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lano, Tex.
BY the time you read this, I'll have packed my
suitcases into the car and will be headed for
Nashville, Tenn., one of the five American cities
where Iraqi exiles in this country are gathering to
vote in the Iraqi national elections this weekend.
In the past few weeks, I've been helping to organize
trips to Nashville for some of the 5,000 Iraqi Kurds
who live in the Dallas area and who are eager to
vote, even if it means taking time off work and
enduring a 24-hour round trip. But until recently, I
wasn't so sure that I wanted to vote myself.
In 1976, when I was 15, my older brother and I left
behind our parents, four brothers, three sisters,
500 cousins and our beloved village of Dargala, in
the Kurdish part of Iraq, to come to the United
States. We also left behind many bad memories: of
hiding out in freezing caves in the mountains to
escape the Baathists' bombardment of the Kurds, of
seeing our uncle's family blown up by government
planes.
What we didn't have was any memories of seeing
anyone in our family vote. Saddam Hussein's
candidates always won 100 percent of the vote, but
the election booths in our section of Iraq were in
the form of mass graves. There was no indelible ink
to prevent fraud in elections, only the indelible
pain of broken dreams and the loss of loved ones
since our part of Kurdistan was annexed to Iraq in
the 1920's.
When I voted in this country for the first time, I
thought how lucky Americans were. A vote is taken
for granted here, while back in Iraq people died
(and are dying now) for it. I've voted in every
election here since.
And on Sunday my large family in Iraq will all vote.
For my 72-year-old father and my 70-year-old mother,
it will be their first time. My mother told me that
she would brave the current blizzard in the
mountains of Kurdistan to go vote, even though she
is very ill. My father, a Kurdish freedom fighter
for two decades, looks forward to voting as eagerly
as a child waiting to open his Christmas gifts.
They do not want America to fail in its effort to
bring democracy to Iraq. Above all, they and the
seven million other Kurds want to cast a vote for a
new Iraq that will be based on the principles of
freedom, federalism, and the recognition that any
union between the Arab majority and the Kurdish
minority is voluntary.
Nonetheless, when I heard about the plans for Iraqis
in the United States to vote in the national
elections, my initial reaction was not to
participate. Although I feel a strong tie to my
homeland, I am an American citizen, and my life is
here now.
But then came the news that 31 marines died on
Wednesday in western Iraq when their helicopter
crashed as they were on what Gen. John Abizaid said
was a "mission in support of the election." How can
I ignore the sacrifices of these marines who died so
my family can vote? The best way for me to honor
their martyrdom is to vote myself.
That means that my wife, Allea, and I are driving to
Nashville. Coming along with us will be our
7-year-old daughter, Connie. She will get to see
something that I never got to see as a child: her
parents voting for freedom in an Iraqi election.
Bakhtiar Dargali is a partner in an environmental
consulting firm.
http://www.nytimes.com
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