Following the lives of Zia, Nunu, and Mamina as they were trapped in Baghdad during the height of the civil war was an emotionally challenging assignment. Many Iraqi women lost their lives or their loved ones during the course of my reporting. Yet despite their losses, these women demonstrated kindness and bravery. Many asked not to be named, but I recognize here those who I can for their work: Hanna Adwar, Khanum Rahim Latif, Maysoon al Damluji, Rend al Rahim, Nariman Othman, and Zainab al Suwaijj.
In the United States, I’d like to thank the following people for their empathy and actions on behalf of Zia and her family: Tim Reiser and U.S. senator Patrick Leahy; Nicole Boxer and her mom, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer; Nikki Asquith-Dubois, Jody Lautenschlager, Nancy and Cliff Ruzicka, and Marla Bertagnolli-Keenan; and Sarah Holewinski and Erica Gaston at CIVIC.
The Woodrow Wilson International Center provided me with an intellectual home for my project, and I’m very grateful to the people there who made the Center such a friendly and productive environment. Thanks to Lucy Jilka for steering me to the Center; to my spirited and insightful adviser Haleh Esfandiari, for devoting time to talk with me about women’s rights, the Quran, and the Shia of Iraq; to Sarah Courteau for graciously volunteering her keen eye to several early chapters; and to my intern, Rega “Ahmed” Jabar, for going way beyond intern duties in traveling to Jordan to meet with Mamina and Nunu and to harangue government bureaucrats, bouncers, and taxicab drivers.
The work of a number of Muslim scholars and journalists helped me understand the more nuanced aspects of Sharia law, the Quran, and Islam; these include Albert Hourani, Isobel Coleman, Fatima Mernissi, Nadji al Ali, Leila Ahmed, Amina Wadud, and M.A.S. Abdel Haleem.
For taking the time to explain their work to me, I’d like to thank Jonathan Morrow, Idong Essiet, Gordon Adams, Camille Elhassani, Peter Bergen, Keith Flossman, Ahmed Gutan, and the staff at Women for Women in Baghdad and Jordan. For their history lesson on the U.S. women’s rights movement in the 1960s, I thank Heather Coyne’s parents, Leila and Don Coyne. I also thank Manal’s parents, Dr. Mohammed Omar and Lamah Omar, for talking to me about Palestinian women’s rights, and Zia and Nunu’s father, Baba, for educating me on Iraqi history.
Thank you to Michelle Peluso, Nikki Asquith-Dubois, Sophie Fairweather, Maya Alleruzzo, and Catherine Philp for reading early drafts and giving constructive, honest feedback. I’m grateful to Sebastian Junger for always taking time out of his busy life to talk me through a rough writing patch. By pure serendipity, I met Nichole Bernier at the Bethesda Writer’s Center and would never have gotten the proposal off the ground if not for her excellent edit. I appreciate Ron Roach for introducing me to the Center and for our long conversations about neoconservatism. Thanks to fellow scribe Rufus Fairweather for coining the book’s title, and to Cherry Fairweather for providing home-cooked meals and warm fires throughout the long writing process (and thanks to both for hosting the best wedding a bride could ask for in the middle of it all). My mentor, Mark Bowden, has been the most thoughtful and inspiring role model a journalist could ever wish to know—I’m grateful for all his advice and friendship over the years.
At William Morris, thanks to my agent, Mel Berger, and to his assistants Evan Goldfried and Graham Jaenicke.
At Random House, I’m very lucky to have worked with editor Tim Bartlett, whose strong sense of detail, narrative, and history pushed me to write and rewrite and kept the project alive during difficult times. Millicent Bennett was a master at moving the story along quickly, and I’m grateful for the consideration she put into the final edit. Thank you also to production editor Janet Wygal.
I would especially like to thank my parents, Lynn and Phil Asquith. It must not be easy for parents to watch their daughter go off alone to Iraq at the start of a war, nor to hear gunfire at the other end of a distant phone line. Yet they gave me a lot of support and wisdom, and I hope this book makes them proud.
A foreign correspondent’s life can be a lonely one, and writing a book is usually a painfully solitary process. But I’m incredibly fortunate to have had a companion. Jack Fairweather, who I met my second day in Baghdad, has been by my side, across the world, for every stage of this book, and I could not have written it without him. I thank him for being an adventurous reporter, a dogged editor, a war historian, a creative thinker, and a supportive and loving best friend and husband.
Lastly, I would like to thank the five women whom I have come to know intimately in writing this book: Heather Coyne, Manal Omar, Zia, Nunu, and Mamina. They trusted me in sharing their stories honestly. A long war that is distant to most was profoundly personal for them. Observing their struggles, tears, and victories over the last five years has been an honor, and has demonstrated to me women’s capacity not only to endure the toughest of circumstances, but to do so with humility, empathy, dedication, self-sacrifice, and love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After graduating from Boston University, CHRISTINA ASQUITH worked as a staff reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer before leaving the newsroom to teach for a year in an inner-city school. Shortly after the Iraq war began, she took an assignment in Baghdad for The New York Times and spent the next two years covering the war for the Times, The Economist, and The Christian Science Monitor. A journalist for more than fifteen years, she has also written about women’s rights in Afghanistan, Oman, and Jordan. Asquith is currently teaching about women in Islam at the University of Vermont. She lives in Burlington with her husband and their daughter.
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