While I and my neighbor standing on the rooftop of my house in Baghdad’s Shiite Kazimiyah neighborhood, watching the market full with turbaned clerics and chador-clad women going for shopping in the nights, we felt elated. Breathing in the fresh air on that dusk was an experience after a long time – something that we almost have forgotten. But not now, for there is something for us and with that lost smiles are coming back on our faces, however half complete they may be.

While I was moving on the rooftop and smiling on the change that I witnessed in the street, I can’t help myself comparing the new scenario with the recent past. And suddenly a retrospect struck me at that very moment when my neighbor, who had house in front of mine, was brutally killed by the militants in the same street that has forgotten those blood stains.

And on the very next day, one of my neighbors house was destroyed in an air raid by coalition forces. And when I remembered the bitterest one, grin replaced the smile on my face. It happened in the commemoration of my relative and suddenly there was firing in the next street and everyone rushed to look for a safe corner leaving the corpse behind. That was the fear of life that we have lived and survived under, only because of luck because bullets and rockets fired recon neither the guilty nor the innocents.

Yes, from grins to smiles, from war clouds to the clear light of the day, Iraq is changing from little to something substantial. A great shift for us indeed. As things have started returning to normalcy, we are gaining lost confidence, but we are still in dilemma to comprehend whether it’s calm before or after the storm. Nevertheless, we relish the memories of the past that we desperately want to live in, but still we vacillate in suspicion and we don’t even know when fiendish claws of war will drag us back into that sheer misery.

Well, a nation without fear for the survival, no rattle of gunfire and the scream of warplanes, market full with people throbbing for daily work shedding behind the shackles of dark past, this is what everyone aspires his country to be and we are not different to this. Though a distant dream for us so far with hopes lingering in war smoke, yet now the peace seeds that are buried deep under war debris have started sprouting and with that the hope is also springing back. And it’ll, if prolong and made stable, surely be the second coming for us.

We don’t want bombs anymore; we don’t want bloodshed, enough we suffered a lot and now no more mess please. We want our own blue sky to live under and white moon to watch from our rooftops. However, for us, a change in our country or even in our lives is a willy-nilly affair – wherein we can’t participate or contribute, only the passive spectators witnessing our own destruction.

We want the same old harmony – Shias and Sunnis living together without any malice. We want a genuine, vivacious, and vibrant civil society with social fabric and same old routine. A life without the sounds of bombs and bullets, people going to offices, sharing happiness with neighbors, visiting relatives…but even beyond 6 PM, as these activities vanish in fear of violence after the sunset. But now no more, and a drive from Kazimiyah over an unlit Tigris River bridge into Azamiyah, which in the past has shown no signs of life along the main road after 6 PM, can be seen lit and echoed with the vehicles that pass across as late as 10 PM. At the same time, glaring Kasrah, a Shiite enclave, with its lively outdoor market and coffee houses can be seen lively from far, symbolizing the change.

This surely is the second coming for us. May be we Iraqis expected too much from US invasion and thought it’d be easy get going, but it proved contrary to our notion. Notwithstanding, now some expectations have turned fruitful and we don’t want to let it go waste. Amen!