Once Upon a Time is creative non-fiction written in the form of a memoir which focuses on the fact that another Baghdad existed not too long ago when people of different nationalities and religions lived and worked together peacefully. The central point of the book is life in Baghdad during the 1940s and 1950s, a period remembered as the golden age of Iraq. The stories told are as seen through the eyes of a young girl and woman, the author, who was born and raised in a Christian multicultural middle class family in Baghdad of the time. The book spans the first twenty years of her life spent in the Middle East. Intertwined with her personal story, the author tells of the lives of others, family, relatives and friends, as she knew them in the Baghdad of her youth. Iraq was a nation of multicultural and diverse people of all backgrounds and beliefs, with a heritage that goes back thousand of years. Iraqis and non-Iraqis, Moslems and non-Moslems, Christians and Jews lived, worked and mingled together in harmony, each aware of their particular cultural boundaries and respectful of others. As the author narrates her personal story she reveals many insights into her life, customs and cultures of Christian and Moslem families, both Iraqis and non-Iraqis who lived and thrived in Baghdad. Interwoven with the personal stories are historical chapters and facts that enable the reader to gain in-depth knowledge of the complexities of the religions, cultural and socio-economic background of Iraq and its people. References to present day conditions in Iraq act like a magnifying glass, making the potential for the country¡¦s possibly hopeful future, if it can find a connection to its more happy past, all the more vivid. The story is not told chronologically. The author weaves back and forth making time and space, condense and merge. There is a co-presence of different eras and events giving the book an unusual richness. Flashbacks and leaps into the present co-exist simultaneously creating a weave not unlike the arabesque intertwining of Arabic ornaments.

Chosen by Tim Seibles for The Hilary Tham Capital Collection. Brian Turner says Sullivan "listens across cultures and across languages in order to undo the erasures of time and power," calling this "a book of compassion and deep humanity." Poems spring from inspirations as various as paintings by Iraqi painters, the voices of Iraqi poets, co-translation projects with poets living there or in exile, and daily life in Iraq itself. Co-translations comprise one section of the collection and give a priceless cross-section of Iraqi poets today. Says Seibles: "David Allen Sullivan gives us an intimate tour of war-torn Iraq, an intricate look at the minds of people for whom military violence had become a defining part of daily life. Because these figures speak with such authority and desperation, reading this collection disrupts and deepens the way we, who have not lived with war, perceive its terrible damage. The poems are at times poignantly lyrical and in other moments darkly magical--as if the reader has somehow entered the poet's more than real dreamscape. I don't know if art can save us from self-annihilation, but to echo Muriel Rukeyser slightly: David Allen Sullivan's poetry is the kind of thing that might help us back away from the brink." Lola Haskins adds: "Sullivan's book left me in a state of shock and awe: shocked by the terrible sufferings of the Iraqi people, and awed by the high and heart-breaking grace of the survivors who present them. For me, the most resonant word in the poems is 'blood,' not because it's so often used, but because of its double meanings: the literal--the substance in all our veins that's essential to life, and the figurative--'family,' which is the heart the whole collection wears on its metaphoric sleeve: that we are all, wherever we come from, family." Poetry. Middle Eastern Studies.

What was it like to live in Iraq before the earth-shaking events of the end of the twentieth century? The mid seventies to the late eighties witnessed Saddam Hussein's rise to power, the establishment of Kurdish autonomy in the north, and the Iraq-Iran war. It also brought an influx of oil wealth, following the 1973 war and the spike in oil prices, and a parallel influx of Arab talent, including many Egyptians, as the Egyptian left became disenchanted with Sadat. The massive migration also extended to workers and peasants, some of whom created an entire Egyptian village just outside Baghdad. We witness all of this and more through the eyes of an Egyptian woman married to an engineer working in Iraq. The narrator, who works for an Egyptian magazine's bureau in the Iraqi capital, has a behind-the-scenes view of what was really happening at a critical juncture in the history of the region. Moreover, she has a mystery to solve: an Iraqi woman from the marshes in the south of Iraq, who is also a communist journalist, has disappeared, and as the mystery unfolds we learn of her love for an older Egyptian Marxist journalist. This is Iraq before and beyond Saddam, Iraq as the Arabs knew it, in the lives of interesting people living in a vibrant country before the attempted annexation of Kuwait and the American invasion. This is the Iraq that was

Full Moon over Bagdad: a collection of evocative short stories that recalls a key moment in the history of Iraq and the Middle East. Apparently independent, these fourteen chapters are actually intertwined by the presence of the moon which marks existences and events, together as well as quotes from Arabic poetry. The reader will be enthralled by tales of diverse Arab cultures for which the moon has always held profound significance “… Each one of us is tied by the moon by an invisible thread that gathers us together the way silk fronds arrange the pearls of a necklace.” Two decades have passed since the invasion of Iraq. Yet bombs and calamities continue to fall upon other countries affected by this event. Despite the geopolitical chaos it engendered across the Islamic world which has made peace seem a distant dream, these stories reveal the diverse resources of Arabic cultures that enable them to survive… Akram Belkaïd is editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique. Born in Algeria in 1964, he graduated from an engineering school and began his career in Algeria writing for Le Quotidien d’Algérie and La Nation. He settled in France in 1996 where he wrote for the economic and financial daily La Tribune. Author of several works on Algeria, the Maghreb and the Middle East, his work also covers current events, commodity markets and international geopolitics of the entire Arab world.

In Baghdad, Iraq, in 1939, nine-year-old Heskel Haddad, then the most fervent of Iraqi nationalists, first heard a fellow Iraqi call him "lousy Jew." Iraq, which for centuries was called Babylon, housed the world's oldest continuing Jewish community, largely concentrated in the capital city of Baghdad. By the late 1930's spurred by pro-Nazi elements, the Arab community had become increasingly anti-Semitic. On the eve of the holy day of Shuvuot, small roving bands of M'silmin killed 900 Jews in Baghdad, among them Heskel Haddad's cousin, his closest friend, who had been stabbed in the back and left to die in slow agony. Heskel Haddad swore the solemn oath to avenge his cousin, and began to organize an underground movement to protect his fellow Jews from further slaughter. As conditions worsened in Iraq, more and more Jews dreamed of escaping to Israel, but attempts to flee through Syria and Trans-Jordan meant death in the desert or at the hands of the Bedouin. The only way out was into neighboring Persia, now called Iran. Between 1948 and 1950, the Underground led 20,000 Jews to safety. An anonymous informer put Haddad on the "wanted list," and eventually Haddad was forced to leave Iraq forever. After a grueling journey through the desert into Iran, Haddad was forced to leave Iraq forever. After a grueling journey through the desert into Iran, Haddad arrived in Israel, where he was reunited with his family, which had left Iraq penniless as a result of the mass expulsion of Jews. Born in Baghdad is a gripping, richly atmospheric book about exotic lands poised between ancient tradition and modern change--and about the human values that must ultimately transcend both.

As the C-130 transport aircraft circled Baghdad in preparation for landing, Jack Armstrong, the forty-three year old seasoned intelligence operative, fastened his seatbelt for a mission he never bargained for. Armstrong soon discovers that his many years of working undercover in the Middle East haven't prepared him for the transformative journey he begins to make once he steps foot on the ground in Baghdad. Throughout the mission, Armstrong finds himself engaged in an upside-down interior labyrinth: struggles with his deeply held moral and religious convictions; conflicts within his work for the C.I.A. in Iraq; his love for Iraqi medical doctor Haifa al-Hashimi; commitments he cannot keep to his wife and children in the States; and the ideals and policies that he has always defended working for the U.S. government that don't seem to 'fit' any longer. Armstrong is partnered up with middle-aged Iraqi informant, Daoud al-Hassan, a pensive former victim of torture from the old regime, full of old-world wisdom and common sense survival tactics who gets Armstrong out of many a tight circumstance. Colin MacPhearson, an old friend from British Intelligence, joins Armstrong and Daoud in their pursuit of 'Jabbar' - the symbol of all this is evil and the ultimate target of the mission. The characters, conflicts, carnage and circumstances that Jack Armstrong becomes enmeshed in make for not only an action-packed drama but a study in the common denominators that make us all human. It offers a front-row center seat to the real-life story of today's Iraq through the eyes of Jack Armstrong and the circle of humanity around him. It presents a human face to the Iraqi people and 'their story'. But the real 'man from Baghdad' is not revealed until the very end of the story - or is it the beginning?