Happy Days are Back in Baghdad!!

Sitting like Shahrazad in the Arabian Nights, S., my best friend started narrating her amazing stories to us in one of the greatest Friday dinners I ever had.

"Dig in," she said after I finished reading the Italian poem.

That was the first Friday dinner she has prepared since she left last February. Life at the office stopped since she left. We became just like robots working for the sake of the work and our career. But when she came back, she brought back happiness, life, encouragement, inspiration and joy.

When she first came to Baghdad last year, she turned my life and made me decide to be a reporter. "This is a great reporting B," she told me about the first story we worked on together. I got the first byline story with her then.

She inspires me, encourages me and makes me feel that life is meaningful. She teaches me what journalism means.

Every Friday, she cooks for us the best food, Cuban, Italian, American, Chinese, etc. and at every Friday night, I read poems depending on the kind of food she cooks. Everyone becomes very happy every Friday as she makes the office full of joy and makes us gather and enjoy her wonderful food.

For me she is not only a friend, she is a sister and I bet everybody knows what a sister means. I already have a sister, so I know this feeling and I feel she is just like my sister but lives in another country.

Once, I went through a hard time. I was covering violence in Baghdad day after day and I was so depressed to the extent I was about to leave my job as a reporter. We kept emailing each other. She helped me a lot to pass that period and that hard time and made me understand that my country needs me, needs my power, my loyalty, my hope, my will, and my love.

All what I said is so little in comparison to what she gave me and still giving me. She is our Angel that came back to Baghdad.