Fouad Ajami has written a lyrical contemporary history of Iraq that is stunning in its literary sensibility and powerful in its portrait of a fascinating country - a divided land of compelling cultures, numerous religions, and wondrous beauty. Interweaving Iraq's recent story of dictatorship and wars with its history, both ancient and contemporary, Ajami, with an innate poetic temperament, portrays a country whose history has been consumed by pan-Arabism and oppression and whose future hangs in the balance.
It is Ajami's fervent belief that the troubles in the Arab would revolve around two basic factors: first, America's limited understanding of the region, desperate need for oil, and even more desperate need to deal with terrorism; and second, the stranglehold that pan-Arabic thought has on the region. If not harnessed and handled thoughtfully, these force, Ajami believes, could lead to further suppression of thought and impediments to peace and progress. A solution will come only though a deep understanding of the country's history and people.
Ajami delves beneath the familiar picture of Iraq - a land where sectarianism clashes with fundamentalism, modernity with tradition, democracy with nationalism - to get at the underlying truths of real Iraqi's lives and desires, and thereby at the real forces at work in Iraq every day. From Baathist insurgents, Shia clerics, and American soldiers to Kurdish politicians and poets, Iraqi policemen, and ordinary women voting for the first time in their lives, Ajami visits with the breadth of Iraq's populace and gives us a profound portrait of Iraq today, how it got here, and where it might be going. In Iraq's endless variety, Ajami sees the possibility for a harmonious, diverse, fluid society, or for an acrimonious, war-torn place stunted by power struggles.
Ajami, considered the leading thinker on the Arab world today, has written an illuminating appeal that the world allows Iraq to be Iraq: not a puppet state for America, and not another Middle Eastern country guided by a pan-Arab philosophy. By writing this marvelous story of a people, a land, and a nation rich in history and culture, Ajami offers a vision of a different future for Iraq - one of promise, prosperity, and true freedom The fascinating blend of current events and history add a spectacular depth to the book and afford a picture of where the new Iraq will wind up if it stays on its current course.
