-- This week's picture in FOUND Magazine Posted by Vanderleun at December 18, 2003 11:56 AM"rummaging around one quiet afternoon at baghdad international airport (i'm a photographer for a company that's working in iraq), i went into an abandoned store and, naturally, started going through some of the drawers. underneath a stack of year-old pita bread (very, very hard), i stumbled across a small stack of passport photos. there are two things strange about them. one, all the photos are of women. and two, every face has been scribbled on with a red ink pen. very strange.
My dear Iraqi girlfriend H. would understand why and be able to tell you immediately. Women are garbage in Islam. This is why they resemble walking bags of trash. They are treated like toilets, used as punching bags and when no longer needed, dumped and carted out to the curb of nonexistence that is either death or divorce. Both are equally horrific for Muslim women.
She often threatens her All-American headstrong and wayward prodigal daughter that she will be sent back to Iraq to marry her uncle.
This isn't a threat so much as it is a reality. Girls are bargaining chips. If you have a debt, sell your unruly daughter to the man you owe.
H. told me that from childhood, girls are told that they will all go to hell. It says so in the Koran and so she shrugs her shoulders and is resigned to her fate. It can't be much worse for them there in the hereafter than in the here and now.
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