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"ON JULY 14, 2003,
I left Kuwait on a C-130 transport plane bound for Baghdad,
the city of my ancestors and a place I had not been for thirteen
years. Two nations could legitimately claim me as their native
son. The first was the United States, where I was born and
raised. The second was Iraq."
So begins this groundbreaking
memoir of hope and hardship. Haider Ala Hamoudi spent two
years living in Iraq outside the relative safety of the Green
Zone working to help rebuild a country he loves.
The intimate stories he shares—from
a walk on a busy Baghdad street, to the momentous day Saddam
Hussein's sons were killed, to the tragic killing of hundreds
of civilians on one of Shi'a Islam's most holy days, and even
the joyous occasion of Hamoudi's own wedding— invite
the reader to experience a new side of the country that has
featured so prominently in our nightly news. Hamoudi draws
on his unique perspective as the American-born son of two
Iraqis to bring new insight to the question: What went wrong
in Iraq?
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