SEATTLE — The waning moon hangs low above the modest mosque as the members of the caravan make their final preparations. Marwa Sadik, 19, watches her mother attach an Iraqi flag to the family's red minivan and steps in to help the older woman explain the passion that fuels the grueling trip ahead.
They will travel nearly 1,200 miles this day through fog and rain, wind and hail, in a 13-van convoy that stretches like an out-of-control slinky moving down Interstate 5 through three states.
It is 6:55 a.m. Friday, and they are heading off to participate in Iraq's first free election in more than 50 years. But the only polling place in the western United States is at the officers' club at the former El Toro Marine Base in Irvine.
Their exercise in prayer, pain and perseverance, somber and celebratory in equal measure, will eventually take the group nearly 22 hours, one way. But it is a trip they make gratefully, fully aware of the much more severe voting hardships in their homeland.
"Last month they kidnapped my uncle from his house in Baghdad," Sadik says about the insurgents, her breath a white plume in the inky morning. "He escaped from them. He is safe, but he's still worried. He can't go out. He can't work. He's depressed. He has four kids. The situation is really bad.
"But he's going to vote," says Sadik, whose family came from Baghdad via Syria to Seattle three years ago because her mother wanted the children to have an education, medicines, a future. "He's really excited to vote, so he can live safe with his children. Especially now, after what happened to him. He really wants a better life."
And if he is willing to risk his life to cast a ballot, then her family is willing to make the journey to Irvine.
Sadik and her family also are excited. Friday was for driving. Saturday for voting. And today, before hitting I-5 again for the long trip back home? "We're going to go to Disneyland."
Fajr, the Dawn Prayer
"When you have the first election in the history of Iraq, you want to be a part of it. For me, honestly, if I don't take part, I give up on my own people and tell the terrorists over there, 'you won,' " says Muhamed Qatrani.
He is squinting in the glare of television lights that cast this working class neighborhood in an unnatural glow as he talks about the trip he has feverishly arranged. The minivans scheduled for a 7 a.m. departure have just begun to line up on 108th Street. But first comes prayer.
