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.