Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Interpretation of a Nightmare


Last night was a disturbed one for me with a nightmare infested sleep (or lack of it). I saw myself surrounded by dead bodies of Oriental origin. I was struggling to put them in a big container, one by one when I woke up to a very dry throat and an exhausted body. I couldn’t go back to a proper sleep for the rest of the night.

True to its authoritarian ways, China is being unreasonable in a violent manner with the ‘Free Tibet’ movement and it leaves me highly disturbed. I’m sure it will have negative repercussions on China’s ambitious plans of hosting the Olympics in the best possible way.

On another front, there have been 1, 195, 524 causalities in the 5 years of Iraq war, out of which 4000 were American soldiers and 308 were soldiers from the coalition troops. Rest were Iraqis, both civilian and militant. What a waste of human lives and for what?

Below is an an email written by one of those 4000 American soldiers. Its extracted from the NYT article which appeared today. Its heartbreaking!

Hey beautiful well we were on blackout again, we lost yet some more soldiers. I cant wait to get out of this place and return to you where i belong. I dont know how much more of this place i can take. i try to be hard and brave for my guys but i dont know how long i can keep that up you know. its like everytime we go out, any little bump or sounds freaks me out. maybe im jus stressin is all. hopefully ill get over it....

you know, you never think that anything is or can happen to you, at first you feel invincible, but then little by little things start to wear on you...

well im sure well be able to save a couple of bucks if you stay with your mom....and at the same time you can help her with some of the bills for the time being. it doesnt bother me. as long as you guys are content is all that matters. I love and miss you guys like crazy. I know i miss both of you too. at times id like to even just spend 1 minute out of this nightmare just to hold and kiss you guys to make it seem a little bit easier. im sure he will like whatever you get him for xmas, and i know that as he gets older he’ll understand how things work. well things here always seem to be......uhm whats the word.....interesting i guess you can say. you never know whats gonna happen and thats the worst part. do me a favor though, when you go to my sisters or moms or wherever you see my family let them know that i love them very much..ok? well i better get going, i have a lot of stuff to do. but hopefully ill get to hear from you pretty soon.*muah* and hugs. tell mijo im proud of him too!
love always,
your other half

Juan Campos, e-mail message to his wife

4 comments:

Smiling Dolphin said...

the travails of long distance love ....worse than writing from a trench in a war ravaged desert...am off to china this friday for ten days...i agree with aamir on the tibetan issue though..dinner end april?

meraj said...

april end sounds good. and i am in-sync with aamir's point. olympic torch doesnt belong to a particular country...it represents a spirit.

phish said...

i agree. and i have been stumbling upon dreams today. this was the most disturbing by far.

Bhaskar Khaund said...

who's gonna tame the chinese dragon ? NO one i'm afraid...tibet's another sacrificial lamb in the high altar of international politics..its v. sad