Wednesday, January 03, 2007

One Hundred and One Days



One Hundred and One Days
By Asne Seierstad

Reviewed by Claudine

One hundred and one days – that is the length of time Asne Seierstad stayed in Iraq before and during and after the invasion of Iraq in April 2003. She takes us to the streets of Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, interviewing people, reporting stories and scenes which we would not have otherwise seen in the news. In this book, one realizes that in war, there are no victors, only victims. Families who lose their homes and loved ones in an instant to missile attacks. Children and young people, whose lives are scarred forever, by wounds they sustain. Perhaps one of the most moving stories for me is about Ali, a 12 year old boy, who lost his family and home to an American missile. Covered in burns, he had his arms amputated in order to save his life and it was extremely heart-rending to hear him ask Seierstad, ‘Can I have my hands back?’ This is just one of the many painful stories she relates in her book. The book is mostly conversational in style effectively conveying the immediacy and intensity of the emotions churning and exploding within the Iraqis. It makes for gripping reading from page to page and the reader finds himself, like the Iraqis, helplessly caught up in the whirl of events that hurtle forward.

All in all, this book describes the under-represented perspectives and experiences of the Iraqi people which draws us into their little-known world and helps us gain a better understanding as to why some of them looked forward to the war while many others harboured a deep seated hatred towards it leading to the chaotic disunity and ambiguity which we see in present-day Iraq.

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