The Sirens of Baghdad

I read this book in French, having bought it in Europe, where it is prominently displayed in bookshops. I found it to be a frighteningly realistic portrayal of the life of ordinary Iraqis since the beginning of U.S. military involvement in Iraq. It really helps illuminate how anti-American feeling has been generated, through the description of the transformation of an ordinary man into a terrorist. What struck me most of all about the book was the multiplicity of voices. These include the fanatical, militant terrorists who wish to assert Middle Eastern supremacy while destroying the West; the Bedouin woman who has left her village to become a doctor in Baghdad, and supports most of her relatives financially; her brother, who rejects her when he discovers she is living, unmarried, with a man; and the hero's friend, who tries to turn him away from the path leading to terrorism by reminding him that not all of the West is anti-Islamic, as exemplified by the popular demonstrations across the world in support of the Iraqis when the U.S. had announced its decision to invade. This is a truly excellent book that deserves to be read by everyone.

Yasmin Khadra (a female pseudonym for Mohammed Moulessehoul) in his novel THE SIRENS OF BAGHDAD takes the reader inside the head of a young unnamed first-person narrator who has been recruited for a secret mission, the nature of which he himself does not know when the story begins when he has just arrived in Beirut to carry out the mission: "All I know is, what's been planned will be the greatest operation ever carried out on enemy territory, a thousand times more awesome than the attacks of September 11. . . ." The rest of this chilling novel covers the events in this young man's life that get him to this appointment with destiny. The narrator was a humanities student who had to leave the University of Baghdad when the American forces invaded Iraq and return to his home in the remote village of Kafr Karam. Gentle and nonviolent by nature, he lives a relatively quiet life with his sisters and aging parents. "I had nothing to complain about in my parents' house. I could be satisfied with little. I lived on the roof, in a remodeled laundry room." Although he had no television, he listened to a "tinny radio." Then three events occur that make the narrator willing to do anything to get vengence against the American soldiers whom one character describes as shooting first and verifying later. He witnesses the killing of a retarded youth about his age by American soldiers at a checkpoint when he starts running away. The Americans mistakenly believe he might be carrying explosives. Then an American plane drops a missle on a wedding party. Finally soldiers break into the home of the narrator's family looking for terrorists and commit an atrocity that "a Westerner can't undertand," as the family is disgraced. The young narrator returns to Baghdad, a man on a monomaniacal mission, where he encounters more violence and ignorance from all sides, betrayal and where his views clash with that of his friend Omar who tells him: "No one owns the truth." Although certainly most Westerners will disagree vehemently with most of the young narrator's conclusions, this novel is instructive as to the hopelessness and rage that can blind someone who has experienced what the narrator has and turn him into an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist. To call this novel unsettling would be a gross understatement. It is frightening beyond measure. We have to ask ourselves (without revealing more of the plot) if the narrator's mission is possible. We can no longer call novels like this science fiction. It should be read with another finely-written, nuanced novel, THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST.

This book was a very well written book. The story is a great one because throughout this war the media rarely talks about what the Iragis are feeling or why they fight. All though this book gives just one primary viewpoint (i.e. Iragi against U.S.) it still allows you to understand why Iragis are fighting period whether it be against each other or the U.S. through smaller passages. It is a great read, I didn't want to put it down. It is intoxicating with its descriptions of Iragi life. Everyone should read this if they want to feel as if they understand in total this war. It will not be for everyone and the book itself does not pick sides but merely explains how Iraqis feel.

Wow! Pick the book up if you get a chance, especially if you have ever lived/worked in the Middle East or know someone who has, or if you would like to read a novel from an Iraqi point of view. I bought this book before my son, serving in the U.S. Navy in Iraq, got out of there, but did not start to read it until he was on U.S. soil. The ending is kind of weak, in my opinion, but it's so interesting to read the author's take on why the Americans are over there. It also provides some insight as to why there are so many young men who are happy to take on a suicide mission. This IS a work of fiction but I'm sure the author's sentiments match those of a lot of the Iraqis.

The concluding sentence of Yasmina Khadra's latest book, THE SIRENS OF BAGHDAD, magnificently encapsulates the present-day Middle East and the worldviews of too many Westerners and Middle Easterners alike. Speaking from a hillside overlooking Beirut, the unnamed first-person narrator states, "I concentrate on the lights of the city, which I was never able to perceive through the anger of men." THE SIRENS OF BAGHDAD is essentially two books. For its first 240 pages, it is a study in the formation of a non-religious terrorist. The unnamed protagonist begins as a university student in Baghdad, a Bedouin from a remote Iraqi village named Kafr Karam. For this young man, college represents more than an opportunity for advanced education; it is family pride rstored, a pathway to a successful career, and a means to secure his family's future. The U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003 forces the student to return home to Kafr Karam, and the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime mirrors the decline in the protagonist's fortunes. When the neighbor blacksmith's young, mentally handicapped son loses two fingers to a metal gate, the narrator accompanies him for an emergency trip to the hospital, only to see the boy gunned down on the way there by American soldiers at a checkpoint. Not long after, an American drone missile explodes in the middle of a village wedding party, killing seventeen women and children. The final insult occurs when American soldiers invade the narrator's own home in the middle of the night in search of weapons. During their incursion, they treat the narrator's father so poorly that he involuntarily exposes himself to his son, described as the ultimate indignity for an Arab man and his family. "For Bedouin," the narrator tells us, "...honor is no joking matter. An offense must be washed away in blood, which is the sole authorized detergent when it's a question of keeping one's self-respect." Later in the book, he explains, "Either live like a man or die as a martyr - there's no other alternative for one who wants to be free....I'm waiting for the moment when I'll recover my self-esteem, without which a man is nothing but a stain." Thus, the sirens of the title are many - the siren call of commercial Western culture, the lure of terrorism and violence for revenge, and of course, the sirens sounding alert during warfare. This succession of increasingly close at hand tragedies and affronts leads an otherwise secular and educated young man to seek revenge on their source, the ugly Westerners by joining a small terrorist cell. Time slows to a crawl for the narrator as he receives training and a series of small jobs by which he can prove himself. Up to this point, the book offers a chilling and realistic look into the making of a terrorist while simultaneously criticizing the West by inference for being the creator of its own enemies. The narrator's motivation is not religious fanaticism or radical fundamentalish, just revenge against the perceived abuse