This is CBS I On The World with John Bacheler. Here's John Bacheler.

Continuing my conversation with Christ Abdul Ahad. The new book is a stranger in your own

city, travels in the Middle East long war. It is years 2011, 2012 and 2013. On the eve

of much, much more violence than even in that first decade following the American conquest

and occupation of Baghdad and Iraq. Christ, Christ, a very good evening again to you and

we begin the conversation with a high school friend of yours whose name, we're called

Namdaegar is Hassan. You find him sheltering in his family's home in the northern part

of Baghdad behind locked doors. This is a Baghdad that is unrecognizable from 15 years

before. It's divided into concrete blocks and also people are keeping neighborhoods of

Shia, Suni and everything in between. Hassan, what does he tell you about his life and

his medical degree and how he is living? Good evening to you again.

Good evening John. Hassan was a high school friend and we used to walk from my high school

into his house when we ran away from school to avoid one of these spontaneous demonstrations.

But after the first phase of the civil war, trying to retrace my footsteps, my route

back into Hassan's house, I realized that the neighborhood had been divided. There are

two wars now separating the high school from Hassan's house and to go into that one needs

to leave one enclave, drive up and down highway and to the second enclave to find another

neighborhood. Of course, the whole geography of Baghdad had changed by that time. I managed

to trace, I managed to find him and of course he tells this story. We as journalists, we

witness the horror selectively. We go, we see a story with him. But for the people of Baghdad

and Hassan was like that, they had to live through a day by day. So he describes the time when

a carbon went right in front of him when he was stuck to checkpoint and they asked for

...