Feisty Aphrodite Archives
Dispatches Iraq: The Woman’s Story
This documentary was done by a woman named Zeena Ahmed who travelled to some of the most dangerous places in Iraq to listen to the stories of women surviving the day-to-day realities of living in a war-zone. Travelling with a dear friend from Baghdad, they set out on the road with a camera and a taxi driver, unaccompanied and unprotected. During their trip, they interviewed various women including a doctor who set up a women's clinic in the badly-hit town of El Qaem; a physical education teacher along with a family of women championship runners in Basra who continue to practice despite death threats from fundamentalists; a widow of an ambulance driver who was killed by American Forces while answering an emergency call; and an eight-year-old girl who was taken away for three months and presumed dead by her family before reuniting with them. Zeena's friend from Baghdad, Intasada, has been a pharmacist for 25 years who now works at the Baghdad Hospital after loosing her pharmacy to the war. She is a mother raising five children. This journey through Iraq brings to light the plight of a diverse number of women whose lives and stories have never been seen by the outside world. The humanity and brutal honesty this lens provides forces the similarities of these women's lives with those in the West (or anywhere for that matter) to be at the forefront, as the ethnic and cultural differences that are regularly used to divide us fall into the backdrop of the most obvious commonalities shared by women all over the world whose lives are dominated by patriarchy: mother, daughter, student, wife, professional, activist and survivor.
This video was sent to Feisty Aphrodite from our friend and comrade Dr. Dahlia Wasfi at Liberate This.
