Sometimes a certain situation brings back a memory you didn’t even know that it still existed in the depths of your mind.
This is what happened to me a few days ago, when my daughter asked me about adult education in Iraq, a program in the seventies for the eradication of illiteracy, she read about. She told me that the program reduced female illiteracy in Iraq from 70% to 30% within just a few years.
Wow, the last time I read, heard or thought about the campaign to eradicate illiteracy in Iraq must have been about 30 years ago. I didn’t really know that it was such a big success. Talking with my daughter about it brought back a memory of my time in the kindergarten in Baghdad. And after so many years, the purpose of one of my favorite activities in kindergarten was clear for me.
When I was 5 going to 6, I visited Al-Mansour al-Tasisia kindergarten in Baghdad. Part of our kg program was playing short sketches in class. I loved getting dressed up and I wanted so much to get the chance to wear these miniature traditional Iraqi clothes. The white dress and head cover (dishdasha and yashmagh) for the men or the black body cover (abaya) for the women. Unfortunately I never got to play the role of an adult. In the two times I participated, I played the daughter and this role didn’t need a custom. Anyway, the teacher used to pick five or four of us and train them on the role, while the rest of the children drew or played. Then they started to act and we all watched.
I remember two stories that we played, the first was about illiteracy and the second was about children vaccinations.
This is the one we played about illiteracy:
An illiterate woman, wearing the black abaya, is sitting at home while her husband is at work and her child is at school. The bell rings and she opens the door. The postman gives her an envelope and leaves. She opens the envelope to find a paper with red text written on it. She starts to talk to herself: „Oh my God. Something bad must have happened. Why is the text in red? It must be something really bad.“ She holds the paper, looking at the red letters and starts crying. „Oh, God help me. I hope my child and my husband are safe. Why is it red? Maybe my husband had an accident at work. Maybe he is in the hospital.“
For those of us who were watching the play, this was the funniest part. We laughed with tears, looking at her holding the paper and crying.
Then her daughter or son (depending on the actor) comes home from school and finds her/his mother crying and shouting: „What happened? Oh my God, what happened?“
She/he takes the paper and reads: „Electricity bill for December 1979“
The mother stops crying and looks embarrassed. In that moment the father comes home and the daughter/son tells him what happened. The father turns to his wife and tells her: „You see my wife, reading is important to everyone. Not only for those who work. I will take you tomorrow to register you in the literacy center.“
The wife replies: „Yes, I must go to school and learn how to read. Reading and writing is very important and I don’t want to cry again because of an electricity bill.“
The daughter/son gets very excited and says: „My mother will go to school and learn, just like me.“
When the play ended and we clapped for the cast, the teacher started questioning around: „Who has someone illiterate in his family?“
Then she would ask those who raised their hands, who the illiterate person they knew was. Some said it was their mother or father but mostly it was their grandmother. The teacher then told them to go home and tell their parents or grandparents to register at one of the literacy centers, “because reading and writing is very important for everyone.”
I was always sad because we had no illiterate person in our family so I couldn’t raise my hand nor get the mission to tell someone in my family to go to the literacy center.
Schlagwort: Iraqi
Copyright
When I came back to Vienna to settle down with my family, I had to prepare myself to be able to look for a job. As a first step, I decided to take all the 7 exams needed to obtain the ECDL (European Computer Driving License). I studied and went to the exam for the first module. It was a multiple chose test about computer essentials. The questions were very easy and I finished in half of the required time. I gave the test paper to the examiner and went out to wait for the result. He came out, called my name and gave me the test, saying: „congratulation you passed the exam.“
I took the test and looked at the only mistake I made. The question was: if you buy software license, on how many devices are you allowed to install it?
A. 1 B. 2
C. 5 D. „As much devices as you like.“
Well, now after living 12 years in Europe I can only laugh when I think back, because my answer was „D“. I really thought that if I buy software I can install it on as many devices as I want, but really, I had a good reason to think so.
Most of the software we used in Iraq were copies of copies of copies. I hardly remember seeing an original floppy, or later a compact installation disk. I’m sure we had one software key on thousands of computers in the country. As if „copyright“ was interpreted into “the right to copy.”
I don’t think anyone really bothered to think about it. No one would consider copying a CD as robbery. It was just common because long before software was copied, music tapes were also sold that way. We went to a record shop, gave them a list of songs, and an hour or two later we picked our cassettes up. If it was a really good record shop, they had originals and always made the copy directly from it. One could get almost everything from Arabic songs to classic music, operas and the newest international pop and rock albums. It was a little problem when I went to order a mix of song and I didn’t know the exact song title, because it was only clear for me what song I meant when I sang: „mmmmm hmmmmm yehhhh hmmmmmmmmm ….“ to the music in my mind; but for the seller,it was just the: „mmmmm hmmmm yehhh hmmmm …“ That didn’t sound like anything at all. So I preferred, to avoid embarrassment, to wait for maybe weeks till I find out the title of the song. Life was really hard before YouTube and Shazam.
Film tapes had a different story. I don’t remember video shops in the 80s in Baghdad, but the video tapes (originals, copies or records from the TV) were lent from one person to another and spread by changing owners. Lent Tapes hardly found their way back to their original owner. Every family had missing video tapes and used family gatherings to ask questions like: „Did you take Gone with the wind?“ or „Who has Grease?“ and when they don’t get an answer: „I will never lend a film to anyone of you again.“ It was a never ending story.
The really big turn in the copy business came with the embargo on Iraq and the invention of the CD. We could get anything on a disk: software, games, films and music. CD shops filled Baghdad and people were just hungry to be up to date with the rest of the world, since we had a strict ban on satellite dishes and almost no Internet. Even the free TV started to broadcast copies. It was a big event when the film Titanic came out in the U.S. and we saw it on free TV just a few weeks after the film prime. We prepared popcorn, drinks and blankets waiting for the film and then went teary-eyed to bed.
After that, the film song of Celine Dion „my heart will go on“ was broadcasted almost every day as a background song when the closing credits of the TV Chanel were displayed.
At that time we didn’t realize that we were all living on a Titanic that was slowly drowning into the sea.