Eid Mubarak/Have a Blessed Holiday (Rendered in Arabic Jali Thuluth style by Mamoun Sakkal)
"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," writes Mohammed in a touching tribute to freedom -- and his readers -- on the occasion of the first anniversary of the three-man blog Iraq the Model:
This wasn’t an action from one side, you 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.
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 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?" adds Ali:
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.
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 . . . 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.
"By the way, it's a nice coincidence that today is also the first day of Al Fitr Eid!" adds Omar, referring to the Islamic holiday that marks the end of the month-long fast of Ramadan*:
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.
Keep up the faith, Mohammed, Ali and Omar. "Eid Mubarak!"
*From Wikipedia: Eid ul-Fitr [Al Fitr Eid] falls on the first day of Shawwal (the tenth month in the Islamic calendar). As with all months in the Islamic calendar, it begins with the sighting of the new moon. For this reason there may be regional differences in the exact date of Eid, with some Muslims fasting for 29 days and some for 30 days.
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