Friday, June 09, 2006

The U.S. Gets Its Man, Fatima Gets a Generator

The news that Fatima has gotten a generator was most definitely overshadowed by the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Some of the better blogging on the war comes from Iraqis themselves. Naturally. They include Fatima, who blogs at Thoughts From Baghdad.

So we are happy to announce that this lovely lady has finally dealt with the bane of all Iraqi bloggers – unreliable electrical service – by purchasing a diesel generator.

She explains:
It cost about $400 for a new piece, and another $400 for one month's supply of diesel to run the generator. Very pricey for the diesel, which normally should have cost one-sixth of that price, but we're happy all the same. Here's a clip of the sound of our generator [from] outside my aunt-in-law's backyard (where it sits). Just so that you get an idea of the beautiful noise that our neighbours wake up to in the morning and sleep to at night. [It] adds noise pollution to the whole mess here but, at the moment, it's music to our ears.
If you’d like to hear Fatima’s generator, click on this link.

1 comment:

OutOfContext said...

Thanks for the link to Thoughts from Baghdad. Her words penetrated me through the bunker of commercial media. This is what I wrote about it on my blog:

Thoughts from the Window, after all

After having read the simple and chilling posts in Thoughts From Baghdad, I looked out at my daughter playing in the yard. She got on her bike and rode off down little side street which the huge pickups and SUV's too often speed down. Across the way, my neighbor, a Normandy vet, mowed, displaying the perpetual and inscrutable grin he wears while he works on his lushly planted shady acre. My daughter returned, let the bike fall and tried throwing her homemade boomerang. A stray cat screeched and came flying down a tree, birds squawking at it from the leaves overhead. I thought of Fatima, walking to the store with her 10 month old, deciding which way to go safely; furtively photographing her neighbors razor wire fence, fearing her camera would make her a target either as a foreigner or someone wealthy enough for kidnapping; not daring to stop and chat in the street. Small world, huh?