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This is a compelling and excellent true story of one woman’s life and what it was like for her and others to be living in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein regime.
Living under the rule of Saddam Hussein could either be very good for you and your family or to the other extreme. As Hussein’s government was about to be toppled, the country would soon slip into a transition of utter chaos, confusion and dissolution.
Coming from a prominent family, Mayada’s life was far above that of what others may have experienced. She was free to come and go as she pleased. She was able to carry on with her job at a print shop she owned. Mayada was one of the more fortunate women living in Iraq, but her life would soon go through a terrible upheaval, one she could never fathom.
Being that paranoia permeated the country, its government and consuming Saddam himself, people could be imprisoned for the mere rumor or speculation of saying something against the government, especially Hussein. A person’s life could hang by a thin thread for something as simple as a lie. This is what happened to Mayada. So many other innocent people had already been tortured and put to death, would this become her fate as well?
This story details the course of her arrest, for allegedly printing propaganda against the government, to her imprisonment and what she and the 17 other women she shared a small cell with, were soon to endure. She would later give journalist Jean Sasson, an extremely graphic account of the torture she and each woman had to go through at the hands of the barbaric prison guards.
Luckily, after a month of constant torture and degradation, Mayada was released from the confines of the prison and later escaped the country. Some weren’t so fortunate. She befriended the many women she shared a cell with and later tried to locate them or their families, to give them whatever help she could.
Although some entries of this story are graphic and disturbing, it’s important to know what the people of Iraq endured during the reign of Hussein. Only through education and publication to the world, can things ever hope to be changed for the better. Sometimes, living in the free world, we take so much for granted. Our freedoms allow us to come and go as we please and we are able to speak our minds. This story awakens and helps to put our own lives into perspective as well. A 5 out of 5 stars!