Word: baghdad
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...Antoon rarely mentions Iraq explicitly in the poems. Were it not for this slim volume's title - and a few references to the Euphrates and the Tigris - you'd hardly know that the poems in The Baghdad Blues were specifically about the ordeal of life in Iraq. Like Bosnian poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic - whose Sarajevo Blues recounts the wracking of that city - Antoon finds that agony is agony regardless of your GPS coordinates...
...pure pain. Antoon also sings of love. In the beautiful "Phantasmagoria II," he writes: "Your lips/ Are a pink butterfly/ Flying/ From one word/ To another/ I run after them/ In gardens of silence." Again, there's no sign that our Romeo is roaming the streets of Baghdad. Instead, Antoon has turned the sick city into a mirror of the world at large, where desire and disaster are never far apart...
...ordinary criminal. Saddam Hussein's last Defense Minister had been condemned to death by an Iraqi court for his role in the slaughter of thousands of Kurds. Like his former boss before him, Hashem was held in Camp Cropper, a U.S. military base on the outskirts of Baghdad, and would have to be flown to his execution by U.S. military helicopter. The Iraqi government planned to hang Hashem at 3 a.m. on the anniversary of 9/11. A speech had been written for the occasion, to be delivered by an Iraqi spokesman, noting parallels between the acts of terrorism committed...
...Iraqi army and then Defense Minister. He remained popular with his troops, who admired his military bearing and plainspokenness. In April 2003, when Saddam's propaganda was still claiming military successes against the invaders, it was Hashem who announced publicly that U.S. forces were poised to enter Baghdad...
...will be treated with the utmost dignity and respect, and that you will not be physically or mentally mistreated while under my custody." Petraeus personally accepted Hashem's surrender in September 2003 and made his aircraft available so the former Iraqi Defense Minister could fly in comfort to Baghdad, where he was taken into custody. But Hashem was soon released and returned to live freely with his family in the northern city of Mosul. In June 2004, however, Hashem was taken into custody by the Iraqi government and put on trial for his role in the Anfal, Saddam...