The President's Gardens
This book from Muhsin Al-Ramli is probably a must to understand the civilian life in the years of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His personal history in that country is probably also relevant, in fact the author's brother was hanged by the regime for attempted coup or perhaps the support for change. Intellectuals are always feared by dictators.
The author moved to Spain where he studied and now teaches at University.
The author moved to Spain where he studied and now teaches at University.
The gardens are the presidential ones, those of Saddam, a person with a crazily criminal mind and behaviour, witnessed by everyone in the daily life dynamic till the core of his madness, the beauty of the gardens in the hands of a totally insane savage.
The book will help you to feel what the life in that harsh, cruel and sad environment was, how and what struggling meant, how life was in a way or another was inevitably crossing the president erratic and lunatic ruling. It is a story of people, three in particular, with an ancient culture, proud of it and probably for that partially resigned to fatalism too.
The many souls of that Iraq will come out, they will look so incredibly far from each other, the government and the rest left struggling, but yet so together in the aftermath, with the distinctions fading.
The many souls of that Iraq will come out, they will look so incredibly far from each other, the government and the rest left struggling, but yet so together in the aftermath, with the distinctions fading.
Enjoy it fully, maybe with a cup of tea.
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