Baghdad Sketches: Journeys Through Iraq

Freya Stark first journeyed to Iraq in 1927. Seven years after the establishment of the British Mandate, the modern state was in its infancy and worlds apart from the country it has since become. During her many years in Iraq, Stark was witness to the rise and fall of the British involvement in the country as well as the early years of independence. Typically├óΓג¼Γא¥and controversially├óΓג¼Γא¥she chose to live outside the close-knit western expatriate scene and immersed herself in the way of life of ordinary Iraqis├óΓג¼Γא¥living in the ├óΓג¼┼ףnative├óΓג¼┬¥ quarter of the city and spending time with its tribal sheikhs and leaders. Venturing out of Baghdad, she traveled to Mosul, Nineveh, Tikrit and Najaf, where she perceptively describes the millennia-old tensions between Sunni and Shi'a. In the 1940s she returned again, this time traveling south, to the Marsh Arabs, whose way of life has now all but disappeared; north into Kurdistan and later, Kuwait, in the days before the oil boom.