Volume 14 Τεύχος 3
Life In Hell
Running for your life from fundamentalist bandits, helplessly watching innocent women being shot in the street, and car-bomb explosions that shatter your bedroom window. Just another humdrum day in the life of a student in Baghdad.
You Can't Go Home Again
Mostafa Alshawi fled from Iraq to Sweden with his family when he was three. 20 years later he returned to his home country. He's a proud member of the Shia Islamic clan of the fishermen in Iraq, and in Sweden he is enrolled in the Police Academy.
Records
OMAR SOULEYMANHighway To Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of SyriaThis is the kind of album people would play on a raucous desert trip, blasting across the sands. Arabic music in general is an acquired taste because of its use of quarter...
Baghdad Brothel
Allah never smiled on street walking. Under Iraq's former Baathist regime, being a prostitute was seriously risky business.
Sunni Or Shiite?
After the fall of Saddam's regime in 2003, the army was dissolved, and former high-ranking Baath Party members were removed from their positions.
Counterfeit Iraqi
For many years, I've known this guy who makes counterfeit documents. He's not the only one in Iraq doing it, but he's one of the best. He can fake anything from a passport to a visa.
Leaving Iraq
For years there has been a steady stream of people leaving Iraq. Our Iraqi buddy Isam Kalka tells us people make a pit stop in Jordan or Syria because it's close and the countries have a history with Iraq, but after that most people travel on elsewhere.
Keep It In The Family
Even after the guards got caught stacking naked prisoners like a hairy, human-rights-violating cheerleading team in 2004, very little changed in the awful conditions at Abu Ghraib.
I Want My Dvds
MONSTERS AND MADNESSEven back under Saddam, when we weren’t allowed to have email, you could still find pretty much any Western movie you could ask for (porn excluded)
Pictures Of Clerics On My Bedroom Wall
This is a Basra street vendor who sells posters of Shia holy figures. About 60 percent of Iraqis are Shia, and about a third of that percentage are super-duper into it. These hardcore little gangs run the show in Iraq.
Iraq From Above
Do you know that thing Denzel Washington said in Philadelphia, where he'd go, "I don't get it. Tell it to me like I'm a five-year-old." When he said it, he meant, "Cut the shit."