"If you think of those who will die you will never move."
Just finished reading A Stranger in Your Own Land by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad and holy hell was it a hell of a ride. I'd call it good but it's hard to reconcile that word with such a journey into the heart of darkness.
A hair over four hundred pages of guided tour through the absurdities and atrocities of the long war touched off by that benighted wannabe cowboy. It's one of a slew of books released for the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq but as far as I know it's the only one written by an Iraqi.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad starts off with a glimpse of what it was like growing up in the 80s and 90s under Saddam, during the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and the sanctions that followed. Then he takes you on his journey from architect and military deserter to journalist and from there to battlefields on multiple war-torn countries.
From the US invasion, through the insurgency and the sectarian conflict that followed, the Syrian civil war and Daesh, the book is not so much a history of the war as it is a local's first-hand perspective on events. That perspective is part of what makes the book so fascinating, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was able to go places and talk to people no westerner could and fills in some of gaping holes in their accounts of the conflict.
No sympathy for the devil. There's a lot of devils in the book but for a war Americans started they're mostly minor characters. Several of my friends fought in Iraq, the book serves as a nice complement to the bits and pieces they shared with me of their time there. One bit in particular stood out, an insurgent was telling Ghaith Abdul-Ahad about how they didn't stage attacks within 2km of their village to avoid American reprisals. I was instantly reminded of a friend's story about how the Army took their Mk 19s (automatic grenade launchers) away because once they were attacked in a location they'd blast the hell out of it anytime they passed it again.
At it's core A Stranger In Your Own City is a book about the absurd, grotesque waste that is war. Cycles of oppression and violence, mistakes made and then made again, twenty years of violence and oppression with nothing to show for it but death, destruction, and more corruption.
Photos are all from 2020 here in Louisville, when we had a few run ins with military occupation. Reading the book it was hard not to be reminded of 2020, the soldiers in their humvees running around shooting people (David McAtee) and all the militias sounded eerily familiar. Like a glimpse at a narrowly avoided alternate timeline.
The book seems all the more relevant with the recent chatter about a 'National Divorce' around these parts. Just want to shake the people spouting that and ask 'Do you not understand what that would look like?' Anyways, A Stranger In Your Own City is a hell of a read, check it out if you're looking for something interesting to read.
On that note, I'm going to close with one last quote from the book. It remains eternally convenient to blame outsiders for any misfortune.
