Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Your next book is Cultural Cleansing in Iraq by Raymond Baker, Shereen T Ismael and Tareq Ismael.
This book interests me because I want to understand all the crazy things that have been going on. I mean the museums were looted and the libraries were looted and burned. This was the illiterate mob at work. But the problem is that no one stopped them. Where were the troops? They were busy guarding the Ministry of Oil, but no one was there at the museums. They just let them in, even into the presidential palace. I remember seeing this procession of people coming out with things like sofas, pictures – anything they could find. These things should be preserved for later generations to see.
Academics were being killed. There was a kind of cultural cleansing going on. They are still being killed but not as much as before. Many colleagues of mine are dead.
Why do they target academics?
Maybe it is because they can influence people. If you have brains in a brainless estate you are potentially dangerous to the authorities.
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May Witwit is an Iraqi who is now living in the UK. She was forced to flee Baghdad when her life became too dangerous – leaving her job as a university lecturer in literature behind her. She has recently published a book about how she managed to escape Iraq with the help of a gutsy BBC journalist.
