Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Your last two books aren’t directly about Iraq, but you say there are parallels with the situation there. Tell me about The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
I taught this book to my students during the economic sanctions. And I feel like it gave me some kind of strength to continue. When I read about the struggle of the old man and the blood running from his hands because of the heat of the rope, I would always think, one day we will make it. At that time I had to work three jobs just to make ends meet. I thought I will struggle on and in the end things will come out fine, but they didn’t. We were invaded and our lives were shattered and people changed.
Invasions bring out the ugly side of people as they struggle to survive. I was shocked to see that many people changed loyalties and turned into open crooks. Some of them even changed their faith.
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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.
