by Seja Majeed
For many years, Seja’s family searched for Helmi Fadel Al-taki, but it was only in 2003, after the collapse of the Ba’ath regime, that they realised it was most likely that he was buried in a mass grave, since he had not been released from prison. To this day, Seja’s family have no idea what happened to him, or how he may have died. Seja says, ‘From the moment I was born I knew about war and death, without anyone having to explain it to me. It became a part of my being, to know that people were hungry to kill and destroy everything around them. I was helpless to do anything but comfort my mother. I would hear her cry, knowing that so much injustice had been done to her family. She had lost everything, except her hope that maybe she would find her brother alive.’
In 2012, Seja was accepted on to the highly competitive graduate programme for Shell, the multinational petroleum company. She first worked in Scotland, on the North Sea oil fields, and was then transferred to work on the Iraqi Majnoon oil field. She now lives in Dubai and frequently travels to Iraq.
She is also a One Young World ambassador. One Young World is a premier global forum for young people of leadership calibre, endorsed by many political and social figures such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, humanitarian Bob Geldof and US senator John Kerry. Seja began writing her novel, The Forgotten Tale of Larsa, when she was just nineteen, while she was also studying law and working. It took Seja eight years to complete her novel; she has dedicated it to the memory of her uncles and the Iraqi people.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
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A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR