The wisdom of the father.

Even though I spent almost exactly half my life outside iraq, it was the latter half and so the more relevant one. So even when in this country (UAE) I speak the iraqi dialect and so am treated as an iraqi (which is pretty sweet coz most arabs love iraqis). I don't feel it so much. Mostly because after the first gulf war, I (hopefully not just me) felt very dissilussioned with nationalism and the arabian dream, more so when we moved to NZ and then Australia and I started subscribing to a more logical type of *ism that is Islam.


I remember in the first years in NZ, my brother and I faced many problems of fitting in, probelms of bullies (me), no friends, language barriers etc... made us a bit standoffish about what I shall term 'white people', this coupled with our previous propaganda saturated education in iraq about how arabs the best and the west is more or less shit.



My dad used to talk to us about the differences between the east and west, about how people in the west are more direct, more genuine, how arabs generally carry double standards. I used to argue so much with him on these points, along with my brother we thought dad's arguements were due to his illusion of the greatness of the west.
At the time we were in our teens and illogically opposed to our dad's ideas and theoroes. alhumdulillah for his patience and love for us.


For some reason we didn't seem remember that our dad had spent some 45 years in Iraq, he had joined in 2 wars and lived through like 5 or 6 wars and two revolutions, that as a doctor in Iraq, New Zealand and Australia he's had exposure to alot more sections of the community in all those countries.



Coming here and working with these people on lower levels (the service center) and higher levels (expensive marketing projects) it's amazing how on the ball my dad was, I must acknowledge this is not a perfectly accurate fact for ALL people. , but subhanallah the respect and appreciation for systems and rules in australia is so clearly contrasted here by the almost absolute lack of repsect, and unconcious resistance to following or respecting any regulation. I've noticed that alot of people here just WANT, without regards for anyone or anything else.
I've also noticed that no one here keeps thier word, it's so wierd but there are so many promises and so many boastings of achievements, and yet when you come down to business, people are such bums ! no regards for deadlines or promises ! in the begining it can be frustrating but then you just count those instabilities into the realities and contingencies of project development.

so what can I say ? dad you were right, I'm just glad I realised that while my dad is still alive.