Hometown Baghdad

Hee hee, now I'm kinda embarrassed. I nearly gave Marco a heart attack with my april fools joke! By the way honey, it's twins!

Anyway, I found a fascinating site. There are some Iraqi guys in their twenties making videos of regular life in Baghdad right now. This whole Iraqi conflict seems so abstract here in the US - we talk about sunnis and shiites and kurds like they're weather fronts moving around on a map or something. By that, I mean that we talk of them as masses of people, shifting political alliances, religious groups, but never as individuals. And I think the news gives us an impression that all they do is get bombed and pray at mosques.

These videos are great because they show the life of regular individuals. They lead lives that are in many ways "normal" (their mom cooks good meals, they play guitar), set against a backdrop of war. But it shows how the war and their normal lives weave together in a much more complex and multi-dimensional way than we usually think. It's real and it's interesting.

It's at Hometown Baghdad. www.hometownbaghdad.com