“Where were you on March 20, 2003?,” Aaron Hughes, an Iraq War vet and artist, asks our group. We’re sitting on the floor around a Persian rug while Aaron brews a large pot of fragrant Alwazah tea with cardamom.
Slowly people start to share their memories of that night. Someone remembers watching the events unfold on television in disbelief—images of the first missiles and bombs launched by U.S. and coalition forces on Baghdad. Several of us in the room find out that we had all participated in the same demonstration that took over Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. One woman shares that she was pregnant with her first child and could never have imagined that the U.S. would have remained in Iraq and Afghanistan for her child’s entire life thus far. ...