My 32-year-old sister damned the day she decided to get a passport. At that time, in December 2008, she decided to request her passport for the first time to help our Mom get a surgery in Iran.  She didn’t know or think that the visit to Iran would turn bad. First, the surgery for Mom failed which was a heavy blow for her and the whole family. Next, some Arab countries made her regret the visit to Iran they won't let her cross their borders with the Iranian stamp in her passport.
 
 Today, she wants to go Jordan to have a surgery of her own.  But the Jordanian authorities won’t let her, or any Iraqi, set foot on the Jordanian soil if that person has made a visit to Iran for any reason.
 
  Her husband, some relatives, close friends and I have gone to great lengths trying to get a visa, or new passport, whether legally or illegally, but all was in vain.
 
 
 If Jordan has problems with Iran, it is between the two countries, but I believe it is more than that.
 
 
 I don’t want to talk about Jordan as a country as it is a neighbor and its people stood with Iraq in distress, but the officials there are ungrateful to Iraq and Iraqis who made, and still make, the Jordanian economy flourish.
 
  The Jordanians are concerned about the Iranians as the latter live in a Shiite state while Jordanians live in a Sunni one. The former king of Jordan, King Hussein stood with Saddam Hussein against Iran in the Iraqi-Iranian war from 1980 till 1988.
 
 Jordanian officials feel that Iran is becoming too close to Iraq.  Jordan used to be Iraq's only gate to the world, but now it has several rivals. Iran is one of them. Iran has the longest borders with Iraq, Saudi Arabia is second, then Syria, then Kuwait and then Jordan.
 
 In the eighties, or during the war with Iran, Syria was with Iran against Iraq. Thus, Jordan was the gate of Iraq to the world.
 
 Jordan used to have oil for free during Saddam’s regime, and exporter Iraqi goods through their port in Aqaba.
 
 Things changed after 2003, and Iranian borders have been opened for the Iranian goods to be imported and fewer Iraqi goods are exported.
 
 
 Thus, I believe this kind of war between Iran and Jordan is about which country will have the bigger piece of cake from Iraq -- and to hell with Iraqis. What crime did my sister do which made the Jordanian authorities stop her having the urgent surgery in Amman.

For the last two days the parliament made its first step to represent Iraqi people. The minister of trade was called to be questioned for corruption and misusing authorities.

As an Iraqi citizen I want the parliament members or the representatives to feel the Iraqi citizen’s needs and problems to be discussed and dealt in the sessions. Most Iraqis including me have many points against the people’s representatives as they were focusing on the privileges they can get for the period they occupy the position leaving the people’s important issues postponed.

  On Saturday and Sunday’s sessions, Iraqi people were watching T.V. and seeing the integrity committee do its job questioning the trade minister of the corruption in his ministry. We don’t know if the parliament will vote for the no confidence or not, but we are happy that the parliament is going forward to deal with the problems that Iraqi have been suffering from including corruption.

 In the last few years we were struggling from the terrorists and the sectarian violence with the bad relationship with our neighboring countries ,but nowadays other things come to the surface.

  The most dangerous issue that Iraq suffers from is corruption. All those officials who are accused in corruption, from 2003 till 2008,were using the lack of security and the violence as excuses to keep their positions and to steal more and more money. Some of them fled the country when they were about to be sued. We had two former ministers as good examples.

  The decrease in violence reveals or removes the cover which has been used by those corrupted officials or contractors. Thus, this issue comes on the surface and facts become to appear and those people should be replaced.

 I believe that the government should focus on this side as it says that this year is the year of construction. Also the parliament should do its duty to monitor the government to do so.     

Though I had hardly made a social call for the last two months, I made three ones today. Relatives, neighbors and friends were blaming me of being far away from them, and I really had lost touch with a few people who cannot understand how busy my own life is these days. 

 Thus, I dedicated my day to have three social calls. The first two calls were in my neighborhood in western Baghdad while the third was in the far south of Baghdad .

 First, I visited a cousin who is suffering from a blood disease.  Doctors told him to go abroad to handle his case otherwise he will die. Despite his condition, my cousin was calm when he told me of his struggle to learn what‘s wrong with him. He said that five doctors had examined him and each one gave him a different diagnosis from the others. The fifth one told him that he should go to Iran or Lebanon to be treated there. I believe the doctor recommended those two countries, not because they are the best, but they are the nearest, the cheapest and the easiest to get into for an Iraqi. Other Arab countries, including Jordan , Saudi Arabia and Kuwait make it more difficult. My cousin will go next week.

 The second visit was to condole my uncle’s family who lost their father to an unknown disease. He was all right a night before his death, but life in Iraq is full of difficulties and mysterious illness. He didn’t complain about anything before his death. I knew him very well. He was a teacher before he quit from his job during the former regime’s time due to the poor salary. He had a family of seven children most of them are girls. At that time, his sons were soldiers who needed money for themselves to survive in their units, bribing their officers to allow the soldiers see their families and for transportation as their units were in the deep south or north. So he quit from teaching to work as a taxi driver to feed his big family. He suffered a lot and I believe he died because he was blaming himself for having a big family with no future for them. The landlord gave my uncle one month to evacuate the house he had lived in for ten years. He died before he did that and the family doesn’t know what to do.

 The third visit was to a cousin who got married a week ago. I couldn’t attend his wedding party because I was at work so I decided to go to his house with a present in hand after his honeymoon, which was only one night at a hotel!. I didn’t ask why they had only one night, but I guess it was related to money. I congratulated my cousin on getting married. He wasn’t happy though. He joined the Iraqi army a year ago as he couldn’t find permanent job for the last three years. He used to be a cook in big restaurants, but the sectarian violence made him leave that job as he is Shiite and the restaurants are in Sunni neighborhoods.

  I came back home full of grief and depression. Life is so difficult and it becomes more and more complicated with the lack of planning, neglect and corrupt people.