HW 34: Respond to Riverbend

Gold plays a big role in Iraq with their families and it shows how much a family has saved up and has right now as status concern. People pulled their money out of banks before the war, and bought gold instead (Riverbend, 100). When there is a rumor going around that a house will be invaded women often hide all their gold and valuables so it is not taken. Riverbend also stated that "Gold can be shown off and worn, but in times of economical trouble, a few pieces can be sold to tide the family over. Tea is also important and valuable in an Iraqi's life. The tea they drink isn't like in the US from a teabag, and if you serve them a teabag you risk scorn and disdain. It is an important time durning the day for them all to sit down together and catch up. "In the evening, most Iraqi families gather together for "evening tea. Its hardly as formal as it sounds...No matter how busy the day, everyone sits around in the living room, waiting for tea" (Riverbend 108). The time they spend together drinking tea is like a way for them to escape from the war and be in their own little world with the people they love just for a little while where there is no harm to them.

HW 32: Shopping For School Supplies

On Saturday October 1st Riverbend went out with her cousion, his wife and her brother to go school shopping for his two daughters. Since the conditions in Iraq were so drastic and the war started her kids werent able to set outside the house unless it was to visit a relative. In Iraq there arent huge shopping plaza's or malls so they has to travel to the middle of Baghdad to find a shopping area. They went to a stationary shop that sold everything from toys to desk sets. Riverbend and S. had to search all over the store for just the right designed notebooks for the kids. When the children go to school they now have to ba guarded by other kids fathers and bring their own chairs to sit in durning the school day. I feel so bad to be put in that situation and dont know how the children are able to preform in those conditions.

HW 31: Responding to Riverbend

After reading August 31-September 16 one thing that caught my eye and made me want to do more research on and find out what it was really about was SCIRI (Riverbend, page 43) I never heard of this term and it attracted me to find out what it was really all about. When i typed SCIRI in on wikipedia.com the results of the definition was Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

(http://209.85.165.104/searchq=cache:LXx3WB05rIgJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciri+sciri&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us) The SCIRI is one of Iraq's largest political parties. In May 2007 the name of the political party has been changed to Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council; they removed the word "Revolution" from it because " they thought it was seen as a reference to overthrowing the secular Ba'athist government. The political party was found in 1982 after the Iran-Iraq war. The political party finally joined the United Iraqi Alliance list for the general election on January 30, 2005.