HW 32: Shopping for School Supplies

After Reading Riverbend’s posts from September through October the topic I decided to summarize is Shopping for school supplies. Riverbend goes with her cousin and his wife, S., to shop for school supplies for their two daughters. Prior to the invasion of US troops the two young girls would go to the store and pick out the school supplies they liked. Now that the danger of abduction is present the girls have to stay back and it is left to Riverbend and S. to pick out the supplies they think the girls would like. Ironically all the notebooks have American themes such as Barbie and Winnie the Pooh. Riverbend picks out which themes she thinks the respective girls would like and strawberry erasers. Prior to the war this was a time for excitement for young kids in Iraq, but now parents including Riverbend’s cousin and S. worry constantly about the security of their children. Riverbend remembers how she loved to see the kids walk to school in their uniforms. This year and many more to come will not be anywhere close to that. Her cousin will walk his two daughters to school protected by a “pistol at his waist” (Riverbend pg 96). This eerie image shows how drastically the country has been altered by the invasion of the US.