My Dad's Dead Sister Finds Him on Facebook, and Now They Are Skyping... A True Story.

At the salon I always hear you, the client, tell the most interesting stories. This is the story that everyone wants me to share with you. So here we go... Since I gave you the punch line in the title, I have to add this story would not have happened without the heroic presence of US forces in Iraq. I am going to start at the beginning.  A little geography: in the Hotspot region of the world that has been giving all of us a heartburn for a while,  for centuries there live Kurdish people in the rural  area surrounded  by countries of Iraq, Iran, and Syria from one side and Turkey on the other. A little history: much like the Jews, Kurds  have always wanted to be independent and never wanted to integrate and be a part of neither Iran nor Iraq; therefore, for long time they have been the object of the tug of war between all these countries, and they have been disliked and bullied by both countries of Iran and Iraq. So one day about eighty years ago, my grandfather, who was one of the Kurdish leaders fighting for independent Kurdistan, gets word that the new Iranian king (the Shah's father) wants to meet with him and his sons. So proud and thrilled for the opportunity for a free Kurdistan and meeting with the king, he left his daughter (age 3) with his mother( his wife has died at birth of the daughter) and says his good taking his two young  boys (my dad age 5 and his brother age 7) on this historical journey to Tehran the capital of Iran. The journey was long and treacherous on horse back and took them close to a month to finally get to destination only to find instead of a welcoming committee there were soldiers with guns waiting for them. He soon found out that the new king's invitation was only a ploy to get rid of leaders of unruly territories and holding the sons hostage was the way to stop any retaliation ...and it worked. They threw him in jail and placed the boys in a orphanage. When my dad was in his twenties, he made a daring first and last attempt to find his sister. He said, "When I got closer to the Iraq border, suddenly I was being shot at from all sides." First, Iranian border patrol were shooting at him thinking he was a Kurd (which he was), and Kurdish Braves were also shooting at him thinking he is Iranian (which he now was).  Now was 1980's and time for Saddam Hussien to take his turn of bullying the Kurdish villages in Iraq. When Saddam sees that his troops are receiving great resistance from the Kurds, in 1988 he decides to unlash his chemical poison  gas weapon on Halabje village killing 5000 Kurds: http://middleeast.about.com/od/thisdayinmideasthistory/ig/March-16-in-Mi... Dad heard this news and knowing that his sister lived in Halabje. He thought of his sister and her family as being perished in Saddam's genocide. And that was his reality until a few days ago when a Kurdish man in the new Kurdistan sitting at his computer on a mission from his 82 year old mother-in-law to find her long lost brother. And he actually finds the 85 year old brother (my dad) on Facebook. The brother and sister first share family pictures. Then they decide on the language that they can communicate. His sister knows Kurdish and Arabic, and my father knows Farsi and English. Since her daughter  and son-in-law speak English, they decide on American English because it is the perfect language to communicate freedom, and hope for a better future. Note:  as an American, I have always been less than pleased with the U.S. going to and being in Iraq, but yesterday I was face to face with the miracle of the freedom that U.S. has provided to humanity in that I sent and received Facebook messages from an eight year old Kurdish girl in the new Kurdistan who is my new relative. The meaning of all of this is that it takes time for freedom to blossom and flourish; however, does the price we Americans pay worth it???? I can argue that we may not be perfect, but every American, young and old, intuitively knows what we stand for is Freedom. This is not just a "company slogan".  We spend time, money, and our brothers and sisters of U.S. armed forces who sacrifice their lives for it…for us all.