One of the most beautiful pictures in the world
Friday, March 31, 2006
Barbie Gets a Divorce
Ralph was driving home one evening when he suddenly realizes that it's his daughter's birthday and he hasn't bought her a present. He drives to the mall, runs to the toy store and says to the shop assistant, "How much is that Barbie in the window?"
In a condescending manner, she says "Which Barbie?" She continues, "We have Barbie Goes to the Gym for $19.95, Barbie Goes to the Ball for $19.95, Barbie Goes Shopping for $19.95, Barbie Goes to the Beach for $19.95, Barbie Goes Nightclubbing for $19.95, and Barbie Gets a Divorce for $265.00".
Ralph asks, "Why is the Barbie Gets a Divorce $265.00 when all the others are only $19.95?"
"That's obvious." The sales lady says. "Barbie Gets a Divorce comes with Ken's house, Ken's car, Ken's boat, and Ken's furniture."
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Child Bride
Her story begins in the village of Mullah Allam Akhound, near Kandahar.
"When I was three years old my father died, and after a year my mother married again, but her second husband didn't want me," says Gulsoma. "So my mother gave me away in a promise of marriage to our neighbor's oldest son, who was thirty."
"They had a ceremony in which I was placed on a horse [which is traditional in Afghanistan] and given to the man."
Because she was still a child, the marriage was not expected to be sexually consummated. But within a year, Gulsoma learned that so much else would be required of her that she would become a virtual slave in the household.
At the age of five, she was forced to take care of not only her "husband" but also his parents and all 12 of their other children as well. Though nearly the entire family participated in the abuse, her father-in-law, she says, was the cruelest.
"My father-in-law asked me to do everything — laundry, the household chores — and the only time I was able to sleep in the house was when they had guests over," she says. "Other than that I would have to sleep outside on a piece of carpet without even any blankets. In the summer it was okay. But in the winter a neighbor would come over and give me a blanket, and sometimes some food."
When she couldn't keep up with the workload, Gulsoma says, she was beaten constantly.
Gulsoma's scars
"They beat me with electric wires," she says, "mostly on the legs. My father-in-law told his other children to do it that way so the injuries would be hidden. He said to them, 'break her bones, but don't hit her on the face.'"
There were even times when the family's abuse of Gulsoma transcended the bounds of the most wanton, sadistic cruelty, as on the occasions when they used her as a human tabletop, forcing her to lie on her stomach then cutting their food on her bare back.
Gulsoma says the family had one boy her age, named Atiqullah, who refused to take part in her torture.
"He would sneak me food sometimes and when my mother-in-law told him to find a stick to beat me, he would come back say he couldn't find one," she says. "He would try to stop the others sometimes. He would say 'she is my sister, and this is sinful.' Sometimes I think about him and wish he could be here and I wish I could have him as my brother."
One evening, Gulsoma says, when her father-in-law saw the neighbor giving her food and a blanket, he took them away and beat her mercilessly. Then, she says, he locked her in a shed for two months.
"I would be kept there all day," she says, "then at night they would let me go the bathroom and I would be fed one time each day. Most of the time it was only bread and sometimes some beans."
She says every day she was locked in the shed, she wished and prayed that her parents would come and take her away. Then she would remember that her father was dead and her mother was gone.
But Gulsoma had an inner strength even her father-in-law couldn't comprehend.
"When he came to the shed he kept asking me, 'Why don't you die? I imprisoned you, I give you less food, but still you don't die.'"
But it wasn't for lack of trying. Gulsoma said when her father-in-law finally let her out of the shed, he bound her hands behind her back and beat her unconscious. She says he revived her by pouring a tea thermos filling with scalding water over her head and her back.
"It was so painful," she says, dabbing her eyes with her scarf and sniffling for a moment. "I was crying and screaming the entire time."
Five days later, she says, her father in law gave her a vicious beating when his daughter's wristwatch went missing.
"He thought I stole it," she says, "and he beat me all over my body with his stick. He broke my arm and my foot. He said if I didn't find it by the next day, he would kill me."
* * *
Gulsoma found hope after escaping
She crawled away that night and hid under a rickshaw. When the rickshaw driver found Gulsoma, broken and bleeding, he listened to her story and took her to the police. She was hospitalized immediately.
"The doctor at the hospital who treated me said, 'I wish I could take you to the village square and show all the people what happened to you, so no one would ever do something like this again,'" Gulsoma says.
It took her a full month to recover from her last beating. But the fear and psychological trauma may never go away.
"I was happy to have a bed and food at the hospital," she says. "But I was thinking that when I get better they will give me back to the family."
However, Gulsoma says when the police questioned the family, the father-in-law lied and tried to tell them she had epilepsy and had fallen down and hurt herself. But the neighbor who had helped Gulsoma confirmed the story of her beatings and torture.
The police arrested her father-in-law and "husband." They told her, she says, they would keep them in jail unless she asked for their release.
"Everyone was crying when they heard my story," Gulsoma says. Gulsoma says she stayed at an orphanage in Kandahar, but was the only girl in the facility. Eventually, her story was brought to the attention of the Ministry of Women's Affairs.
The toll of torture
Gulsoma was then brought to a Kabul orphanage, where she lives today. She takes off her baseball cap and shows us a bald spot, almost like a medieval monk's tonsure, on the crown of her head where she was scalded.
She then turns her back and raises her shirt to reveal a sad map of scar tissue and keloids from cuts, bruises and the boiling water.
Haroon and I look at each other with disbelief. Her life's tragic story is etched upon her back.
Yet she continues to smile. She doesn't ask for pity. She seems more concerned about us as she reads the shock on our faces.
"I feel better now," she says. "I have friends at the orphanage. But every night I'm still afraid the family will come here and pick me up."
Gulsoma also says that when the sun goes down, she sometimes begins to shiver involuntarily — a reaction to the seven years of sleeping outdoors, sometimes in the bitter cold of the desert night.
She says she believes there are other girls like her in Kandahar, maybe elsewhere in Afghanistan, and that she wants to study human rights and one day go back to help them.
As we walk outside to take some pictures, I ask her if, after all she's been through, she thinks it will be harder to trust, to believe that there are actually good people in the world.
"No," she says, quickly.
"I didn't expect anyone would help me but God. I was really surprised that there were also nice people: the neighbor, the rickshaw driver, the police," she says. "I pray for those who helped release me."
Looking directly into the camera, she smiles as if nothing bad had ever happened to her in her entire life.
"I think that all people are good people," she says, "except for those that hurt me."
Her story begins in the village of Mullah Allam Akhound, near Kandahar.
"When I was three years old my father died, and after a year my mother married again, but her second husband didn't want me," says Gulsoma. "So my mother gave me away in a promise of marriage to our neighbor's oldest son, who was thirty."
"They had a ceremony in which I was placed on a horse [which is traditional in Afghanistan] and given to the man."
Because she was still a child, the marriage was not expected to be sexually consummated. But within a year, Gulsoma learned that so much else would be required of her that she would become a virtual slave in the household.
At the age of five, she was forced to take care of not only her "husband" but also his parents and all 12 of their other children as well. Though nearly the entire family participated in the abuse, her father-in-law, she says, was the cruelest.
"My father-in-law asked me to do everything — laundry, the household chores — and the only time I was able to sleep in the house was when they had guests over," she says. "Other than that I would have to sleep outside on a piece of carpet without even any blankets. In the summer it was okay. But in the winter a neighbor would come over and give me a blanket, and sometimes some food."
When she couldn't keep up with the workload, Gulsoma says, she was beaten constantly.
Gulsoma's scars
"They beat me with electric wires," she says, "mostly on the legs. My father-in-law told his other children to do it that way so the injuries would be hidden. He said to them, 'break her bones, but don't hit her on the face.'"
There were even times when the family's abuse of Gulsoma transcended the bounds of the most wanton, sadistic cruelty, as on the occasions when they used her as a human tabletop, forcing her to lie on her stomach then cutting their food on her bare back.
Gulsoma says the family had one boy her age, named Atiqullah, who refused to take part in her torture.
"He would sneak me food sometimes and when my mother-in-law told him to find a stick to beat me, he would come back say he couldn't find one," she says. "He would try to stop the others sometimes. He would say 'she is my sister, and this is sinful.' Sometimes I think about him and wish he could be here and I wish I could have him as my brother."
One evening, Gulsoma says, when her father-in-law saw the neighbor giving her food and a blanket, he took them away and beat her mercilessly. Then, she says, he locked her in a shed for two months.
"I would be kept there all day," she says, "then at night they would let me go the bathroom and I would be fed one time each day. Most of the time it was only bread and sometimes some beans."
She says every day she was locked in the shed, she wished and prayed that her parents would come and take her away. Then she would remember that her father was dead and her mother was gone.
But Gulsoma had an inner strength even her father-in-law couldn't comprehend.
"When he came to the shed he kept asking me, 'Why don't you die? I imprisoned you, I give you less food, but still you don't die.'"
But it wasn't for lack of trying. Gulsoma said when her father-in-law finally let her out of the shed, he bound her hands behind her back and beat her unconscious. She says he revived her by pouring a tea thermos filling with scalding water over her head and her back.
"It was so painful," she says, dabbing her eyes with her scarf and sniffling for a moment. "I was crying and screaming the entire time."
Five days later, she says, her father in law gave her a vicious beating when his daughter's wristwatch went missing.
"He thought I stole it," she says, "and he beat me all over my body with his stick. He broke my arm and my foot. He said if I didn't find it by the next day, he would kill me."
* * *
Gulsoma found hope after escaping
She crawled away that night and hid under a rickshaw. When the rickshaw driver found Gulsoma, broken and bleeding, he listened to her story and took her to the police. She was hospitalized immediately.
"The doctor at the hospital who treated me said, 'I wish I could take you to the village square and show all the people what happened to you, so no one would ever do something like this again,'" Gulsoma says.
It took her a full month to recover from her last beating. But the fear and psychological trauma may never go away.
"I was happy to have a bed and food at the hospital," she says. "But I was thinking that when I get better they will give me back to the family."
However, Gulsoma says when the police questioned the family, the father-in-law lied and tried to tell them she had epilepsy and had fallen down and hurt herself. But the neighbor who had helped Gulsoma confirmed the story of her beatings and torture.
The police arrested her father-in-law and "husband." They told her, she says, they would keep them in jail unless she asked for their release.
"Everyone was crying when they heard my story," Gulsoma says. Gulsoma says she stayed at an orphanage in Kandahar, but was the only girl in the facility. Eventually, her story was brought to the attention of the Ministry of Women's Affairs.
The toll of torture
Gulsoma was then brought to a Kabul orphanage, where she lives today. She takes off her baseball cap and shows us a bald spot, almost like a medieval monk's tonsure, on the crown of her head where she was scalded.
She then turns her back and raises her shirt to reveal a sad map of scar tissue and keloids from cuts, bruises and the boiling water.
Haroon and I look at each other with disbelief. Her life's tragic story is etched upon her back.
Yet she continues to smile. She doesn't ask for pity. She seems more concerned about us as she reads the shock on our faces.
"I feel better now," she says. "I have friends at the orphanage. But every night I'm still afraid the family will come here and pick me up."
Gulsoma also says that when the sun goes down, she sometimes begins to shiver involuntarily — a reaction to the seven years of sleeping outdoors, sometimes in the bitter cold of the desert night.
She says she believes there are other girls like her in Kandahar, maybe elsewhere in Afghanistan, and that she wants to study human rights and one day go back to help them.
As we walk outside to take some pictures, I ask her if, after all she's been through, she thinks it will be harder to trust, to believe that there are actually good people in the world.
"No," she says, quickly.
"I didn't expect anyone would help me but God. I was really surprised that there were also nice people: the neighbor, the rickshaw driver, the police," she says. "I pray for those who helped release me."
Looking directly into the camera, she smiles as if nothing bad had ever happened to her in her entire life.
"I think that all people are good people," she says, "except for those that hurt me."
A narration with a happy end!
Kids Displaced by Hurricanes Reunited
NEW ORLEANS - When 4-year-old Cortez Stewart was reunited with her mother and five siblings in Texas last month, it closed a happy chapter in the sad story of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Cortez represented the last of 5,192 Gulf Coast children listed as missing or displaced after the storms struck more than six months ago. The effort to reunite those youngsters became the largest child-recovery effort in U.S. history.
Kids Displaced by Hurricanes Reunited
NEW ORLEANS - When 4-year-old Cortez Stewart was reunited with her mother and five siblings in Texas last month, it closed a happy chapter in the sad story of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Cortez represented the last of 5,192 Gulf Coast children listed as missing or displaced after the storms struck more than six months ago. The effort to reunite those youngsters became the largest child-recovery effort in U.S. history.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Indian Movie!
Did anyone watched an Indian movie? if you did, you will understand this cartoon. If not I will explain that to you abbreviately. Indian movies are well known for too much exaggeration in their stories. And that is all that matter. Backhome, if we felt that someone is lying are telling a story that is supposed to be real but it is fictitious, then we say this is an Indian Movie.
(Please click on the picture to see it in a clearer way)
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
My adventure in the mall!
I went to the gallery mall today to take pictures for our second assignment. Since I am writing and contrasting between malls in U.S and shopping areas back in Baghdad so I went ahead to take some picture at the gallery mall in the inner harbour. I was so deeply involved in snapping some shots here and there before I saw the security gurad came to me asking me whether I work to the mall or what! I told him no I am not and he replied that I am questionably taking a lot pictures to the mall! Well guys, so far I thought the only place where they have strict restriction on taking photos is Iraq! well may be I have to write an article to compare the prohibtion of taking pictures between the Inner Harbour and the Green Zone in Baghdad!
I went to the gallery mall today to take pictures for our second assignment. Since I am writing and contrasting between malls in U.S and shopping areas back in Baghdad so I went ahead to take some picture at the gallery mall in the inner harbour. I was so deeply involved in snapping some shots here and there before I saw the security gurad came to me asking me whether I work to the mall or what! I told him no I am not and he replied that I am questionably taking a lot pictures to the mall! Well guys, so far I thought the only place where they have strict restriction on taking photos is Iraq! well may be I have to write an article to compare the prohibtion of taking pictures between the Inner Harbour and the Green Zone in Baghdad!
Interesting Article on BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4762436.stm
Beijing clamps down on spitting!
With the Beijing Olympics now only two years away, the authorities have launched a campaign against one of the city's least pleasant habits: spitting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4762436.stm
Beijing clamps down on spitting!
With the Beijing Olympics now only two years away, the authorities have launched a campaign against one of the city's least pleasant habits: spitting.
The local government says it is part of a campaign to raise the ethical and cultural standards of the city ahead of the 2008 Games.
Foreign visitors to Beijing are often astonished by its citizens' capacity for expelling mucus.
Spitting is not just confined to the open air.
The floors of shops and restaurants are often peppered with phlegm.
But Beijingers are now being told they must abandon this cherished tradition.
The Beijing Capital Ethics Development Office has declared spitting the city's number one bad habit.
Special bags
Police have been ordered out on to the streets to track down offenders. Closed circuit television cameras will be used to catch them in the act.
"This year we will intensify our law enforcement efforts in this field," Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing's Capital Ethics Development Office, told a news conference.
"We will require law enforcement officials to step up the frequency of fines."
For those who simply cannot kick the habit, there is an alternative. Hundreds of uniformed "mucus monitors" will patrol the streets handing out free spitting bags.
"You have to spit into a tissue or a bag, then place it in a dustbin to complete the process," Ms Zhang said.
She said that there would also be a renewed crackdown against the city's second biggest headache - littering.
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