Word: nouman
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This isn't how Lahib Nouman's life was supposed to turn out. Her father was a wealthy dealer in engineering tools. The Noumans lived in the then tony district of Saadun and sent their 13 children to the city's best schools, where they learned Arabic, French and English. Lahib's genteel upbringing is clear. She uses demure terms even to describe the depraved treatment she has endured. Her torturers "made pee-pee and ca-ca" on her, she says in English, and they "made love" to her against her will...
After completing a law degree, Nouman took a job as a criminal investigator at the Justice Ministry. Later she pursued a doctorate at the Sorbonne. Her studies were cut short in 1985, when she broke a hip in a traffic accident. Back in Baghdad, she began to take on criminal cases, mostly pro bono. That's how she came upon Naadi, a young Egyptian bellhop who had crossed Uday Hussein. Naadi was being held at a police station and being tortured even as Nouman waited to see him. "They were touching his fingers with a live wire, and I could...
...walls of Lahib Nouman's home don't just talk, they howl. They scream in terror, shout with rage, moan in pain and sob with frustration. All the emotions overloading this tiny woman's brutalized mind she projects onto the walls of her living room. She scrawls on them with maroon lipstick, ocher spray paint and gray lumps of charcoal, in Arabic and a sprinkling of French. It's the only way she knows to exorcise her mental demons, to preserve what remains of her sanity. "There's so much inside here," she says, slapping violently against the side...