Wars’ living victims honor the dead, push for peace

[unhappycamper]

Maram Ahmed, 3, sat among military boots commemorating troops from Massachusetts at a peace rally in the North End.


Wars’ living victims honor the dead, push for peace
By Emma Stickgold
Globe Correspondent / June 1, 2010

Three-year-old Maram Ahmed darted among the 88 pairs of black boots arranged within a circle, toes all pointing to the waterfront. Each pair had a white label bearing the name of a Massachusetts victim of the Afghan or Iraqi wars.

The girl’s mother, Ayfer Abed-Aljabar, and father, Oday Mahmood, stood close by in Christopher Columbus Park in the North End, recalling their flight from Iraq, after his job with the US military made him a target. An attempt on his life prompted a move to Syria. The family lived there for about two years before moving this year to Lowell, where a growing group of Iraqi refugees has taken root.

“I lost my friends,’’ Mahmood said. “We want peace — just peace,’’ his wife added.

As a group of people came ashore from a boat in the Boston Harbor, Rafal Al-Saad, 16, raised two fingers, flashing the international peace symbol at them.

Draped in a red, white, black, and green scarf — the colors of the Iraqi flag — Al-Saad, a Lowell High School senior, spoke eagerly in English and Arabic about returning to her homeland and becoming a doctor. But first, she said, the fighting must stop.



unhappycamper comment: I still need to unload my camera. Hopefully there will be a few good pics which I will post.