets and adorn them with hand picked flowers from fresh springing meadows... Let me smell the earth again. Let me smell the sun. Let me smell life...again. Wait, I will make myself beautiful for you. I am hiding my black winter clothes and bringing out my colored summer ones. Look at the pattern. Feel the fabric. Do you see that flowered dress ? Look at this one, it's pure white silk. And what about that one - it's embroidered with the finest of blue... Look, look, they're all out, waiting to be worn...waiting to be born again... I promise no dust. I promise no fuss. I promise to be a good girl. No procrastination. No laziness. No stalling. No... Oh, here you are, knocking on my door. What flowers did you bring ? What do they smell like ? Is Summer hidden in them, in between their stalks, in between their petals ? Will you greet me with embraces and kisses, like in the old days ? I open the door... A dwarf stares at me...holding an old rusty tray and a list of names...encrypted on burned paper... Over 40 dead today, he said. An explosion. It happened at 7 pm, just when the Sun was setting and when a cool breeze made it safe... I shut the door in his face. I shut the door. I leave my winter clothes spread on the floor, like skeletons... waiting to find a corpse to dress...I shut the door and leave them lying there, pieces of fragmented red, pieces of fragmented black...I leave them lying there...in between seasons with no name...in between life and death... I leave them there...in the grey of my life, of our life... I leave them there, for another Spring, another Summer, another...Winter. And am back to Black.


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54443&hd=&size=1&l=e