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Dancing in the No-fly Zone: A Woman's Journey Through Iraq |
Author: Hadani Ditmars
Published: 2005-09-30 |
List price: $16.95
Our price: $13.22
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As of: December 04th, 2008 02:35:59 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Soldier's Perspective
For the past 15 months I have been Iraq, mainly Baghdad, serving as a gunner for my unit. I received Hadani Ditmars' book "Dancing in the No Fly Zone" from a friend of mine in Canada. Before reading the book I had an understanding that a lot of the problems Iraqi's faced were caused by American actions in the past.
What she has written hasn't really changed how I feel towards the Iraqi people. I do not hate them, though I do say insensitive things with my squad, and I do not look down on them. When I was younger I wanted to be a minister to help people, but now, I am a soldier in Iraq, and my biggest regret is that I haven't helped any Iraqis. I wish I could have, but our mission prevented us from really helping the people of Iraq.
I would have enjoyed actually talking to any Iraqi, but that was impossible as well. Her book helped me see the people of Iraq, not as victims, or as terrorists, or however else they are portrayed in the media, but as people.
Excellent look at civilian perspective in Iraq
This is a book about Iraq from a civilian's perspective and it should be read for its own merits and not, at all, as a title seeking to justify the Iraq invasion or villify the US government. Ditmars focuses on the civilian element in her book, and rarely strays into military territory. She tells us what she learned talking to the Iraqi people and because of that, this is a title that should be studied and appreciated on levels separate from those that dissect the war on terror and Iraq's part in it. Do not read this book looking for excuses or anger over the invasion - read it just to see how life became for the Iraqis in the wake of the invasion and what they think about it. From my review of "Dancing in the No-Fly Zone" at Eclectica Magazine here is a brief synopsis:
Canadian journalist Hadani Ditmars traveled to Iraq several times throughout the late 1990s and beyond, and in her book Dancing in the No-Fly zone she does a very interesting comparison between life in the country under Saddam Hussein and after the American invasion. Her book was published before the sectarian violence escalated into civil war, but she provides an excellent snapshot of the years leading up to that catastrophe and shows also how many people were struggling to prevent it, to live their own, normal, lives.
Ditmars is not sure why she is so captivated by Iraq and its people but is clearly in awe of the long cultural history it holds. "Cradle of civilization, birthplace of Abraham, capital of the Islamic world under the great caliph Haroun al-Rashid, and more recently a center of pan-Arabism and artistic and intellectual life, Iraq is not a place to be considered lightly. It is a place to read poetry, a place to study holy books, to ponder the meaning of civilization."
She intends no irony with that last statement, "to ponder the meaning of civilization," but in her last visit, late 2003, she sees glaring examples of the destruction of civilization all around her. Old friends have left their jobs as artists and musicians to find more lucrative work for the Americans, but the price they pay in abandoning their own creativity (not to mention their contribution to Iraqi society) is high. Teachers are drivers, professors are translators, and a cellist is... she's not quite sure what her cellist friend is doing, but it somehow involves one of those ubiquitous NGOs. The American sector of the Baghdad seesm secure and thriving with the best the city has to offer providing assistance, but the rest of the town is struggling on every level. Ditmars is shocked and appalled when she compares the degradation of society against even the darkest days under Hussein and the sanctions. "It seemed rather than liberation, the invasion brought only the chaos of a power vacuum, and an increase in self-censorship for survival's sake." The arts, which were so long the life of Iraqi culture, are dying before their eyes, and Ditmars seems determined to document every last aspect of it she can find....
In the end, Ditmars leaves Baghdad because it has become too dangerous, and because the story she has to tell is simply being repeated by everyone she meets. On her last night she attends a fund-raising concert for the Garden of Peace project she initiated--a place for women and children to safely go and play and talk in the city. She listens to four children in particular sing "a rousing anthem whose lyrics combined nationalism, hope and a bit of John Lennon." Afterwards she learns the children do not attend school as they must work to help support their families. One little boy in particular, twelve-year old Assem, works twelve-hour shifts in a shoe factory to pay for his insulin. He is a boy with diabetes living in a war zone who must work to get the medicine he needs to stay alive. Ditmars gives him $20 to help pay for insulin, a gift he initially refuses but agrees to accept for his drugs. The next morning she gets on an airplane and leaves Baghdad behind but can not forget what she saw there, how the city has become the very definition of tragedy. And after reading her book, I can not forget Assem. What chance does a child like that have in a place that is falling apart; what chance do any of them have to survive in a city that the world seems determined to tear apart?
They are not all insurgents, Ditmars makes clear, echoing what authors Rory Stewart and Ann Jones have already proven true about Afghanistan in their books. Just because it's easier for us say they are, they are not all insurgents
unique
there aren't any other books on iraq like this, nor are there any other books like this on war or women... hadani ditmars has written a complicated account of her experience in a country whose culture she appreciates. she writes in a way that does not "other" the iraqis or emphasize the foreign nature of their being, but rather describes their situation in terms that are flatly human and contemporary. the book is both serious and fun, written with an almost conversational voice. she manages to communicate facts of the iraqi predicament that include both the everyday and the bureaucratic, oscillating in tone between ironic detachment and real grief.
The human face of a demonized people
Most journalists in Iraq today, with few important exceptions, remain embedded with the US military, relying on Iraqi reporters who risk their lives to do actual reporting, or simply repackaging the latest press release from inside the Green Zone. Hadani Ditmars is a vital, welcome, exception. In this important book she takes us into the homes and communities of Iraqis from many walks of life to show the feelings, desires, hopes, and thoughts of a people who have been demonized in our media and who have had their lives torn to shreds by an occupying power that actually has contempt for the lives of the people it claims to have liberated.
This is about the real people of Iraq.
This is a fine book. Ditmars took me on a tour of her experiences as a Canadian journalist, culling on 7 years of assignments in Iraq. With the exception of the front page of today's Oregonian, "Life and Death in Baghdad", I have seen nothing else in my reading of the news, and my favorite magazines, that comes close to showing how the everyday life of Iraqis is affected by the occupation, and previous sanctions. Everywhere else I see journalists dealing in abstractions, without a shred of cultural understanding and true compassion. With courage and aplomb,the author is able to use a variety of connections and disguises to connect with artists, musicians, intellectuals, laborers, prison keepers, health care givers, a suspected undercover agent, and even a "king in waiting". She is sensitive also to the women and children of Iraq, in these very trying times. We need more good books and reports about life on the ground in that distressed country.
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