Zona

Today was an Islamic day for me. I met an Iraqi/Canadian who had just recently finished his PhD studies. His specialty is trauma in children. In 2003 he had traveled to Iraq with a group to do a study on the traumatic effect of the war on the children of Iraq. Of course we can all guess and imagine of the trauma these children go have and are going through so I asked the man.

"What did you discover that surprised you?"

He told me that the children could relate stories of people being killed by bullets and bombs and beheadings without any emotion. He told me that the children spoke of those things in the same tone as I would speak of say, my computer breaking. (which was the example he gave)

He also told me that when they asked the children what their hopes for the future were the grand majority expressed a hope to die fighting for their country. I, of course, was flabbergasted. I made a comment that it appeared that these children now believed that the only thing that they could control was the manner of their deaths. He responded that I was exactly right and that most children who had been severely abused either physically or mentally had that same syndrome that the only thing they could control was their death.