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| The Almavore is among us... |
| truth |
| liberty |
| V O R A C I O U S... |
| R A P A C I O U S... |
| R A V E N O U S... |
| We're dealing with more than ghosts & vampires here... |
| Almavore and Almavore characters Trade Marked email@almavore.com |
| justice |
| "Monsters disguised as men..." BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The pain here is choking -- it's a dark, suffocating sorrow. "They took my husband away in front of me. I found his body in the morgue a few days later. He had multiple bullet wounds and his eyes had been gouged out," one woman tells me, forcefully twisting a tissue in her hands as if it somehow could ease her agony and erase the chilling memory. She didn't want her story told, too afraid that she would meet the same fate as the man she loved. Her husband's body bore the "signs of torture." How many times has that phrase been used? It's such a common phrase it's as if what really happened gets glossed over: skin scraped off their bodies, fingernails ripped out, horrifying screams of pain before death. How many times have we reported death tolls from one horrific bombing or another and not been able to get across that these are lives that literally were blown apart? No matter how hard we in the media try, Iraq remains a nation filled with untold tragedies, the scope of which so often is overwhelming. And no matter how hard Iraqis try to shield themselves and those they love from the horrors here, more often than not they fail. Yet they keep fighting. Editor's note from CNN: "In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories behind the events. Here, CNN's Arwa Damon describes the hardships faced by Iraqi women. Her documentary airs this weekend on CNN and CNN International." |
| Signs of torture' you can't imagine CNN | March 16, 2008 |
| Further Information: Nahla works at a radio station and is one of those women. She's tall, slender, elegantly dressed and has a firm handshake. I look at her and it's nearly impossible to imagine what she's been through. "This numbers game, you always think that you are exempt from the numbers," Nahla tells me, referring to the daily death toll. "You're pained by them, but you are outside of them." On April 14, 2007, her world shattered. There was an explosion on a bridge in the capital and 10 people were killed. Her husband, Mohammed, was one of them. "And with it, I am motionless," she says. "Truly, life was in color and now it is in black and white. I feel like it is a game of musical chairs we used to play with others. ... One time you are hit with the chair; another time, someone else is. Now, my son and I are out of the game completely, completely." The image of the man she loved, tall and proud, is of a doctor who moved his family back to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein because he believed his country needed him. He was a father who doted on their 6-year-old autistic son. Also etched into her memory is the image of his charred body, melted together with nine others, a twisted pile of black, scorched flesh. |
| I don't have enough pages for all these freaks. I'm still trying to keep this as a monthly updated site (jeesh). |
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| Nahla tells CNN's Arwa Damon: "Truly, life was in color and now it is in black and white." |