SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq — Dressed in a vintage navy suit, Abdul Karim stood outside the MaDonal, the Kurdish version of golden arches and cheeseburgers.
The 70-year-old Kurd has seen a lifetime's worth of violence and degradation in Iraq. But on this glorious summer day, Karim glanced at his surroundings and declared: "This is how all of Iraq can be one day."
Sulaymaniyah, surrounded by the rocky mountains of northern Iraq, is a far cry from the drab, war-torn world of Baghdad. Virtually independent from Iraq, the Kurdish stronghold has prospered in recent years, and there are no scars of the latest war.
"It's another world," said Amid Salim Amin, 28, a Turkoman who lives an hour and a half away in Kirkuk but dreams of Sulaymaniyah. "We have nothing in Iraq. All the years are lost. But there, in Sulaymaniyah, things are different."
Here in Sulaymaniyah, the capital of eastern Kurdistan, the streets are sparkling clean. The sun beams down on colorful murals painted on city walls, and well-manicured gardens overflow with magenta bougainvilleas and fragrant gardenias. Water guzzles from pristine fountains at orderly traffic circles.
Teeming with goods from the outside world, the markets are bustling with crowds. Iraqis from Mosul, Kirkuk, Baghdad and the south travel long distances on potholed highways to buy satellite systems, electronics and household goods that are unavailable or unaffordable in their part of the country.
Billboards advertise cellular phones, a service the rest of Iraq has never known. The cars are shiny and new, unlike the rusty bombs that jam the roads in Baghdad.
Liquor stores sell Kentucky bourbon. Internet cafes rival Starbucks with their shots of espresso.
Unlike their peers in the rest of Iraq, the Kurds here also speak freely of politics and personal freedoms they have experienced under their fledgling democracy the last few years. Women in Baghdad look at the Kurdish regions to see how women there have improved their status in the male-dominated Muslim society.
Sulaymaniyah, along with northern towns and villages in Dohuk and Irbil governates, has not been under the direct rule of the Iraqi central government since the United States and Britain imposed the no-fly zone. The 1991 move was intended to check incursions of the Iraqi army into the region when more than 1 million Kurds were displaced from their homes.
After a period of bloody infighting, the two main Kurdish parties — the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish Democratic Party — agreed to share the administration of the Kurdish autonomous region. The U.N. oil-for-food program guaranteed 13 percent of Iraq's oil revenues for the Kurds.
Sulaymaniyah blossomed under peaceful, Kurdish control.
"Before, we couldn't speak. Before, we couldn't live," Karim said. "But life has changed from bad to best in Sulaymaniyah. I hope everyone in Iraq can live like us soon."
From afar, the Kurds, with their long history of suffering and isolation, waited patiently for the day Saddam Hussein would be toppled from power. Over 24 years of rule, the Iraqi dictator brutally repressed Kurdish revolts and drove millions from their homelands into the high mountains on the border of Turkey and Iran in a campaign to "Arabize" Iraq's northern governates.
Part of that long history of Kurdish suffering ended the day American troops rolled into Baghdad, though freedom is not complete yet. Many of the 4 million Kurds spread out over their northern enclave make no secret of their longing for a separate Kurdish state.
In the small Iraqi-controlled but predominantly Kurdish village of Altun Kupri, midway between Kirkuk and Irbil, Farhan Rasheed, 50, was busy giving his daughter, Aisan, away in marriage. It was the first wedding since war's end in the picturesque town on the lush banks of the Nahr az Zab as Saghir river.
Wedding guests danced traditional Kurdish folk dances as music echoed down the narrow, twisting lanes.
But fears of an uncertain future lingered.
"I feel so happy today," Rasheed said. "Saddam is gone. It is my daughter's wedding. But we can never have a stable life until we have a Kurdish state. No one else will protect our rights."
If national elections in Iraq fail to produce adequate representation for the Kurds, Rasheed said his people may decide the time has come to act on independence. That could seriously hinder U.S. efforts to keep Iraq intact and at peace.
In the meantime, Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians and Turkomans have their eye on the city of Sulaymaniyah as a model for reconstruction of their shattered nation.
"In Sulaymaniyah," Karim said, "the people have genuine smiles."