Heroes of Baghdad
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2014
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Global viewpoints. In this edition: Kevin Connolly visits the Baghdad book market and salutes the bravery of those who carry on with their daily lives amid a constant threat of violence; Jeremy Bowen considers the impact on the Middle East of the apparent coming together of the two rival Palestinian factions; Chris Terrill's on a perilous day out with the fishermen of Mauritania in west Africa; Katy Watson is in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo where housing's a serious problem - this is a place with the world's largest slum population. And fish and rice they are used to, but Robin Lustig was in the Burma's Irrawaddy Delta when the locals, for the first time, were invited to sample German sausages and tomato ketchup.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a download from the BBC. It's from our own correspondent. We make one version of the programme for the BBC World Service, but this is the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate A.D. |
| 0:16.2 | Hello. Today, read all about it, the true heroes of Iraq's years of bloody conflict. |
| 0:23.6 | It's the Brazilian city with the world's largest slum population, and the battle over housing in Sao Paulo is becoming increasingly political. |
| 0:31.6 | A question you just can't ask a 16-year-old girl, not even in a remote village in Burma's Irrawaddy |
| 0:38.3 | Delta. And on the beach in Mauritania, we learn why the language of love is all about fish. |
| 0:45.3 | The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is confident he won enough votes in this week's election |
| 0:51.1 | to hold onto his post. But it'll be weeks before the results published, |
| 0:56.0 | and with parties bitterly divided, forming a government could take much longer. |
| 1:01.0 | April was one of the bloodiest months in the country for years. |
| 1:04.0 | More than a thousand people were killed. |
| 1:07.0 | Kevin Connolly says the way ordinary Iraqis go about their daily business amid the ever-present threat of violence is nothing less than heroic. |
| 1:16.9 | The book market in downtown Baghdad is a joyful testament to the durability of the human spirit. |
| 1:22.8 | The sellers spread their wares out like carpets of all the world's learning, stretching from the covered |
| 1:27.6 | walkways out into the middle of the pedestrianised street. It is an odd selection. There's a copy of |
| 1:34.3 | practical electronics from the pre-transistor age, a handbook of civil engineering that would take |
| 1:39.0 | two people to lift up, and a book with a picture of the tough but tragic French boxer Marcel |
| 1:44.1 | Sardin on the cover. |
| 1:46.0 | He's the one who dated Edith Piaf and died in a plane crash. |
| 1:49.7 | On more than one stall, you find stacks of mine camph in Arabic, which you can interpret in one of two ways. |
| 1:55.9 | Adolf Hitler either has a disturbingly big print run in these parts, since there are a lot of them, |
| 2:00.7 | or gratifyingly |
| 2:01.8 | low sales, since they're still there. There are also a couple of copies of the autobiography |
... |
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