Wednesday, November 18, 2009

This is the process essay that I wrote for class, and hopfully I got an A on it
Make a Law That People Avoid Disobeying It
When something new appears in the society, the lawmakers try to pass a law to organize it. What is important is whether the new rule is necessary or not. Frequently, the suggestion for the new law is made by the parliament members. Occasionally, the suggestion is made by ordinary people. After the notion of the new law arrives to the parliament, parliamentarians try to discuss it and pass it as an official law. During the discussion about the new law in the parliament, lawmakers have to go through many procedures in order to make an appropriate law that fits the society.
First of all, the philosophy and concepts behind laws must be to accomplish and enforce justice instead of fairness by implementing the laws. Justice means try to know the reasons and the details of why someone committed a crime. Also, justice tries to know the motivation of the crime, and then give the sentences that criminals deserve. For example, Ali stole a car, and Shwan also stole a car. If the judge sentenced them both to 5 years in prison, that would be implementing fairness. If a judge concentrates to know the reasons why Ali and Shwan had stolen cars, then the judge give them the sentences that they deserve not base on the equality. For example, if the judge found out that Ali stole a car because his family was starving and found out Shwan stole a car because he just liked the car, probably Ali would be sentenced to 2 years in prison, but Shwan would be sentenced to 5 years in prison.
Meanwhile, the new law must not be in contrast with the Iraqi constitution because the constitution’s principles are considered as the mother of the rules. For example, one of the principles in the constitution says that the rules must not be against the Islamic principles. Therefore, the parliamentarians can’t pass a law that says people must not pray in the mosque because that would be against Islamic principles.
Then, the sentences must fit the crime. Therefore, there must be rational explanations behind the sentences. Sometimes, lawmakers must regard the time when the crimes take place. For example, in Iraqi law the sentence of the stealing at night is more than the sentence of stealing in the day time. Stealing at night or at day time is still stealing, but there are rational reasons behind the different punishments. Stealing at night is much easier for the thief, and it is most spooky and frightening for the family that had been mugged. Also, if you at midnight found out that someone broke in your house, you would not be able to sleep the rest of the night. So it spoiled your rest time, and these sorts of things are considered in Iraqi laws.
After that, the parliamentarians should consult the jurist’s opinion and propose for the new law. They must make the rules flexible in order to be able to change them down the line if they are necessary. The laws must not be sacred as the Quran because if they were holy then no one can change them in the future. That is one of the problems that Iraqi people are facing today. For example, Kurdistan’s laws have allowed polygamy for many years. In the last two years, however, feminists were trying not to allow polygamy in Kurdistan’s laws any more. There was a vigorous debate going on between religious people and feminists about that. The religious lawmakers believed the polygamy must be allowed legally because the Quran mentioned it. The feminists believed that polygamy should disappear in our society because people now are more liberal and they believe in the principle of equality between men and women. I believe the rules must be reformed according to the sociological change in the society and adapt the old laws to the new situation or thoughts. For example, now Kurdish law has stopped hanging criminals because people believe it is against human rights. So lawmakers agree that the law could be amended when it is required by the majority no matter how holy it is.
After going over all the steps above, now the first draft is ready in the parliament. Then the committee of law reads the new law to everyone. During the reading, if anyone has a suggestion to change something in the new law and lawmakers find the suggestion suitable, then lawmakers will make the change. Usually, very small changes happen during the reading. Voting for the new law takes place right after the reading. After the majority vote for the new law, the law will be sent to the president.
After the parliament ratified the new law, the president has the right to veto the new law in 15 days. Usually the president wouldn’t object the law unless the new law creates public unrest or riot. For instance, the last time that Kurdistan’s President rejected the law was the law of journalism because the law provoked the storms of protest and sparked outrages. Therefore, the president rejected the law and sent it back to the parliament to make some changes that the public needed.
After the president signs the new law, the parliament will publish the new law in the national newspaper in order to make people aware about the new law. The national newspaper tells people unequivocally when the new law will work. Ignorance of the law isn’t considered as an excuse in Iraq as result people must read the new law and be aware of it. Otherwise the Iraqi law will not forgive you under the ignorant excuse if you commit a crime.
Now the new law is official, and people who live on the Iraqi soil must obey the Iraqi laws no matter where they are from. There is an exception for some foreigners who have diplomatic immunity. That doesn’t mean they are free to commit crimes. The only thing that Iraqi laws can do is to ask them to leave Iraq as soon as possible if they commit a crime. The rational explanation for that is the relations between countries can get worse or maybe can get to the state of declaring war if they sentence each other’s diplomats. For example, if an Iraqi judge sentenced the Turkish ambassador to 5 years in prison because he raped a girl, which would be utter disgrace to Turkey, and then the relations between Turkey and Iraq, would get worse or maybe Turkey would try to harm Iraqi people covertly by sending terrorists as revenge.
The final step is to execute the law by judiciary. The law that comes from the parliament doesn’t have all details about the crime. The reason why the laws don’t have all the details is to leave some authority to judges to decide. The judges are only people who can implement justices because they will figure out the reasons and the circumstance of the criminal. It seems impossible to talk about all the details about situations in the law in the parliament. For example, the law says if a man killed someone deliberately, he would be sentenced to 20 years in prison. In this case, the judge must not sentence him to 20 years without knowing the reason why he killed him, even if the killing was intentionally. The judges have responsibilities to know the reasons why he killed him, then decide his sentence. In this case, the criminal might get more or less sentences than what the law says, it depends on the situations and the motivations.
To sum up, parliamentarian’s consultations should customize proper laws to the society. Our society needs a law that can be modified because life fluctuates wildly from time to time. The aspiration of every law is to bring happiness to the society, so the law should be deemed to be the salvation of evils by law-abiding citizens in the Iraqi society.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Polla
Get the Whole Picture in One Buliding
The Red Museum in Sulaimani is a place that visitors should not miss in order to know the history of struggling and suffering in Kurdistan. There a saying, “if you don’t know the past of a place, you won’t be able to know its present and future.” The Red Museum was built in 1979 by the Bath Party, and since then it used to be the concentration camp in Sulamani till the popular uprising in 1991 . Thousands of innocent were tortured despicably in it. The Red Musaem doesn’t describe how the situation was just in Sulamani, but also gives you a complete picture about situation in Kurdistan when Saddam was in charge. There are many halls in it, and each one present an area and its victims. For example, there is a hall, and it has 182000 pieces of glasses hang on the wall, each piece of glass symbolize one person who victimized by Saddam during the Anfal process. Also, in the hall there are 5000 lights on the roof, each light symbolize one village that vandalized and razed to the ground during the Anfal process. There is another hall full of photos; the photos were taken by the Bath Party in order to make a document and send them to Baghdad to show Saddam their activists in Kurdistan. During the popular uprising, people attacked the Red Museum, and found those photos. Last week, I took some of my teachers to there, and I helped them as a translator. One of them saw the photos and said,” What were we doing at the time when these things happened. We were having nice lives.” I felt that she wanted to cry deeply because the photos told her everything before I translate a word. One thing that excited people whom I took is the president room in the building. Now they put pigeons in the president room. And some people believe that they should have put dogs in the room instead of the pigeons. The reason why they put pigeons instead of dogs is because the pigeons are symbol for peace; therefore they want to show peace beside the genocide. in brief, I recommend visitor to go to the Red Museum to see with your own eyes how Kurdish people suffered under Saddam’s Regime. If you go there, you are able to know how situation was in whole Kurdistan not just in Sulaimani. You as visitor might feel guilty of not doing anything at the time when these things happened.
Red Museum in Sulaimani Iraq














YES
Polla Kamal
The Sky Gave Her Courage
It was spring when people in Kurdistan made a final decision to stand up and confront the human enemies. After Kurdish people took over the authority in Kurdistan by uprising, Saddam sent a big military force to take revenge on Kurdish people. So people started to run, and on the way thousands of people died. Thousands of children couldn’t make it. My mother was about to leave my little sister behind, but the sky and her love didn’t let that happen. An enigmatic power came from a mysterious source and convinced my mom to keep nurturing her beautiful flower because if she gave up on her, the earth would be destroyed.
We were living in hell when Saddam was in charge, and we were like slaves. People were sick of what Saddam was doing, and they said, “We no longer accept this.” It was May 3,1991, when the popular uprising started and people came out on the street like crazy wild animals that ran from their cages. People attacked the military bases and they captured them very bravely, and the army ran away cowardly.
A few days later after the popular uprising, the huge number of military forces came toward Kurdistan to control it again. My father was in the military service at the time. I was four years old, and one of sister was three years old, and other one was two years old. I was playing football with my sisters when people started to panic. I still remember I was about to win the first game in my life, but our game was distracted by the rumor that Saddam’s military was on the way to my town. People believed that would be the repetition of the Anfal process in which 182,000 people vanished without trace. People knew that if they were captured by Saddam’s solider, they would be buried alive or their bodies would be a delicious meal for the dogs around Nwgra Salman Prison in the south. Therefore, everyone was trying to get himself or herself out of the town, and run to the Iran frontier.
My mother didn’t know what to do without my father, and we had to walk about 500 kilometers because we didn’t have a car. My mother got my sisters and me out of my home and started to march toward the mountains. My sisters and I held each other’s hands and as my mom taught us and we used to go to the park. I was confused because I didn’t know what was going on, and I was happy because I thought we were going on a picnic. A surge of families were running toward the mountains just like when a tiger chases a bunch of deer. For me it looked like a marathon because everyone was running to the same direction and no one cared if someone fell down just like in race.
So I asked my mother,” Mom why is every family going on picnic today?” It is the end of the world, and I’m sorry for you because you haven’t lived enough to understand life,” my mother said. I was glad since I was told by my mom that I was going to die because I was going to see God.
We walked a lot, my sisters and I got tired, so we stopped. My two years old sister couldn’t walk any more, and my mother couldn’t carry her because she was carrying my brother and some food. My mother said, “What should we do now?” People were running because the soldiers were chasing them. Some people around us told my mother, “leave her behind, if you don’t, soon Iraqi soldiers will arrive and kill you all, and you don’t have a choice a lot of people abandoned their children too.” My mother’s tears came out like a river, and she asked herself, “How can I abandon my own child?” My mother kissed my sister and gave her affectionate hug as a final one. The hug took forever and then I realized that hug wasn’t normal because it took more than usual.
My sister didn’t know what was going on, and she was just smiling at my mom. She was very quiet; my mother couldn’t leave her when she was awake because she would have chased her. Now my mother abandoned the worthiest and the most valuable thing in her life. The sky seemed to be very angry at my mom when she decided to forsake my sister. Therefore, the sky darkened the day by taking the sun away. My mother’s heart darkened after the sun vanished.
My poor sister nodded off while my mother was singing. My mother put her on a stone, so people could see her easily and she would be saved from animals. She put her on a stone because she wanted people to see her and pick her up for themselves because my mother thought that would be better than her death. She covered her by the only blanket that we brought with us. She left some food with her in order to sustain her longer. She began to pray for her, “God please save my daughter and don’t let her die. Forgive me you know I don’t have a choice please, please God.”
My other sister and I held hands again and started walking. Walking was different this time because we walked without soul, and we walked without my beautiful flower. With every step my mother turned around tearfully to look at my sister. We were far away from my sister about 200 meters when my mother stopped walking spontaneously like somebody made her to stop. She couldn’t walk forward and the only direction that she could walk was backward. Suddenly my mother looked at my sister and ran back to pick her up. My mother looked at her little flower and said tearfully, “I would never forgive myself if I left you here. This is God who wouldn’t let me walk away without you.” The sun suddenly appeared right after my mother picked my sister up.
My sisters and I held hands again as we used to and walked until we arrived to the border. We were happy and preferred to die with each other than separately. We stayed at the refugee camp till the Agreement between the USA and Iraqi government that prevented the Iraqi force to enter Kurdistan. What I have learned from this experience is how to be patient and not give up easily no matter how much the situation that you’re in is difficult. It shows how powerful and influential love is. Since then I have started to believe that real love can protect you from an impetuous decision.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

The fiction story

one of my fiction stories
Polla Kamal
Level-3- John
Find a Way to Be Different From Them
Dana started studying at a university. He went to the university for the first time. Everyone wore nice clothes except him. There were students in his class whose fathers are rich and have authority in the government. He remembered the day when his mother asked him, “What do you want to be like in the future?” He answered, “I would like to be someone who can help poor families like us.”
Dana was 15 years old. He lived with his mother, and his two sisters in a small town in Kurdistan. His father killed in the civil war in 1995. His family was very poor, and there was no one to help them finically. Dana was very smart and genus. He transferred his school from day to the night school in order to work at day and study at night. He wanted to leave school and work to feet his family. But the mother didn’t agree on that because Dana’s father plan was to let Dana finish his school. The mother tried to work on his husband’s plan.
Some girls really liked him because he was handsome. They tried to be his girlfriend, but they couldn’t. The problem was that he was living in a different world. In this world that he had to work all week and study at the weekends, but the girls had nice cars and nice lives. Also, he didn’t let the girls know about his situation.
Now the girls hated him because they failed to make him their boyfriend. They tried to make a plan to bring him down. Two of the girls hated Dana a lot, and they had a bad plan against him. They went to the president of the university to accuse him.
“What is your problem? The president said.”
“There is a guy who tried to do bad things with us.” The girls said.
“Bad things? Like what?” the president said.
“Yes the bad things,” she said crying.
“Tell me what he did to you,” the president said.
“I can’t because it is rude, and embarrasses me,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I’m like your father, and if you don’t tell me what he did, then I can’t help you,” the president said.
“Yesterday, he tried to kiss me, and if my father knew about that he will kill me.” One of the girls said.
“Do you have evidence or a witness?” the president said.
“Yes, she is the witness,” one of the girls said.
The president suspended Dana one week from the university.
“I swear sir, I didn’t do anything wrong. They tried to send me to hell, and they got what they want,” Dana said to the president angrily
The girls were very happy, and they said, “Today is happiest day in our lives.”
After a week, Dana came back to the university, and he started studying. After a month, the girls said, “What we did it wasn’t enough, and we have to do something that will make him never comeback.” They started to think about a new plan.
It was Saturday, and Dana didn’t go to work because he had a test on the next day. He was studying when one of the girls called him. He answered the phone, “Why are you calling me after what you did to me last month,” Dana said angrily because she was the same girls who accused him to the president.
“I’m really sorry about what happened. Please forgive me, and I was wrong, I didn’t know how I did that to you,” she said.
“I forgave you. Now I have to study, goodbye,” Dana said.
“No wait; I really need your help. My father had threatened me that if I failed, he would kill me. Please help me, and I don’t know the subject. As I told you, I was thinking about you, and what I did to you,” The girl said crying.
“Okay, stop crying. How can I help you?” he said.
“Can you come to my house, and my mom will make lunch for us?” the girl asked.
“Yes I can, and I’ll be there in 10 minutes,” Dana said.
The problem was, he was very nice, forgivable, and he trusted everybody. He was very nice with girls because always he remembered his sisters. He went to the girl’s home just to help her, and he forgot what she did to him. He didn’t know that she had the plan to send him to a prison because he thought that everybody was reasonable like him.
He arrived at her house, and there were a lot of guards around her house. The girl’s father was a minster. The guards showed him her studying room, and he went there. He waited for five minutes in her room. Suddenly, she entered the room, and she started cutting her clothes just like a crazy to show that she was under a sexual attack from Dana.
“What is that? Why are you cutting your clothes?” he said.
After she cut her clothes, and she shrieked like she was going to die. “Help, help, help,” she said loudly.
Dana shocked, and he didn’t know what was going on. The guards arrived, and they started to hit Dana. They tortured him a lot because the girl showed herself look like Dana attacked her. The guards called her father, and her mother. A lot of relative came to her house, and the police. Now every relative and neighbors knew about that. The girl’s father was very angry, and he wanted to kill Dana, but the police didn’t let him. The police took him to the police station.
In the police station he said to the police, “believe me, I didn’t do anything. She did that on purpose.”
No one believed him, and everyone acted with him like he was a dangerous criminal. He was worried about his mother’s reaction when she heard about him from the police. The police called his mother, and told what happened. No one from his family believed that Dana did something like that. His mother stopped eating since she heard that.
After a week, the police took him to a court. The girl’s father brought the guards to the court like witnesses, and he got a good lawyer to defend of his daughter. The judge sentenced Dana to three years in the prison. After that, the mother became dumb since she heard that her son will be in the prison for next three years.
Dana decided to study hard in the prison to not loss years without doing anything. One of his American teachers brought him a lot of English books. He could learn English very well during the prison time.
The girl who accused him was about to die because she had a cancer. She was living with the agony of death in the hospital. She wanted to tell her family the truth that Dana was innocent. She told her family the truth, and her family shocked. Immediately, her father went to the court to release Dana. The day after that, Dana released after two years in the prison.
The girl’s father told Dana, “Tell me what you want? I’m ready to give you everything I have.”
“I don’t need anything from you,” Dana said.
The girl’s family came to him, and asked him, “please Dana come to the hospital and forgive our daughter. She likes to see you and tell you I’m sorry. “Do you know why we are so serious about that because we asked our daughter, what your last hope is? “My last hope is to see Dana and hear [I forgave you] from himself,” She answered.
Dana couldn’t sleep that night. He remembered his mother’s advice, “If someone did a bad thing with you, therefore you need to do the right thing to them. Because if you do the same thing that they did to you, then you’ll be like them.” Dana said, “I’ll choose a way to be different from them, and I’ll follow my mother advice.”
Next day, he went to the hospital and said, “I forgave you, and I hope to see you in the heaven.” A few moment later, the girl died, and Dana hugged her quietly, painfully, and crying said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t want that happen to you.”