A Belated 9/11 5th Anniversary Post October 14, 2006

This is a reprint. The Gore Years Website did not exist during the 9/11 five year anniversary. This was our eulogy, and, in fact, the reason why the site was begun.

Ahmed Ibraim remembers the dark years.

He remembers his friends and neighbors while they were rounded up by Saddam Hussein’s regime. He remembers the air raid sirens blaring at 3 am, and the frantic rush for cover, and, especially, the awful roar of the occasional nearby explosions. He remembers hating America for it all.

A Sunni, Mr. Ahmed today lives in a neighborhood that was, in many ways, spared from Saddam’s dark curtain, and, somehow, most of the bombs Saddam’s regime provoked.

Today, his once dusty neighborhood is replete with schools, busy grocery stores and even an occasional Starbucks. His three children have all passed entrance exams for universities run by a group known as the Hijric Collective, a Muslim group that has taken over management of the educational system. Some say the group is tainted by American imperialism and Zionism, but the Hijric is so well financed, and most importantly, housed by Imams, paid off or not, that most of the complaints are mere utterances within the confines of local coffee houses.

The fact that the Hijric Collective is funded by numerous Western benefactors is not lost on Mr. Ibraim, but he adorns his skepticism and distrust with the hope that his children will have a better life than he could have hoped for.

Such is life in modern Iraq, a diffused land that has somehow, despite geopolitics, demonstrated that the concept of civics is a real one, and that disparate groups like Sunnis, Shi’a and Kurds can choose to overcome extreme pasts even in a place as haunted as the world of Middle Eastern politics.

Mr. Ahmed is a typical Iraqi working man. A carpenter by trade, he spends hours at lunch time with his friends dissecting politics not only concerning his land, but America as well.
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