Don't Want To Write A Poem

Just got back home. Exhausted. Nahida's upstairs on the balcony barbecuing me something to eat. She's pissed off to have found one of her flower pots smashed by a piece of flying shrapnel from a car bomb that blew up on the main street while she was out buying me a dictionary.

I've started taking evening classes again. Everybody's home by six in the evening, so having those classes end at quarter to five in a somewhat distant neighbourhood isn't too convenient. But I don't want to spend more time at home than I have to. Other people obviously don't share my opinion since we were only three people in the class. One of them is rather cute girl. I've got to write a poem now because I couldn't get it done in class. I hate writing poems.

Getting two hours of electricity a day is taking the piss. It's not as if it's so warm that everybody's running their air conditioners and it's not so cold as to need to turn on the heaters. The national consumption of electricity during this time must be at it's lowest, so why do we only get two hours of electricity. What's even stranger is that nobody is complaining.

I had the pleasure of an overly-excited cab driver on the way back. He was telling me that a phony checkpoint was set up in Haifa St making all the Sunnis to be pulled aside. The real cops showed up later and placed checkpoints around the neighbourhood trying to find the ones who made the phony checkpoint. The cab driver was telling me that things were happening all over Baghdad. But as always I was oblivious to it all.

During lunch break, there was a Kia minivan that was suspected of being a car bomb, close to my college. Iraqi EOD was there and they had the street blocked off. I never heard it go off and I don't know if they diffused it or if it turned out not to be a car bomb.

I was fifteen minutes late to get to college today. One of the roundabouts leading to my college was blocked off for no apparent reason. Luckily I was in a cab and just walked the rest of the way. As I was walking, I thought of what to say in case the teacher chose to give me attitude. But when I got to class she wasn't there. When she finally did arrive, she explained that she got lost in the side alleys after being blocked by that same roundabout that was closed off to me and that she lives even further away from my college than I do.