Dreaming Of Baghdad

In 1970s Iraq, the Ba'ath Party was at the height of its influence in the Middle East and popularity throughout the West. But a group of activists recognised the disastrous potential of the regime as its charismatic leader, Saddam Hussein, became more powerful. Haifa Zangana was among those resisters, a small group of whom were captured and imprisoned at Abu Ghraib. From the distance of time and place, Zangana writes during her first years of forced exile from her beloved country about the time of her incarceration, the agonising loss of comrades to torture and death in prison, the haunted quality of life so far away from home and family, and the ways in which memory conspires to make us forget what sometimes is most dear to us.