Iraq’s ladies of pleasure in Lebanon – stuck between two evils!

BEIRUT / IraqiNews.com: The 22-year-old Abeer was sitting all by herself at one of the largest night clubs in Junya, northern Beirut, along with other Iraqi filles de joie, and did not have any qualms about revealing her true nationality although she mastered the Lebanese dialect very well. Amidst all the hullabaloo inside the murky smoky cabaret, Abeer had time to tell IraqiNews.com that the living and security conditions Iraq is going through were all to blame for her ending up in the oldest profession. “I came to Lebanon three months ago in search of a job but some bad company brought me here to this place. I failed to get myself a decent job but I had no other option to have this one that brings me $40 a day. I can earn more if I went outside the club with one of the customers,” she said, puffing a cloud of thick smoke in the air from a cigarette between her long red-painted thumb and index fingernails. She said she has been an employee back in Iraq. “After I broke up with my husband and my folks emigrated outside Iraq, I had to depend on myself. I came to Beirut from Syria. I know several other women in my ‘career’ but they are strictly hush-hush about it,” said a smiling Abeer. Another Iraqi girl thinks the phenomenon in Beirut might be far less than in Syria. “Many Iraqi women are doing just this openly in Syria and in well-known places,” said the woman, who declined to give her real name. “Some are blaming the conditions in Iraq and keep parroting on the tough circumstances their families are going through back at home. However, I think this is one of the reasons, but not a main one,” the woman, who looked more conservative than Abeer, told IraqiNews.com. Another Iraqi lady of the night said some of the women used to sell love in Baghdad and so they had to go out of the country after all the threats they have received. “Lebanon is a haven of prostitutes from all over the world,” she quipped. Saad Abdulrazzaq, an Iraqi researcher, said some families had to leave Iraq under bad security conditions but were shocked by the high prices in the countries they went to. “Those Iraqi women had no other option,” Abdulrazzaq told IraqiNews.com. He called on the Iraqi government to do its best to bring displaced and emigrant Iraqi families back to their motherland and save the nation’s reputation. “I just want to live and have a good time,” said Abeer, puffing a final cloud as she put out her cigarette and vanishing away. AmR (I)/SR 50