Photograph: The Guardian, Stuart Wilson/Getty Images
I’ve come to discover a phenomena called Black Friday. It’s a mega sales season when people stampede into shopping malls to buy stuff and stuff and more stuff.
I used to love shopping. I could spend an entire day trying clothes on, matching colors, patterns, fabrics and styles. I would give myself excuses why this dress or those shoes were a must. New and pretty things made me happy, gave me a high. Shopping was almost – how should I put it – orgasmic.
As of last August this spark was gone. Now I look at shop displays in London with their big neon bright stickers ’50% off’ ‘70% off’ hell ’80% off’ for F** sake just come in and buy something, anything! But I have no pulse.
Last August I gave up all my stuff in the height of the migration crisis in Iraq. By then more than 1.3 million people were forced to flee their homes and move to other cities within Iraq. A church one street away from my house in Ain Kawa, Erbil, became shelter to more than 300 families. People just lay in the church court-yard under the sun exhausted after being stripped of all their possessions and chased out of their homes in Mosul city by the Islamic State.
I was confronted by the sight of them like a hard slap in the face every time I stepped out of my house. The sensation of the smooth fabric I wore on my skin, the cold water I drank, the wiff of cool breeze from my ceiling fan, my soft pillow under my head, the smell of my fancy soaps; every comforting sensation that I used to enjoy to tingles felt like hot spikes. The guilt was over-bearing.
I stuffed what I could in a suitcase and gave away everything else including my clothes, shoes, bags, kitchen appliances, pots and pans, china sets, books, paintings, everything.
I no longer feel the painful sting of last August.
Now When I look at window displays in London, all pretty and blinged, I try to recall that thrilling, tingling, happy old sensation. Alas, my libido just falls flat.
Iraqi musings London 