4/8: FORTY YEARS OF HORRORS: A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East's Long War by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
@Batchelorshow
1918
4/8: FORTY YEARS OF HORRORS: A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East's Long War by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Your-Own-City-Travels/dp/0593536886/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
A Stranger in Your Own City is award-winning writer Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s vivid, shattering response. This is not a book about Iraq’s history or an inventory of the many Middle Eastern wars that have consumed the nation over the past several decades. This is the tale of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniacal leader who shaped the state in his own image; a people who watched a foreign army invade, topple that leader, demolish the state, and then invent a new country; who experienced the horror of having their home fragmented into a hundred different cities.
When the “Shock and Awe” campaign began in March 2003, Abdul-Ahad was an architect. Within months he would become a translator, then a fixer, then a reporter for The Guardian and elsewhere, chronicling the unbuilding of his centuries-old cosmopolitan city. Beginning at that moment and spanning twenty years, Abdul-Ahad’s book centers on the West and in its place focuses on everyday people, soldiers, mercenaries, citizens blown sideways through life by the war, and the proliferation of sectarian battles that continue to this day. Here is their Iraq, seen from the inside: the human cost of violence, the shifting allegiances, the generational change.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batsuit, the author, Ray Tha Abdelahad. He's also the |
| 0:10.9 | journalist Ray Tha Abdelahad. His new book is a strange journey on your own city. Travels |
| 0:16.8 | in the Middle East long war. Ray Tha Abdelahad, I learned from you that you saw Saddam Hussein |
| 0:21.7 | the leader of necessity. Twice, once as a youth and again in the trial. What is what's |
| 0:29.6 | struck you as the change that you observed in him when he entered the courtroom? |
| 0:34.5 | So John, as I said, you know, I grew up in the shadow of Saddam and for me when I was |
| 0:39.2 | a child, there was something like, you know, bigger than God in our lives. And I remember |
| 0:43.9 | when I was a child seeing him on top of a Mercedes car waving to the car the second time |
| 0:49.2 | when I saw him was this spray old man white beard entering the courtroom. And that caught |
| 0:58.2 | that trial of Saddam. It could have been another point in which the Iraqis would have learned |
| 1:03.9 | something about their history. It could have been a moment of reckoning with our history turned |
| 1:09.8 | into a shan into a victor's justice. It was a, you know, it was a parody of justice. |
| 1:17.0 | It actually what the trial did turns Saddam from that defeated criminal into a dignified |
| 1:25.6 | old man and gave him the opportunity because the people who were opposed him were so bad |
| 1:32.7 | to getting the opportunity to redefine himself and we enter the not only the Iraq people, |
| 1:40.2 | the Arab psyche as this man standing against them, standing up against them. |
| 1:46.1 | Saddam is executed December 2006. That alone was a significant report here. What I didn't |
| 1:53.8 | know until I read your book is that after his death, his body was taken to the Prime Minister's |
| 2:01.7 | House, Maliki, who was who was breaking from a wedding of one of his children to observe |
| 2:08.1 | the body of Saddam Hussein. It's the word macabre doesn't do adequate to it. What does this |
| 2:14.9 | tell us about Maliki? What, what was he thinking? |
| 2:18.7 | It tells you how petty sectarian mentality he had. I mean, the wedding of the sun was held |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.