This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor.

Here's John Bachelor.

Continuing my conversation with Kraith 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.

Heath, a very good evening again to you,

and we begin the conversation with a high school friend of yours,

whose name where Namdegar 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,

Sunni, 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. I mean,

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, you know, the neighborhoods

have been divided. There are two walls now separating the high school from Hassan's house,

and that to go into that, one needs to leave one enclave, drive up and down a highway,

enter a second enclave to find another neighborhood.

...