Books

Sisters in War

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A new book profiles an Iraqi family’s experience of the war in Iraq, from their great optimism in 2003 to the despair and horror of the civil war years. Anchor Katy Clark talks with author, Christina Asquith, who shared their lives in Baghdad for many years.

Listen to Zia and Nunu and how they feel about the war, and America:

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• Book information
• Christina Asquith’s website

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark. This is The World. Countless books have been written about Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003. Most are memoirs from US soldiers and officials, military histories, and policy studies. Very few have focused on the views of ordinary Iraqis. A new book by Christina Asquith does just that. It’s called Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq. It tells the story of one Iraqi family and the Americans who befriended them. Christina Asquith met the family shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and even lived with them for some time. She’s with us now. Christina welcome.

CHRISTINA ASQUITH: Thank you. Glad to be here.

CLARK: The two central characters here are the sisters Nunu and Zia. And you do such a great job of introducing us to them in the opening lines of the book. I’d like you to just begin by reading the beginning.

ASQUITH: Sure. When the sisters heard the roar of US military planes overhead they clamored up the wooden steps onto the roof of their uncle’s mud-brick farmhouse. “Maybe they can see us,” cried Nunu happily. She shouted to the sky for once not caring who heard. “Go. Good luck. But don’t kill any innocent people.” Zia laughed with her glad to have something at last to celebrate. The Americans were here to free them from Saddam. She watched her little sister waving at the distant black specs, skipping over the mud and straw in her fancy shoes. A few days ago Nunu had overheard on her shortwave radio that American troops were marching through Iraqi villages going door to door and ever since then she had been getting up an extra hour early in the morning just to do her hair and makeup. So far no war heroes had shown up. But it was so good to see Nunu happy that Zia hadn’t even teased her for it. They could feel the electricity in the air. After years of oppression, the government was about to be overthrown and Iraq would be free – a freedom they had only ever known through their mother’s stories of Iraq’s glorious past.

CLARK: How did you meet Zia and Nunu? And how did you happen to come to live with them for a while?

ASQUITH: I met them just at the start of the war. I was doing a story on Saddam’s daughters and I was looking for Iraqi women to interview. And I went into the Saddam’s palace which at that point was occupied by the US administration. Zia had volunteered to work for them about a month earlier. Incredibly brave thing for a young Iraqi woman to do. And I started to ask her … . When I interviewed her about Iraqi women’s lives under Saddam I could just see that she was incredibly bright and incredibly hopeful and idealistic in my opinion for what the Americans were going to be able to do in Iraq. And we just became friends. She had me over for dinner and I met her family and over the course of the year through my friendship with her I realized what an incredible story was happening and how very much the effects of the war of Iraqi people were being reflected in the experiences that she was having. So I asked her and her family if I could follow their lives and write a book about them.

CLARK: And Zia, the older sister, the older of the two Iraqi sisters, she’s the more adventurous one and she as you say is the one who went and worked with the Americans in the green zone. And she really risked her life doing that. Just tell us a little bit about the attempt on her life when the big car chase.

ASQUITH: Okay. Well you know I call Zia my suffer [PH] jet because she very much was trying to break all the rules for Iraqi women by going to work for the Americans and helping the Americans build democracy and stability post Saddam. Zia was coming out of her job in the green zone in the palace one afternoon. And her father picked her up at the gate. And she you know ran to the car very much aware that she could be targeted by an insurgent waiting outside the security gates.

CLARK: She had been warned that people were looking for her.

ASQUITH: Oh not only warned.

CLARK: She was on a hit list.

ASQUITH: I mean others had been killed that she knew in exactly this way. And so she gets in the car and she realizes after a few minutes that she’s being followed and you know they try and lose the guy but he follows them all over the city and she ends up gong back to the US base and leaping out of the car and running towards the base as the man gets out behind her with an enormous machete. And he’s you know definitely going to kill her and her father too. And she survives of course but it’s later revealed that he was going to follow her home and kill her whole family. This happened countless times in Iraq. In fact the woman who replaced Zia in her job was gunned down in front of her home.

CLARK: I found it interesting, we’re looking back now obviously with hindsight as to the events that happened in Iraq, the events that you’re talking about, and so much even the opening lines that you read are so optimistic and there’s always this foreshadowing of we know what’s to come. I mean did you find yourself sort of having to hold back a little bit because you wanted to present the happy optimism that Iraqis felt.

ASQUITH: Yeah well I think they were optimistic for a long time. Then we went through a very dark period in 2005 to 2008. And the question for me now is are we coming out of that? And I think Zia and Nunu and a lot of Iraqi women are wondering the same thing. Should they be optimistic? Are we seeing the embryonic stages of democracy now flourishing in Iraq. We have elections coming up, women represent now 25% of the parliament in Iraq, and moderate parties are returning to popularity after a couple periods were Islamic parties were much more popular. So I’m cautiously optimistic for the future of Iraq and that’s how I end the book – is kind of hoping that things will work out for women. And I think we still even now have to wait and see how it’s going to go.

CLARK: Christina Asquith, author of Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq. Thanks for stopping by.

ASQUITH: Thank you so much.

CLARK: And there’s more about where Zia and Nunu are now and how they feel about the war and America at The World dot org.

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