Cruising through an Irish summer

Cruising through an Irish summer, originally uploaded by Stephen10031.

When you are a small, yellow plastic garden toy with plenty of grease on your central axle, not even the foreboding clouds can hold you back, or keep you down. The wind that blows the rain sets my little back garden friend (above) free.

According to the Associated Press, four suicide bombers attacked a Kurdish Yazidi community in northwest Iraq. 175 people were killed and 200 were wounded.

[Wikedpedia:] "In her memoir of her service in an intelligence unit of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division in Iraq during 2003 and 2004, Kayla Williams (2005) records being stationed in northern Iraq near the Syrian border in an area inhabited by "Yezidis". The Yezidis were Kurdish-speaking, but did not consider themselves Kurds, and expressed to Williams a fondness for America and Israel. She was able to learn only a little about the nature of their religion: she thought it very ancient, and concerned with angels. She describes a mountain-top Yezidi shrine as "a small rock building with objects dangling from the ceiling", and alcoves for the placement of offerings. She reports that local Muslims considered the Yezidis to be devil worshippers.

In the Yazidi worldview, God created the world, which is now in the care of a Heptad of seven Holy Beings, often known as Angels or heft sirr (the Seven Mysteries). Pre-eminent among these is Melek Taus (Tawûsê Melek in Kurdish), the Peacock Angel, who is equated with Satan or Devil by some Muslims and Christians."

How strange and sad. Years ago, when using MSN Messenger, I would use various emoticons when chatting to a friend here in Northern Ireland. One of the emoticons was created by typing (6), resulting in a bizarre creature I named the "devil sparrow."

Perhaps my wee back garden pal is the "devil sparrow," or even, the Peacock Angel. Whatever; tonight he spins on through the shockingly cold night here... (it's supposed to be August!) I try unsuccessfully to avoid thinking about Iraq, the vast, gaping wound of an international crisis that continues to rot and fester and condemn us all. And our political leaders stand up, and talk about the awful crisis in Darfur. What about the fucking enormous one in Iraq?