There'll be dancing in the streets!!!!!!!!! I'll be there with a big picture of President Bush and American flags. I called the Fresno Bee and informed them of our celebration planned. Also spoke w/JustAmy about article in today's Fresno Bee about local Iraqi's. She's gonna try and contact Bill Manders from KMJ Radio. This is going to be fun beyond belief!!!!!!! I wish the whole world could know about how you guys have been out there at Shaw & Blackstone EVERY FRIDAY since 9/11! See you tonight. For victory & freedom!!!
Believe it or not, I called up Abdullah Baker and invited him to join us THERE'LL BE DANCING IN THE STREETS AT SHAW & BLACKSTONE today!!!!!!!!!!
News brings joy to Valley Iraqis
Celebrations started early Wednesday when U.S. forces freed Baghdad.
By Erin Kennedy
The Fresno Bee
(Published Friday, April 11, 2003, 7:51 AM)
Telephone lines to family in Baghdad have been down for weeks, but Fresno-area Iraqis are gleeful about news from home.
"I wish I was there in that square where they toppled Saddam's statute and I could jump and shout and dance with them," says Abdullah Baker, 43, of Clovis.
Celebrations started early Wednesday when U.S. forces freed the Iraqi capital from the 24-year rule of Saddam Hussein.
The phone rang at 1:30 a.m. in Amir Jassim's Fresno home. It was a friend excitedly telling the Fresno State economics professor to turn on the television.
"I couldn't go to sleep afterwards. But I really wasn't tired," the Baghdad native says with a joyful laugh. "I'm very excited about that change. It's about time."
Jassim's 70-year-old mother, who immigrated here from Iraq in 1994, has been glued to the television since U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad. "She never thought she'd see a day when she would not see his [Saddam's] picture everywhere."
Baker, a Caltrans engineer, has been watching that triumphant moment over and over on CNN broadcasts, remembering his teenage years walking with friends in the high-class neighborhood near where the four-story monument to the dictator once stood.
But another replayed scene, of a U.S. tank coming into Tahrir square, a landscaped roundabout in central Baghdad, brought back horror for Baker. The nation's first public escalators were installed there, and as a small child, he used to spend 30 minutes at a time riding them up and down. But by the time Baker was in third grade, Saddam had come to power and bodies dangled from ropes in Tahrir.
"Saddam used the square for hangings. Those were 'spies' ... or that was the propaganda," Baker says.
Foad Al Hamdani, 52, an engineering colleague of Baker's at Caltrans, echoes his thoughts: "I'm very happy to get rid of this tyrant. Now I hope the international governments let the Iraqi people run the show."
Hamdani and Baker scan war broadcasts looking for familiar landmarks, hoping fighting or looting doesn't come close to where their siblings and nieces and nephews live. Last they heard, their families had holed up with water and food.
Phone lines have been out since the weekend after the bombing started. Still, every night, the men try to call Iraq.
Baker lies next to a speaker phone with his 9-year-old daughter pushing the redial button over and over -- sometimes for 45 minutes. He gets a busy signal or a crisp voice saying, "The international line you are calling is not available."
"Dad, stop," his daughter pleads. "Can't you hear the lady? You aren't going to get through."
But Baker can't stop. The last contact was grim. A bomb had shattered the windows of the home of his oldest sister, Amina. Her daughter had just come to stay because dust stirred up by bombing in another neighborhood had made her asthma unbearable. Asthma medicine and inhalers are hard to come by.
"This is the price of getting rid of the regime," says Al Hamdani of the destruction and killings. "I'm hoping we can establish a new one with no jails, no torture, no people disappearing -- a true democracy."
Jassim also has high hopes for his native country.
"It'll be a very vibrant place in the next few years," the economics professor predicts, listing assets such as plentiful water, an educated populace and oil fields that have suffered relatively little damage.
"I like to say Iraq is a very good car with a very bad driver. We just need a good driver now."
The three men see a time soon when they will embrace family on Iraqi soil instead of meeting in neighboring countries, as they've done for years. None of the men has been able to return to Iraq because they were threatened with execution by Saddam for dodging military service decades ago.
Baker is trying to figure whether he could make a 14-hour drive over land from Amman, Jordan. Maybe he'll just wait for the airport to reopen, he says. It can't be long now.
The reporter can be reached at
ekennedy@fresnobee.com or 441-6197.
I just had kind of a neat idea. Can anyone bring a big picture of Saddam so we can take our shoes off and hit it? Just a thought. (Sounds like a heck of a lot of fun!)
I would like to be there tonight but I am SICK SICK SICK, I have had a terrible cold since last Friday and I am trying to get over it. Wish I could be there.
darn.
bye. Tiff :(
Erin Kennedy is a liberal who is very much against the war on terrorism. Chadsworth had several email conversations with her after 911. Probably would have continued except that I intervened and ripped her a new one about some of her comments. She indignantly told Chads she could no longer continue their conversations because of me! :-)
