Days I do not want to forget.

The day, Saturday, the 5th of April 2003.

“The coalition forces are marching in the middle of Baghdad” shouted Omar while I was sitting in the guests’ room with some of my friends. We jumped to the TV to see something that made us froze in our places; the tanks were moving in the area of Um Al-Tobool mosque. This is the first time I see an area that I know well; the corners, the street and the buildings are familiar. Suddenly one of my friends said that he’s going to that area to see what’s happening, we tried to warn him saying that it could be dangerous but he didn’t care and drove his car we got very worried but after about an hour he returned back saying that there’s nothing there that indicates a military action.
We got confused, what happened? We didn’t wait to long until the coalition spokesman declared that it was just “a picnic inside Baghdad”. Our hope meter declined we thought for a minute that it’s over but now it seems that there’s still much to wait for. Still there’s an exciting view when the coalition entered the southern suburbs of Baghdad and the locals welcomed the troops. It was really encouraging.
The artillery shelling became intense and yesterday’s fears became true, they started to use the cannon that is situated near our district; the sound is very loud and annoying. More worrying is that the republican guards placed medium ranged missile launchers at the intersection at the end of our street, I saw these in the morning and in the afternoon a missile was launched which added a new item to our dictionary of sounds. It wasn’t late until an aircraft came and bombed the missile base.
The soldiers are sticking to our houses, this is disgusting; they’re targets and we’re being endangered because of them.
The 101 division is advancing in Kerbala; another city gets liberated while Baghdad is still forced to have the snake’s head in her lap.
The British forces are making a significant progress in Basra and peace is restored in Najaf by the cooperation of the locals with the coalition.
The coalition declares that the Iraqi army’s capability to fight as divisions has vanished and what remain are small groups severed from central command.
The regime is more confused now and the firebrand announcements indicate the collapse of the regime. Al-Sahhaf is talking about restoring control over the airport as if the pictures that the whole world saw came from a historical movie.
The American administration says that they will uncover the plans for ruling Iraq for the coming period. The plans include a military administration and an interim civil administration and Adnan Bachachi says that he’s been told to form a government. When I heard this I asked Omar “will you accept him as a president?” he replied “let them assign a snail and I’ll accept him, anyone except Saddam”.
The situation is bad here due to the electricity outage but people started to use generators; ours had a very loud noise however the neighbors were satisfied with it; one of them said “your generator’s noise is better than the sound of the bombs”.
The night became scary, because you don’t know what tomorrow may bring. But the sight tonight is decorated with a new painting; the illumination ammunition fired in the sky are surrounding Baghdad, lightening the sky and these are remaining suspended in the air for a long time, one friend explained saying that these have parachutes to give light for longer time. We kept watching them falling down slowly like clusters each one consists of four flames. The scene is charming.

By Mohammed.