Simon points to Raghda zaid's blog, which has invoked a weird sort of uncontrollable sad rage I can't shake.
Raghda is a 13 year old girl who loves cats--a lot. Pictures of big cats, tiny cats, cats with umbrellas, cats in mailboxes, melon-headed cats, cats dressed up like ducks, pictures of pictures of cats! She also seems to like pink and flowers and enjoys school and writing. But most of all she likes cats. I can tell that she has more passion for cats than most people have for anything.
Amidst the cat pictures Raghda tells us a bit about herself:
Every one how has a [blog] wrote a subjct under the name( a bout me) so. i'll write about me: I am Raghda zaid, I am 13 years old, I am from Mosul but I live in Baghdad. I love the computer and using the internet, I love to read magasines and, I like cats, I have a cat but I keep it outside the hous because the cat maight bring diseases. I love to visit Mosul very much, I visit it each year in the summer holiday.
Later we see some really original cat posters that Raghda created herself with captions, like:
Sometimes... when you're happy... no one sees your smile...
Then you get into the usual 13 year old girl stuff:
The day before yesterday a big bomb exploded in Baghdad in Al -Rabee street near my house, Alot of peaple died in that explosion, and alot of cars were burned and so were the shopes. The man who did this has kild alot of peaple (women, children, men). and i'm so sorry for losing lots of iraqi peaple.
You know kids! All they ever think about is bombs and innocent dead.
Ahh.. and then more cats and happy pictures of waterfalls. Even a nice poem:
Friendship is most important thing in the world, Some times our friend could be our father, mother, brother or sister. The meaning of friendship depend on how we know this person and how much we could trust him.
Then more nice stuff:
The security something we all miss, even the Americans solders have no security, they have a sign on there vehicles saying "keep 100m distance or you will be shot", imagine you are driving in a crowded road and an American patrol want to use this road, where will you go and how to keep the 100m distance, this is the reason that all our roads are almost in stand still state.
If any driver wasn't able of keeping the distance he will be shot. And if these patrols want to clear the road for them they don't use horn or silence, but they use their guns.
This is obviously just the kids imagination, I'm sure. We would have heard about this kind of stuff over here in the US. We care a lot about this kind of stuff. We love freedom. And peace! We love peace and freedom! Freedom and peace and persuit of happiness are our values. This is a thirteen year-old girl, what does she know? All this girl cares about is cats.