Life is all about stories and this is a story of us meeting a lovely family from Baghdad, IRAQ.
As an Indian, it is not very easy for us to visit IRAQ. And the highly unstable political environment of Iraq only makes our travel more difficult. Needless to say, with everything that’s going on, it will be at least some years, if not decades, before we can visit Iraq. So never had we thought that we would have a chance of meeting anyone from Iraq anytime soon.
On this particular day, we had taken a guided one day tour to visit Gabala, from Baku. There were around 20 tourists from 3-4 different countries with us in the tour. After some discussions with our English speaking guide, we came to know that we have an IRAQI Family with us as well. We were excited, but a little skeptical as well, whether we will be able to interact with them. We had lots of questions for them, like ‘How is your daily life’, ‘What do you do for a living’ etc?
So after 1hr or so we tried breaking the ice by introducing ourselves. That went pretty well.
We discovered that the gentleman is a professor in literature in Baghdad University, his wife is a mechanical engineer and their two daughters are studying in college.
The gentleman started telling us how volatile the situation is in his country, how they are always uncertain what’s going to happen the next day, they didn’t even know who exactly is ruling their country, how the place was so beautiful 15-20 years back and what peace was like for them.
He jokingly told us that 13 years ago, price of 1lt water was equivalent to that of 5 lts of petrol in Baghdad !!
During lunch, we shared a table that day, had tea together and got to know each other a little more.
We knew we can never understand their pain, but it felt nice to see them smiling and enjoying themselves.
We said goodbye at the end of our trip and left wondering how the world would look without all these meaningless wars!
How everyone can live in peace and harmony sharing their wonderful cultures!
Is it too much of an ask? Isn’t it worth a thought?
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