No more early morning news, please

[ailbhe]

I dreamed I was in an Iraqi colony, unable to leave, not allowed any privacy because of being female, but accorded special privileges because I was a foreigner. Condemned women gave me their babies and I fed them alongside my own; I was glad that births were, in general, not recorded, so that I could claim the emaciated baby I was feeding was my newborn, along with Emer. He'd be safer as my baby than as that of a condemned woman. He was so hungry.

I was in a room with three other foreign women with nursing babies, one of whom also adopted one alongside her own. We couldn't find out what was happening. I kept telling people I had to leave by June so that I could get my medication - not that I wanted to leave, because that would get me killed, but that I needed the medicine. But the only news we got from the outside world was that there had been an arson attack by terrorists and the laws about planning permission were changing, so now they could build more nuclear power plants and homeowners could have wind turbines whenever they wanted - but environmentalists were concerned by the new law.

I could feel that starving baby at my breast for a couple of hours after I woke.