Searching

Yesterday at 8:00 PM, I was in my way home from my clinic, I met four strykers in the opposite direction, when the first one became behind me it cross over the curb in between the two streets and stopped behind me the last one did the same and stopped about 100 m in front of me. There were only about 10 cars in the street including mine. An American soldier shout from over one of the strykers in broken Arabic "get out of the cars" .
All the drivers and the passengers left their cars and stood on the side waiting for the next step. Many soldiers came out of the strykers, some of them stood in front of us with their guns pointed to our chest other started searching the cars. I was very close to the commander of the group who asked me to open the rear box, I answered him in English "It is opened", "you speak English" he asked me, "Yes" I answered him, he asked me several other general questions, maily about the life in Mosul, he looked very happy to find someone who speaks English. He was really very polite and so was his group. I returned home late telling the family what happened to me.

Early in the morning today we awoke on a far away sound of loud speakers, I get out to the street to hear what it was. The sound get closer and it was saying:"To all the people in the neighborhood, stay in your houses with their ID ready and open the doors for the collision troops for searching the houses. Don't panic it is a routine search. There were several accidents in this neighborhood, we look for the explosive devices."

I get back home awoke my daughters, to get ready to the inspection. I didn't go to the hospital, just call them by phone and told them that I can't come.

In front of our house there was a main hole for drainage system, this hole was closed by dirt and plastic bags, water started to accumulate in front of our house. I took some tools from the house and with the help of my next door neighbor we started to clean the dirt from the main hole. It took about 2 hours to finish our job as both of us are old and not expert in such work. When we finished the American also finished their job. They didn't search our houses. They left the neighborhood.