I am a 60-year-old Sunni who voted for the first time in my life this month.

My family ignored the previous election. Our boycott helped unfamiliar, alien faces come to power. They wore black suits and made Baghdad a miserable city. Under them, even the weather turned bleak.

I voted in this election because of what I've witnessed in Baghdad over the last years. I have watched people rush to rob the victims of bombings rather than rescue them.

I have seen the society I cherished crumble. I voted for a cultured leader, someone who would restore Baghdad's essence as an Arab city.

Baghdad was a paradise once. I could show you my pictures; the way we dressed in the past, the way people were. I used to go to the cinema with my husband, to the theatre and the ballet.

We went to sports clubs and swimming pools and we stayed out late on Abu Nawas, the main promenade along the Tigris.

Now all that is gone.

I never thought a time would come when going out in the street could get you killed. My children risk death every day when they go to school or to work.

Most of our original neighbours in the Karkh district have moved away. My family has managed to preserve its security by sacrificing all the best things in our lives. We do not socialize freely. Imprisoned in our homes, even our food has lost its flavour. We feel as if we are buried alive.

Until now, elections have been irrelevant to my life.

But this time, I voted because I do not want my descendants to suffer they way I have.

On the morning of Election Day, we heard mortars and bombs going off. The attacks were intended to keep the Sunnis away from the polls, but they had the opposite effect. I would have voted that day even if someone had told me there was a bomb inside the polling station.

I went to cast my ballot in the early afternoon, along with my eldest son. Knowing that I disapprove of his smoking, my husband took advantage of my absence to smoke as many cigarettes as possible.

Later that afternoon, my daughter-in-law and my youngest son went to the polling station.

My husband was the last to vote. He had been fretting all day over whether or not to go, and we had a big argument about it.

The previous week, a neighbour who was running for office had offered my husband a ride to the polling station in exchange for his vote. A short time later, another candidate stopped by, making the same offer. In both cases, my husband remained noncommittal.

In the end, our sons persuaded him to cast his ballot, assuring him the coast was clear and neither candidate would spot him on the way to the polling station.

Looking back, Election Day was indeed a special day. It was the first time I can remember the entire family sitting together, talking about politics.

It appears that the political bloc I favoured will not win the election. And while I find that very disappointing, I at least have a clear conscience. I have broken the habit of a lifetime and voted for the future I prefer.

By Inam Ali
www.ottawacitizen.com

Inam Ali a resident of Baghdad. She told her story to Mohammed Furat, an editor in Iraq with The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict. For more, see www.iwpr.net.