President Bush loves emphasizing the heartwarming stories of courageous Iraqis braving conditions to vote in the country’s first free elections in more than 50 years.

So, to make up for future columns against him, here’s one such tale.

It’s not the usual story. This one is, packaged in the form of Kafi Ahmed, a 53-year-old Iraqi citizen who lives just behind Crouse Hospital.

The Syracuse resident actually voted this past weekend despite the barriers of living under an oppressive regime for her first 42 years – not to mention living 400 miles from Detroit’s polling station.

But she did travel to Detroit (one of the country’s five polling stations), and endured sixty hours of traveling and two weeks away from home – for one vote. All that for one measly vote among about eight million.

One vote was Kafi Ahmed’s gift. And it emancipated her.

‘It like my birthday in Iraq,’ she says of the voting. ‘Iraq married (Sunday). Iraqi people, we can’t believe. Never before can believe I’m going to vote.’

It sounds sentimental to read about how this Iraqi refugee travailed 800 miles and almost 60 hours total just to cast one ballot for a country 6,000 miles away. But that’s Ahmed’s story.

She did travel almost 60 hours, transfer four busses and, she says, endured two bus breakdowns. All that, and the Iraqi woman still persevered to make it to Detroit and vote on the first of a three-day, vote-filled weekend.

She still has the blue-tinted right index finger, appreciably faded, of course, which officials applied to all Iraqi voters to ensure that they only voted once.

She still has the documents, safely tucked away in her closet, hidden behind the onslaught of Arabic ornaments beautifying her apartment walls.

She still has the story.

Not of a 53-year-old woman traveling from East to Midwest America to cast one of eight million votes. That’s a good one, too. But the story of a woman oppressed under Saddam Hussein’s rule finally unshackled because she and her family have the right to vote.

It’s the kind of story President Bush eats for breakfast.

Pro-war, anti-war … either way, preconceptions melt when Ahmed tells her story. It’s inspirational, perhaps a bit maudlin for some.

‘Ohhh,’ she moans, clasping her hands to her face after being asked how it felt to vote. ‘When I got home, I put music on computer. I dance three days.’

Her family members, many of whom remain in Baghdad, reacted much the same. A blinking computer window flashes behind Ahmed. In a chat room, she is writing them.

Her American guest asks how they reacted after voting Sunday.

Ahmed picks up a traditional Arab mini-drum and starts pounding.

‘Drum party,’ she says. ‘Music in streets. They dance all day … Wow.’

On Friday, Ahmed cast her vote for Mithal al-Alousi, head of the Iraqi Democratic Nation Party, who survived two assassination attempts in January.

Published on February 1, 2005 at 12:00 pm