Iraq Blog Count

The Peace Corps slogan used to be and probably still is ‘The toughest job you’ll ever love.’ I do not watch much television, so I am not really sure if this is the current slogan. Anyway, this slogan or motto is just perfect for my blogging. Blogging for me is the toughest “job” I love at this point. Well, it’s really not a job, but I do take it serious since I have ended up with three blogs which I hope are a good reflection of me and my interests. Whether they want to believe it or not, people’s characters do shine through or glare through on their blogs.

Though I have been working on an entry for my Christian blog which I will probably post tomorrow, I decided to do a brief post here about a blog I discovered last Friday. The blog is called Iraq Blog Count. It is a blog about all the known Iraqi blogs both active and defunct. They even keep listings of Iraqi blogs that have been deleted. It is very nice and informative that these bloggers have created a place where the writing of their fellow countrymen and women is archived. I feel a twinge of sadness when I see blogs there that have been abandoned without a reason why. Some bloggers got scared and deleted their blogs. I wonder if the blogger of an abandoned weblog is still alive, or is perhaps in exile as one said he would be going into, or if a particular abandoned blog means the writer of it is deceased.

Baghdad Burning is an award winning blog which was published in two volumes and can be purchased on Amazon. It is listed on Iraq Blog Count. It inspired me to start blogging. Last autumn it was abandoned. But “Riverbend” who writes it went to Syria with her family, made her last entry after arriving there, and is probably alive and well.

On Friday, I was reading a blog by an Iraqi psychiatrist who gets very few patients because according to him many Iraqis feel that going into therapy means they are being plagued by djinns. He still writes with optimism and spunk even though life is tough.

My heart goes out to Iraqi bloggers just like it did to a young half Iraqi, half Turkish woman and her siblings who attended a Turkish language class I was taking early last year in Istanbul. I admired her for her ability to smile and the effort she made to try and make friends with me even though she spoke hardly any English, and I know less than 10 words in Arabic. Her Iraqi father was stranded in Baghdad. Her Turkish mother was in Istanbul after being uprooted from her adopted country after 30 years.

I still wonder about Wa’fa, her brothers, and her one sister-in-law sometimes. Have they become fluent in Turkish by now? Have they adjusted to Turkish life? Was her father able to finally leave Iraq? Did he get out safely?