But I love you Iraq

I am an Iraqi citizen and do not come from a wealthy family. I was also forced to change my collage to a lower one whenIraq was hell under Saddam regime.

This is the land of the Arabian Nights, and of love stories that became fables far and wide. In these stories, in the traditions of which they were born, the lover thought nothing of giving up his life for a beloved. But no one thought death would come to this land under the present circumstances. Every day I am exposed to the nightmare the Iraqi people are living through – but also to their fortitude and resilience. In Iraq we lost nearly everything along the way. Many ordinary things have lost their meanings, we became without dreams and the days that have passed are more reassuring than the ones to come. In Iraq, like almost any other country in the world, you can’t get anything done without having a certain bias in your life. Without biases, we are not really conforming to the human nature, which as far as I know, is “natural.” Everyone has a bias, sometimes we prefer to drink a certain kind of juice or eat at a certain restaurant just because “we feel good about it,” just because we feel comfortable with it. Many times we don’t really have a reasonable justification for what we’re choosing to do, and most of the time these are personal choices that probably do not really affect other people. We lost even the decision of choice in Iraq and lost the hope too. But I love my country, I am proud to be an Iraqi we have a long peaceful history; we are a truly multicultural nation; and we are, all in all, a great people. We learn from one another and, in my opinion, our lives are richer for the opportunity to share in such varied experiences.

Hassan Selman
Iraq.