Election Day in Iraq

Iraqis approached today's parliamentary elections with a mix of celebration and caution.

A Hopeful Homecoming

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BAGHDAD, Dec. 15 -- Mustafa Abdul Aziz, a major general in Saddam Hussein's army, fled Iraq to another Arab country in 1991. He brought his wife and children there, and they lived quietly and happily.

Stirrings for his homeland started when U.S.-led troops overthrew Hussein in 2003, Abdul Aziz said Thursday. "I wanted to come back right away, but my children and wife said, 'Let's wait and see if things clear up before we go back,'" he recalled. But Iraq in the postwar period became more turbulent, not less, and Abdul Aziz stayed put in his new home, waiting for his chance.

Iraq's national elections, he decided, provided the opportunity for him to finally come home and take part.

At central Baghdad's Salihiyah district Thursday, however, poll workers told the retired officer that his name wasn't on the lists, and he couldn't vote. He would have to ask the Electoral Commission.

Bewildered and not knowing what to do, Abdul Aziz asked if he could at least dip his finger in the purple ink to feel that he had truly come home and taken part in the voting, he said.

"'That's okay,' they told me. And as I dipped my finger in the inkpot, my eyes watered and tears started coming down," Abdul Aziz said at the polling center, surrounded by poll workers overcome by his story. "That's what we always wanted, a chance to live a free democratic life. I and my family had suffered just to have such a day, and now it has become a reality."

-- K.I. Ibrahim, Special to The Washington Post

The Wedding Party

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KIRKUK, Iraq, Dec. 15-- In Iraq, if people want to portray an occasion as joyous, they say, "It was like a wedding."

On Thursday, groom Nawazad Omar, 24, and bride Shireen Khibhir, 23, two co-workers who had met at the Kirkuk education board, fixed Election Day for their wedding -- and turned a polling site in the violence-wracked northern city of Kirkuk into their wedding party.

With bride and groom in wedding regalia, family, friends and a Turkish band celebrated among the voters, throwing candy to all, said Safa Mahmoun Hadidi, deputy director of the Kirkuk electoral commission.

The couple chose Election Day "so this will be immortal, and the polling site so it will be extraordinary," Hadidi said, relating the words of the newlyweds. "'People will talk about it, and they will see how we defied the terrorists.'''

-- Washington Post Special Correspondent

'This Is Our Future'

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FALLUJAH, Iraq, Dec. 15 -- With a sigh and a shake of his head, Ammar Ahmed described the last year of his life by listing the milestones and hardships of what he called his "Fallujah experience."

A self-described supporter of insurgents fighting U.S. forces across this region, Ahmed fled Fallujah in November 2004, hiding out in nearby Haditha while Marines and Iraqi soldiers invaded this place, known as the City of Mosques.

He ignored Iraq's January election while his devastated city rebuilt. But he tested the democratic process in the country's October constitutional referendum, held days after three cousins were kidnapped by militia members with ties to the army, he said. He voted no, then cobbled together $26,000 to buy their release. He owns a mobile phone shop.

"This is our future," said Ahmed, 27, of the election that will determine Iraq's first full-term government. "This is our destiny. If don't want to live like this, we can't leave it to others."

-- Jonathan Finer and Omar Fekeiki, Washington Post Foreign Service