From Baghdad to Beantown
When Ambassador Faily was told last summer he would be posted to Washington, he told himself he would run in the 2014 Boston Marathon.
“This is a way for me to say ‘thank you’ to our American friends,” says Faily.
A self-described “techie,” Ambassador Faily is not your typical iron man. He ran two marathons in Japan to benefit tsunami victims, but is not normally a workout fiend. Now, with the intensity of work here in Washington and preparation for upcoming parliamentary elections at the end of this month, Faily’s been relegated mostly to jumping on the treadmill to get in marathon shape.
“The running is personally very satisfying, but there’s a bigger issue – it’s an issue of closure,” says Faily. After years of men and women of the US military fighting in his country, dying for his country, it is a small token of appreciation he says for him to run and fundraise on behalf of the One Fund as a way for Iraq to give back to American victims of terror and also for the another charity, Education for Peace in Iraq (EPIC).
Ambassador Lukman Faily hopes his participation in the 118th running of the Boston Marathon will show how one Iraqi originally from Baghdad is trying to travel the long distance from war to peace on the hilly streets of Beantown while thousands cheer from the sidelines.
