The Star

Those of you who have only been visting The Glittering Eye for the last few years may not know that for several years I curated a weekly round-up of the work of Iraqi bloggers. I kept track of every blogger actually blogging from Iraq that I could identify. With only a few exceptions they were young enough to be my children or grandchildren and I felt sort of paternal towards them. I’d guess I stopped seven or eight years ago.

This afternoon it suddenly occurred to me that one of the bloggers I kept track of was a young woman (Sunni Arab) in Mosul who posted as “A Star from Mosul” and, since Mosul had fallen under DAESH’s control, it might be interesting to see what she had to say.

Her most recent post is here. It’s dated June 26, 2014 and it’s pretty heart-rending. Here’s the opening:

I don’t know what to say, my heart is full of sorrow and fear

The past 3 weeks were the hardest ever, 11 years of war , I’ve written about hard days in blog but they are nothing compared to what happened this time.

and the conclusion is here:

Right now, there is no shooting , and armed men took control of Mosul and near by villages, as well as other cities ..

there is no electricity, no fuel, no gas, no salaries, lack of food supplies especially the one that need Freezers , the vegetables and fruits are bad and expensive , as there are no electricity the food in our refrigerators molded , people are struggling in this hot weather (42 Cel)

Everyone is worried and upset , no one knows what will happen next.

We just want a suitable life like any other human being in the world, is it too much to ask?

We are thinking seriously to leave , but how? where? When? We don’t know ..

The last words are:

note : I’ll try to post some photos as soon as i have a better internet connection .

and nothing has been written since.