Ramblings of a Hawaii Real Estate Agent: The Dream of Coming to America

By: David Kucic RA, GRI, ABR, AHWD, e-PRO
First Sergeant, USA (Retired)
Tropic Lightning Real Estate, Oahu, Hawaii

On my last Military tour of duty to Iraq from Jan 2004-Feb 2005, I deployed with 2-11 Field Artillery Regiment from Schofield Barracks, Hawaii outside the city of Mililani.  I was stationed near the Iraq/Iran border in a city called Sulaymaniya.

This area of Iraq is inhabited almost exclusively by Iraqi Kurds.  If you dont know anything about the Kurds, they are the people that were attacked with poison gas in the Iraqi town of Halabja by Saddam Hussein.  It is estimated that 5,000 people were killed during that attack.

When the coalition forces got rid of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds were extremely grateful because they knew they would not have to worry about him attacking them any longer.

I still keep in touch with some of the people that I met there and I recieved a few emails over the past few days from one of them.  This young man is about 19 years old and is the son of an old, female Peshmerga Army Soldier.  The Peshmerga are an Army exclusive to the Kurds.  His mother worked for the Kurdish government in Iraq and was instrumental in taking care of my 100 Soldiers and civilians while we were operating on their Peshmerga Army Base.

Here are his last 4 emails without any editing.  Chony Bashy means hello, how are you in Kurdish.

chony bashy mr.kucic how are you i want to ask some thing i have amedal from us army. yesterday some friend told me that if any one has this medal he can go to america and i want to come  to study i wander if you could ask to me or tell me about it if that true what i am suppose to do it thank you alot again

mr.kucic i wander if you can answer me faster because i like to come to usa faster i will be thank full so much sorry if i couldnt answer you faster because i havenot internet at home i must to go to coffenet wiyh all my best 

dear mr.kucic i will be very happy if you do some thing to me .i know i will be truble for you because i made you besy sorry and thank you. my mam take ahello to you and your wife chony bashy                                                                                your's                                                                                hawraz

dear mr.kucic thank you for your hellping that is your kindness about studing i cant bocause first thay didnt let me and they want abig money like 100000$ to year because of this i cant come like study and about the medal i have afriend he work with us army.he told me that if any one has amedal or the letter like your army told me thank you the america let me in and thay will give me green kard thank you again and chony bashy.                                                                              your's                                                                              hawraz 

It is unfortunate that this young man will probably never realize his dream of coming to America to study.  Maybe someday his children will be able to realize the dream that he had.

For all of the bad media that is getting reported in Iraq, there are so many good stories out there about real people who have real dreams and want to do something with their lives rather than try to kill eachother.