Friday, December 15, 2017

My book about Iraq

Since 2012, I've been working on a book about my experiences in  Iraq and their relevance to ongoing US policies in the Middle East. The book is a blending of nonfiction stories, political analysis, and history. 

Thanks to the money I raised from a GoFundMe campaign, I was able to afford the services of a professional editor whose suggestions and criticisms I am still addressing as of today's posting (October 11, 2018). What follows is the latest iteration of the book's table of contents and the book's preface. 

Iraq: Confronting America's Murderous Reign (working title): 
an excerpt (table of contents and preface)


Contents

Preface                      
 Introduction          

Crime Against Humanity (Life Under Sanctions)

1.     Getting There (and Back)

Operation Desert Storm                                                        
On the Way                                                                            
Call to Prayer                                                                        
            The Road to Baghdad                                                            
            Tilting at Windmills                           
            Return                                                                                                                        

2.  “Jesus Suffering with the People of Iraq during Sanctions”

           Rose                                                                           
           Revelations                                                                
           Parable of the Date Palm                                           
           Dreams                                                                                                                       

3.  “Lilies of Light in a Hand Held High”

            Kareem                                                                       
            Zeena with Hazel Eyes                                              
            Fatima                                                                        
            Gazelles at Night                                                       
            City of Children                                                                                                         

4. “The Hand That Frees the Flower”

            Family Dinner                                                            
            Homecoming                                                              
            Paper and Pencils                                                       
            The Sewing Machine                                                 
            The Television Set                                                     
            Al-Eid                                                                         
            The Portrait                                                               
            The Hand That Frees the Flower                              
            Bush, War Criminal                                                                                                   

5.  “And Promise You Will Remember My Name”

           Magic and Beauty                                                      
           Christmas                                                                                                                   

6.  Joseph, Ibrahim, and Saad

           Storyteller                                                                  
           Ghazi, King of Iraq                                                    
           To Bethlehem                                                            
           Mackerel and Bread and a Purse of Quilted Satin        
                                               
7.  “I Don’t Count the Dead Anymore”

           Mercy                                                                        
           Simple Gifts                                                               
          “I Don’t Count the Dead Anymore”                         
           Tales of the Heart                                                      
           “They Are All of Them Going to be Dead”                                                              
           Stopping to Buy Melons on the Side of the Road    
           In a Manger                                                                
Faith                                                                                                                           

8.  “Still We Live”

           Interlude                                                                     
          Quiet Diplomacy                                                       
          Daily Bread                                                                
          In the Home of Umm Haidar                                     
          Christmas Eve in Basra                                              
          “Still We Live”                                                                                                           

Return of the Mongols (Invasion and Occupation)

9.  Prelude to a Killing

            The River Ran Blue (a day and a night through Baghdad)                                         
            Letter from an Iraqi Girl                                            
            Letter to My Wife                                                     
            Of Teddy Bears and Toys and Coffee in a Cage       
            Umm Aida Speaks of Her Pet Canaries After a Sun-filled Seminar on the Impact of 
            Dante’s Inferno on John Milton’s Paradise Lost
            “I Went to Church on Saturday”                               
            Boston to Baghdad: The Longest Bridge in the World                                              

10.  Defending the World from “Grave Danger”

            George Bush Announces the Start of the Iraq War   
            Iraq Journal: Selections                                              
            For Nadia                                                                   
            Selections from Stations of the Cross                        
            Pietà                                                                           
            Civil War                                                                    
            Through Iraqi Eyes: Invasion and Occupation          
            Flowers of Evil, Flowers of Peace                             
            Pilgrimage                                                                                                                   

Shelter from the War (Iraqi Refugees in Jordan)

11.  “Bombing, Fire. . . . We Have Lost Everything”

Majeeda                                                        
"I Didn’t Want to Hurt or Kill Anyone”
Butterfly Wings and Pickled Vegetables                    
The Dinosaur                                                             
The Magical, Disappearing Scarf                               
Gardenias and Jasmine                                               
“Life Is Always Beautiful”      
                                                                                                          
Conclusion: “Life Is Always Beautiful II”                            
Postscript: In the Aftermath of War and Occupation                       
Chronology of the Author’s Iraq Activism                           
Notes                                                                                     
About the Author                                                                                                                  

Preface

While serving as his country’s ambassador in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda witnessed the bloody fighting between the Republicans, supported by the Soviet Union and volunteer fighters from Europe and the United States, and the Nationalists, backed by Italian and German fascists. In one of his poems — “I’m Explaining a Few Things” — he describes scenes of violent destruction (perhaps in response to the bombing of Guernica, a town in northern Spain) wrought by warplanes on the Nationalist side:

came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Later in the poem, Neruda answers those who might ask why he could no longer write about “dreams and leaves/and the great volcanoes of his native land”:

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

      In 1997 I went to Iraq to “see the blood in the streets,” the blood of the children of Iraq killed not by warplanes but by the equally lethal bombs and blades of economic sanctions. The blood I saw were their emaciated bodies curled up on filthy mattresses in hospitals bereft of ample cleaning supplies and the most basic medicines and equipment necessary for the care of infants and children. The blood I saw were the faces of mothers and grandmothers in black sitting beside their children, holding their hands, wiping their brows, and pleading with drawn looks and empty eyes for mercy. The blood I saw were the cold, windswept cancer wards where afflicted children, with families by their side, received at best only palliative care and in the absence of life-saving drugs, waited to die. On neonatal wards, incubators often held two prematurely born infants, wrapped in blankets in a non-sterile environment, because there weren’t enough incubators, and those in service were usually broken, lacking a temperature-control device. Consequently, mothers had to stand watch over the incubators and monitor the temperature.

The sorry conditions in most of the public hospitals I visited throughout Iraq were the result of sanctions, which curtailed Iraq’s ability to import the spare parts necessary to repair and maintain medical equipment like incubators, or to purchase complete drug protocols for cancer patients of all ages as well as cannulas with needles appropriate for children.

These were the very same children whose inevitable deaths were “worth it,” according to Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, during her interview with journalist Lesley Stahl in 1996. In Iraq I saw with a clarity that changed the course of my life the blood- and pain-filled meaning of words — like “keeping Saddam in a box” — bandied about by politicians and commentators to justify a set of cruel, genocidal policies.

After that first trip to Iraq, I came home feeling angry, depressed, quick to snap at anyone I felt was the least bit unsympathetic to the reality of life under sanctions. I knew I had to reinvent my life by becoming an advocate for the people of Iraq whose undeserved suffering I had witnessed. This book and the experiences I am writing about are one more expression of the advocacy I have practiced for nearly two decades.

I hope my book will inspire others to speak out against injustices, to be in solidarity with those who are oppressed or marginalized, and to oppose not only the policies that violate our common humanity but the underlying values, beliefs, and ideology that would sacrifice human life and happiness to the exigencies of power. The anger I initially felt has neither disappeared nor dissipated. Rather, it has deepened, become a clear, ever-flowing stream whose ultimate source, I believe, is love. Pure and simple love, as I hope these pages will reveal.