Authentic Arab or Muslim voices are rarely heard by the American or Western public. Those that do make it through are often filtered or edited by our own specialists (and our media). In other words, we have almost no direct access here to daily life and popular opinion in the Middle East, and therefore an overwhelming majority of westerners have only one picture in mind when they think of Baghdad: our own.
Enter into this picture Sihem Bensedrine, a Tunisian journalist, who flew to Baghdad just after the war in search of her close friend Nacera. Benedrine, being a Muslim from an Arab country, was privy to information that is habitually kept out of reach of western reporters or visitors. Unable to find her friend, and upset by what she saw and heard there, she decided to write Nacera a series of letters. Eventually Sihem, accompanied by a delegation of women, was able to visit her friend despite governmental surveillance. During this reunion, Nacera revealed to Sihem the full extent of the massacres, mutilations, torture and daily oppression of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The resulting collection of Sihem’s letters and observations is a harrowing and intimate journey, led by these two women, into the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people both during and after the war. In addition, the author delves deeply into the question of why for so long Iraq’s people turned a blind eye to these atrocities.