Baghdad Diaries: A Woman's Chronicle of War and Exile
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Book Overview
In this often moving, sometimes wry account of life in Baghdad during the first war on Iraq and in exile in the years following, Iraqi-born, British-educated artist Nuha al-Radi shows us the effects of war on ordinary people. She recounts the day-to-day realities of living in a city under siege, where food has to be consumed or thrown out because there is no way to preserve it, where eventually people cannot sleep until the nightly bombing commences, where packs of stray dogs roam the streets (and provide her own dog Salvi with a harem) and rats invade homes. Through it all, al-Radi works at her art and gathers with neighbors and family for meals and other occasions, happy and sad. In the wake of the war, al-Radi lives in semi-exile, shuttling between Beirut and Amman, travelling to New York, London, Mexico and Yemen. As she suffers the indignities of being an Iraqi in exile, al-Radi immerses us in a way of life constricted by the stress and effects of war and embargoes, giving texture to a reality we have only been able to imagine before now. But what emanates most vibrantly from these diaries is the spirit of endurance and the celebration of the smallest of life's joys.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1400075254
ISBN13:9781400075256
Release Date:May 2003
Publisher:Vintage
Length:240 Pages
Weight:0.56 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"
Related Subjects
Asia Biographies Business Business & Investing History Iran Iraq Middle East Military Operation Desert StormCustomer Reviews
2 ratings
Great diarist and really funny, wry tone
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
I'd like to point out in case the other reviews don't really flag this - Nuha Al-Radi is a really funny writer with a great, sardonic style. She's a well-connected, aristocratic Iraqi woman who lives in a devastated country and while the bombs fall she potters about her studio worrying about her kilns. She eventually had to sell them for money (to Saddam's people, who used them as pizza ovens!) She has a great eye for the ironies of life under Saddam's regime and has that ability to pick out all that is dysfunctional about her culture and criticize it, without becoming self-loathing. Everything she says about the Americans are self-evident to those of us who oppose the current Iraq war - in fact there are some great observations of hers where we are convinced that it's madness for the CIA to keep accusing Saddam of making sophisticated weapons when he and his people are so dumb they can't even get basic things right. I got a very real, vivid feel of the Iraqi as a proud, cultured people, which is an important perspective to have since we only see them as the receiving end of our bombs. At times this book reads like the Diary of Anne Frank - ironically, this time we are the Nazis.
Day to day llife in Iraq over a decade
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
Eye witness account of events in Baghdad by an Iraqi artist, Nuha Al-Radi kept diaries over a period of about 10 years beginning with the 1991 war, covering the period of sanctions, her own periods away from Iraq, and ending in March 2003 when the current occupation was about to begin. Though the book flows easily and is often humorous, she is not really a great writer, much of her day to day descriptions are quite mundane even involving detail about her dog and his life, and so many different names of friends and acquaintances mentioned it is impossible to keep track. However this adds to the book's effectiveness, the ordinariness of the people is a backdrop to the massive bombing, environmental devastation and later the sickness and birth defects. This is not a book that discusses larger issues but is told entirely from the perspective of innocent civilians, here where Al-Radi resides the US/UK is perceived as doing more damage than Saddam. Excellent choice for those interested in stories from inside Iraq.
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