Sardar Gharib does not regret cutting down thousands of trees. “This is the source of my livelihood and support for my two children. It is the livelihood of dozens of unemployed people” he says as he thinks about using his saw to clear a new forest.
It was the first year of the occupation. In that atmosphere filled with the smoke of bombings and the fumes of fires, even the healthiest of eyes suffered. What, then, could be expected of eyes as delicate and susceptible as mine? Everything around me seemed to pave the way toward my impending blindness: the doctor's awkward questions and his clinic’s painful lighting, pollen dust mixed with toxic gases, the sharp blades of knives pointing at me at garage stalls and shops, the harsh sun and its searing rays piercing through layers of my eyes’ aching membranes, the suffocating military color palette wherever I turned... And, finally, there was the school fence, strangled by barbed wire much like our own lives were.
The State of Beads. This state is made out of myths, legends, and beads. There are no policies, no plans, no actions. Everything that happens is a kind of innovation, a creativity, and a breach of reality presented by unseen forces
Since 2019, protest culture has become ubiquitous in Iraq, especially in Baghdad and the other Shia-majority areas of the country that were the site of the Tishreen protests. Demonstrations are regularly organized for a variety of reasons. Some seek to keep the spirit of 2019 alive. Others are for government jobs. Some protests are responses to specific political or economic issues. Others are shows of force organized by political elites. The last in particular has become more common since 2019, with the political classes appropriating protest culture in order to blunt the effect of anti-systemic protest activism and as a tactic in intra-elite competition.
