Well I have been having lots of phone calls,emails, and so on regarding Diva and this whole thing so I thought I would take some time to write some of it here and then post.
For those unfamiliar with the story, in 2004 I searched pen pal sites to find someone in Iraq to communicate with and I found Diva’s name and wrote to her…she replied with much eagerness to have me as her pen pal and so we began our exchanges through email and instant messaging…
In January of this year she received notice that she had been accepted for the Fullbright scholarship program and would be coming to the US to study and as an aside she has extremely high scores on her tests.
Recently she revealed that she would be attending the University of Kansas at lawrence and then on July 16th left Baghdad for the US by way of Jordan, Chicago O’Hare, then to Phoenix and shuttle to University Of Arizona and Tucson for orientation before travelling on to Kansas on Sunday Aug. 5th.
Manee g has been on the case in Tucson being of much help to her and then Kansas and Ghostdancer stepped up to help on the Kansas end.
I am hoping that both Kansas and Manee will add something of their part of story to this diary.
Now for some updates on Diva.
First of all I spoke to her for a long time last night and consoled her through her tears of frustrations, fears and also joy. She is terribly afraid to think she will have to go back to Iraq, with no relatives there and no male relatives to be sure it will not be a good place for a single female alone.
Her mother is going for sure now to syria in one month and says she is never going back to Iraq. She also reported that the internet cafe where Diva always went to was bombed and she was witness to all the mangled bodies and cannot get it out of her head.
Ok, I want to go ahead and get this diary posted and will add more to comments later.
Thanks to Scribe for creating a new anachronism for us Compassion in Action or the new CIA.
Previous diary links are here,
here,
and here.
