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My Heart Belongs To Baghdad | Leilah Nadir and her beautiful new book, The Orange Trees of Baghdad.

The Orange Trees of baghdad: in Search of My Lost Family
By Leilah Nadir. Kelly Porter Books, 326 pages. $32.95

With media coverage of the Iraq war at an all-time low, only a few people know what is really going on — Leilah Nadir happens to be one of them.

Nadir’s award-winning memoir, The Orange Trees of Baghdad: In Search of My Lost Family captures the unrelenting emotional angst felt by family in Iraq, yet maintains journalistic poise and an activist zeal. From the vibrant, crowded streets of London to the Ottoman-era villas in Beirut to the fine silk shops of Damascus, the book is a cultural journey just as it is an emotional one, highlighting Nadir’s personal struggle in trying to connect with her Iraqi identity.

Born to an Iraqi Christian father and British mother, she also brings forth a minority perspective often ignored by the mainstream media. Narratives of loving family banter and the sweet innocence of childhood are quickly juxtaposed with scenes of flying body parts, thunderous explosions that shatter windows, damaged churches with overflowing crypts and victims who have lost hope through lost limbs.

In the end, Nadir exposes a side to the war that the West cannot see, and she does it through a beautifully written, in-your-face style that is not easily forgotten.

SEE writer Zeb Quereshi talks to Nadir on the phone at her home in Vancouver.

SEE Magazine: What was your motivation behind writing the book?

LN: Well, it was a number of factors, but everything sort of came together when the invasion happened in 2003. We all watched with horror as the war seemed to unfold before our eyes and we’re all kind of helpless to do something. At that time I had really started to connect with my relatives in Baghdad and realized that they had so little idea of what was going on outside, and we had no idea what was going on inside because the media had stopped covering Iraq during the sanctions. I felt there was this huge gap on the human side between what we understood to be happening and what was actually happening. I started writing some journalism and commentaries about that mostly focusing on my family’s experience.  It snow-balled and I realized there was a book there ...

SEE: What did incorporating that personal family connection mean to you?

LN: Well I felt it just humanizes the situation ... and for myself when you hear about a war and a calamity happening elsewhere its easy to feel distant from it, but the minute that its affecting people you know, people you love, people who are connected to you by love has an entire different feeling to it.  All the theories whether war is a good idea, or a dictator needs to be removed becomes theoretical, and it just comes down to the practical day to day things people are going to have to live through. The only way I could express that was to go as intimate as I could and create that emotional connection because I felt that was lost. Unless you care about something from an emotional point of view, you’re not ever going to care.

SEE: Could you tell me a little about the writing process?

LN: I started making the notes in 2003 and it probably took another year I realized I was writing more than just articles.  It took a year to year and half to do the research, collect everything together, and create a narrative that worked.

SEE: There’s a recurring theme in the book about you not being able to go to Iraq and how you long to visit one day. Has writing this book brought a level of peace and lessened that desire or increase it?

LN: Sort of both. I think I felt really impotent I couldn’t go there at the time and I had to do something with all the energy around it.  The week the book came out in 2007 my relatives who I write about in the book decided to flee Iraq.  Suddenly, it felt like all our family had left was what I had written in the book because all the physical connections were gone.  So I felt really grateful that I had written it, but yeah it increased my desire to go.  I mean, I still think about it all the time.

SEE: Have all your contacts left Iraq or do you still stay in touch with people there?

LN: My closest connections have left, but they have family who are still there and so we do hear about the conditions on the ground. But that direct connection has changed.

SEE: Your book came out in 2007.  What’s the situation there right now?  We don’t hear much about the situation there anymore due to health care reform and Obama etc.

LN: I think its a little terrifying because the media has pulled back so much just to deal with security.  There are so few western journalists working there.  If you watched Al-Jazeera you’d get much more of a view ... when Obama took power he said he would end occupation which he still has not done. To me, the media has decided that the war is over, but it isn’t.  Few weeks ago there was a huge bombing in Baghdad and over a hundred people were killed...Baghdad itself is utterly changed.  It’s a honeycomb of checkpoints and blast walls.  It’s worse than it was a few years ago.  Society is completely destroyed and people are having to align themselves with their religious and ethnic backgrounds which they didn’t before.

SEE: Do you see any light at the end of the tunnel?

LN: No [Laughs]. I talk to Iraqis quite a bit, and its bad that they have no hope. Outside of some areas of Iraq there’s basically anarchy, and there’s all these different factions.

SEE: Do you feel like someday you’ll get to visit Iraq?

LN: I think I have to hope that I will.  You hope that your life is long and hope things will change but it’s hard to believe that we’re already in the seventh year of occupation, and it’s no more safe than it was at the start.  I don’t hold out hope for any time soon.