Happy Birthday to "Iraq the Model"

The blog Iraq the Model is one year old today. It is written by three brothers - Mohammed, Ali, and Omar.

Mohammed is a 35 year old dentist living in Samawa in southwestern Iraq. Ali is a 34 year old doctor who lives and works in Baghdad. Omar is a 24 year old dentist working in Basra.

Today, they wrote:

Today we celebrate the 1st anniversary of this blog. We sat together recalling the early moments in the life of Iraq the model, reliving the moments of happiness and grief and the huge magnitude of events we’ve been through in the past twelve months where tears mixed with smiles, anger and dreams....it’s been a long year.

Many people ask me why I started to write and how was the beginning and I today remember the time when we were sitting together, carrying our dreams, our ambitions and our hunger to communicate with the others; it felt like a sweet dream to find all the doors wide open for us and all the chains that restricted our minds simply gone.

I am free...And I need to tell the whole world what this means.I’d love to share this feeling with everyone, the feeling of being strong and capable of making miracles happen and that nothing can limit your dreams.My friends...my readers..

This wasn’t an action from one side, your have always been a rich source of inspiration to us.We have learned the meaning of being united together and we never felt alone in this; freedom lovers are everywhere.Reading your comments and e-mails made my cry many times and I wish I could remember all your names and I could feel everyone, even those who didn’t write to us.I wish I could embrace you all.

Together, you and us were, and will always be closer than brothers and sisters trying to stand against the powers of darkness and ignorance, doing our best to make our voice louder and louder and to make everyone see what our dream is.Sometimes I would despair but your words were always there to comfort me and encourage me to restore my strength and hope.

I used to watch the media presenting the false image all the time and then I would want to scream out loud:This is not the whole truth, this isn’t right . You’re overlooking a great deal of the truth and you’re not presenting the feelings of the love that exists; those feelings that are stronger than weapons and politics and are stronger than the hatred you’re trying to spread.

And this is the reason why we keep writing to you and we know that our love will find its way to you. No borders can stop it and no power on earth can stand between the love and the heart that opened its doors for the light.

My dearest..Thank you for your empathy and for walking through this tough road with us. I have no doubt that one day we will reach our destination and even if we stumble once or twice, we’ve got the determination now to try again and again and we will triumph at the end.We are so happy and we love you all.

-Mohammed

What’s a blog and who’s going to read it? And is it important what we have to say? Such questions were on my minds when Omar started our blog and I couldn’t find an answer that convince me to write. However, and after my brothers published their first posts, my questions were answered. “So there are many people who actually read blogs, and it seems to be important what we write!”. after that I decided to join my brothers and post my thoughts and opinions.

What I’m trying to say is that it was the readers, our good friends who share with us this humble page who made me realize that I must write, I must tell people everywhere what I, being an Iraqi see in Iraq, what I think and what I want. I’ll be always grateful for the people who helped me and my brothers find our voices and encourage us to share our minds and hearts with as many people as possible from allover the world.

This simple web page has come to be an important part of my life for reasons that are much more than just expressing my point of view in politics and the situation in Iraq. It is my window to the world through which I greet my friends every morning from Australia to the USA. It’s not a one way road, as I feel I know each one of our regular readers, I worry about you just as you worry about us and I miss you when you’re gone for any reason. I learned from you a lot and the most important things I’ve learned were actually things I thought I knew very well before! This has motivated me to look more into the ‘facts’ and ‘basics’ I believed were unquestionable.

In the end I just want to clarify one thing. This blog was not a propaganda tool and will never be. Our unlimited joy with our new found freedom that we still enjoy its sweetness is too precious to be lost or sold no matter what the price. I know that many people look at our writings with suspicion and disbelieve sometimes. Most of these people are misguided by the huge flow of lies or half-truths from the MSM and I don’t blame them, as how can anyone know what’s happening thousands of miles away without depending on the media!? actually they’re the people we are trying to reach because we know that most people are smart and honest enough to distinguish the truth from propaganda. But again there are those who were born free and don’t appreciate the gift they have received and the slaves who have come to love the walls of their prison and can’t see life in a different light. These are the people who simply can’t understand our joy and enthusiasm, and the only logical explanation to them would be that we, and people like us are propaganda tool. We long for the day when these people can appreciate freedom, and then we will be brothers and sisters again.

We have faith in ourselves, our people and the good people everywhere, and all we are doing is trying to share this faith and hope for a better future for Iraq and the world with the others. What good would it do us to complain and whine about how difficult life is? And why does anyone expect things to be perfect after such a drastic change as the one happened in Iraq, and when they’re not, they start to attack the people who made the change possible?

We have certainly have made many mistakes and said some foolish things over this year and we beg your forgiveness and promise you that we’ll try to remain faithful to ourselves and to keep examining what we write and correct our course when we drift away.Happy anniversary to all of you, as this is your blog and I’m not exaggerating when I say that you have put into it more than we have.

- Ali

This is a big day for me but I don’t think I can express my feelings well as I’m overwhelmed with emotions. As a matter of fact, this occasion is more important to me than my own birthday.Thinking of what we’ve done together on this blog makes me feel proud and gives me hop for the future.

Now we strongly believe that being optimistic in the darkest times is not something to be ashamed of. It can help us override the obstacles we’re facing no matter how huge they may seem and doesn’t mean that we’re dreamers because our optimism is based on beliefs and facts that do exist but are unfortunately not recognized by the MSM and many governments and parties that are either ignorant or have a similar agenda to that of the tyrant we lived under for decades.

The most important thing we achieved in the past year is building trust and understanding among us, failing the evil attempts of those who want us to think of each other as enemies.I believe that we’ve all learned so many things from each other and to some extent, we’ve succeeded in bridging even if a small fraction of the gap that separates our different cultures, at least in the way of thinking about solutions for our problems because we’re facing similar challenges and above all, we share a common goal; freedom for all mankind.

I truly feel privileged by the enormous numbers of comments and e-mails we received from you and we benefitted from reading them all; the ones that supported our points of view encouraged us to work harder and keep defending our just cause while the ones that disagreed with our points of view taught us to look at different issues from different angles and broadened our horizons.

“Iraq the model” wouldn’t have reached this far without your contributions and ideas my friends.Thanks to all of you and thanks to our colleagues in this huge, ever growing family (the blogosphere) who have supported us and spread the word about this blog to help us in our struggle to show the world the hidden parts of the fact in our country.By the way, it's a nice coincidence that today is also the 1st day of Al Fitr Eid! So there's more than one reason to party, and even if it's early for some of you, it is beer o'clock somewhere!

- Omar