Sleepless in Wyoming and Iraq..

Adam imed the other night at 3 am. Seems he couldn't sleep. He felt sick and there was no water in their camp, not even to drink(!). We talked for a while, I did my best to comfort him from 5,000 miles away. I had my webcam on and everyone in my family was around and stopped over to Hello. I am sure that helped him to be more homesick :(.

So then I went to go to bed: took my shower, crawled in to bed, got my stuffed animal, and started reading a book that I had been intending to read for a while, called Infidel. It's about a muslim woman from Somalia and how she escaped Somalia and claimed refugee status in Holland where the culture challenged her beliefs about being a Muslim woman. It is difficult to read because there are a lot of topics about Muslim beliefs that are hard for many Westerners to wrap their heads around, beatings, female circumcision, multiple wives and families. I ended up staying up until 2 am reading it. The hardest thing about the book is reading about how difficult it is for these women to free themselves from the culture even when they have a strong desire to do so and are in a place where legally they can. This woman talks about her fears of her father coming to kill her after she escaped for dishonoring the family and not obeying him.

A had a soldier tell me in confidence that one of the hard things about Iraq is seeing how men treat women and not being able to do anything about it. The women work hard and obey their husbands and get beaten if they don't. Talk about a culture clash.

I wonder if the gender inequality in Muslim communities like that will ever change. I can't see how that will happen. Its a weird enslavement where the women rarely try to escape and see it as the will of God. It is interesting and at the same time kind of hard to read it from this woman's point of view and about her questioning her faith in Islam.

Long story short I was up late last night. I hope Adam finally got some sleep, has water, and is feeling better.