Sarmad says

Thanks for visiting the page. As you've probably already read by now, this blog is set up to help our friend Sarmad help his family in Baghdad. After living in the US since 2004, he headed back to Iraq to help improve his family's lives and get them out of a pretty dire situation. 

He reports missing--in addition to all of us--his bed, the subway, and access to clean, running water. Here's how he describes what he found on his arrival back in Baghdad:

Rubble, trash and checkpoints are ubiquitous. The city is covered with dust, and at first glance it sounds as if no one lives here. Everywhere you go you get a sense of absolute hopelessness, helplessness and misery. Driving in this god-forsaken place makes you want to vomit. Everything is ruined and nothing was rebuilt. Everyone you talk to says it’s way better than last year or two years ago when things had fallen apart completely but what I see now is a pretty desperate situation.

He's trying to get his mother, two sisters and brother into safer circumstances. He's worried about how they'll fare, if he can really make the change in their lives he wants to make. "Anxiety is at its utmost," he reports. But we're here to help.

Thanks for your donations, and for taking the time to read this. Feel free to leave comments. We'll update as we hear from him.

Friends of Sarmad

The first $10,000

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." --Emerson

Sarmad Ali came from Baghdad to New York in 2004, an unlikely sojourner with a less than usual story to tell. A journalist by trade, he came to the US in hopes of building a career that would help him help his family back in Iraq, which has relied even more heavily on his support since his father’s disappearance in December 2006.

Though he lives here, his heart and mind are always with them, in their crumbled house that only gets electricity once a day at best, drinking barely potable water without access to the resources they need.

His older sister is sick, his mother needs medical attention, and his younger brother and sister wait for the promise of a better future. It’s a lot for one guy to handle.

That’s where we come in. We’re a group of people who want to help him help his family, to assist with funds he can use for paying their rent, medical care, food and maybe even a little fun. Donations are completely voluntary and go through a Paypal account that gets him the money straightaway.

If you have questions or concerns, don't hesitate to holler [helpsarmad(at)gmail.com]. We're a reputable bunch just trying to make good on that old saying "that's what friends are for"... we’d love to give you more details about where he is looking to move them and how they’ll rebuild, but we don’t want to risk endangering him or his family in any way.

If you would like to make a donation, please use the paypal form to your right. We'd like to see if we can reach our goal of $10,000 by the end of October, and then we'll decide what to do next from there.

Thank you very much.

Friends of Sarmad