The night of the fall of Baghdad

Author's name: Ahmed Khairy Al-Omari

"The call to prayer pierced the surrounding silence. It seemed strange, sad, and familiar at the same time. It was the same voice I had grown accustomed to hearing call to prayer for the past four years. But this time it was broken, humiliated, and captive. It was choked and hoarse, as if it were about to burst into tears... There's nothing wrong with a little brokenness in the voice that calls to prayer, but when it's for the one to whom the prayer is directed. This voice, however, had a different kind of brokenness. It was tinged with humiliation similar to the humiliation of someone forced to watch his wife being raped and her honor violated. That was completely understandable... The wormwood too... When I entered the mosque, I found it desolate and dark. There were some familiar faces, but there was something unfamiliar about them... I thought that perhaps they were thinking the same thing about me. When I prayed, I cried. I remembered the last time I prayed before the war, the evening prayer, the eve of the war, the last supper!... And I remembered my tears then... I pitied myself, crying before the war, during the war, and after the war. What would be the outcome of this crying other than this occupation and humiliation, other than this stuttering that I find on my tongue wherever I go? And when I left the mosque, I noticed a picture posted on its door. It was an announcement of a missing young man. Who was he? Just another young man named "Firas Abdul-Jabbar." I read the details. The announcement asked anyone with information about this young man to provide it at a specific address... The announcement also said: He was lost in the Dora area, on a specific date. I looked at the date: April 8, 2003. It was the night of the fall of Baghdad... Suddenly, I found the picture had become a group photo that we all lined up to take: We, the deceived, we, the misled, we, the defeated prisoners... Firas Abdul-Jabbar, left and never returned. The night of the fall of Baghdad... And this is the journey to search for him, for us, and for you as well, in a way. This was not the beginning of a story inspired by imagination; it was the painful reality that prevailed in Iraq during the American invasion of its people. In this book, the writer Dr. Ahmed Khairy Al-Omari narrates the events that accompanied the fall of Baghdad, following up on the atmosphere that prevailed after that period, focusing on the human, social and national concerns and tragedies that surrounded the Iraqi people. He narrates all of this with the pen of a conscientious critic who did not neglect any of the events, even the marginal ones, to complete the picture that prevailed in Iraq at that time.