The Baghdad Blues

These poems convey the sense of shock and horror at the human cruelty and waste of war in Iraq.

Meet Sergeant Mario Alvarado and his squad. When they signed up, each of them knew that active-duty military service in Iraq would push them to their physical, mental, and emotional limits. What they didn't count on was having their mettle tested again when they came home. When the sergeant meets embedded reporter Dana Jensen, he falls for her almost immediately. But in the chaos and confusion of life in war-torn Baghdad, they lose touch until their paths cross again in Washington, DC. Privates Jake Nevitzky and David Jonson, boyhood friends, deploy to Iraq for two tours together. But when they return home, the heroes' welcome they expected is threatened by family problems and haunting memories of their time in the desert. Private Shana Fenton is a woman who must learn how to be one of the guys in the squad. She serves with valor and honor-but will she go unrecognized because of her gender? Baghdad Blues is a sweeping story of the toll war takes on the men and women who have served in Iraq-and the unexpected challenges and triumphs they experience once reunited with their family, friends, and country.

"Casemate has a long history of publishing high quality military history non-fiction. Lately, they have expanded their range of work to include well written novels using wartime settings." – WWII History MagazinePatrolling the dusty and deadly roads of south-west Baghdad, a young US soldier and his comrades face IEDs and ambushes on a near-daily basis, but the longer he is in Baghdad, the more he begins to question where to look for the real enemy. Patrolling the deadly roads of south-west Baghdad, a young US soldier and his comrades face IEDs and ambushes on a near-daily basis, but the longer he is in Baghdad, the more he begins to question where to look for the real enemy. At a dusty intersection in Baghdad, Sergeant Thomas Kirkland is seconds away from unleashing a hail of bullets on a possible suicide bomber when he's stopped by the unexpected—the piercing dark eyes of a young girl sitting on her mother's lap in the passenger seat. For a split second he'd held the life of this child and her family in his hands. Plagued by fear and anxiety, Sergeant K struggles with his own inner demons as he confronts a population around him that wishes him dead. But he confronts more than just an external enemy, as he discovers the darkness that exists not just within himself, but in his fellow soldiers. A starkly honest and gut-wrenching account of the Iraq war from the perspective of an infantry soldier patrolling the dusty and lethal roads of south-west Baghdad. The threat of IEDs and ambushes are ever-present, but as Sergeant K and his comrades soon learn, modern war can take many shapes and forms. Grappling with a myriad of emotions—fear, anger, confusion, and anxiety—they face many external threats, but they begin to discover that the enemy within themselves can often be more challenging and dangerous than the one they were sent to fight.

Patrolling the dusty and deadly roads of South-West Baghdad, Thomas Kierkegaard and his comrades face IEDs and ambushes, but increasingly wonder where the real enemy is.

"Turnley's tour of duty in the Middle East began this time in February 2003, when CNN sent him there to generate video, photography, and on-air reportage. Operating independent of American troops, he was first smuggled across the heavily guarded Turkish border into Syria and then guided by Kurdish peshmergas through Tigris River marshes into northern Iraq, where Kurdish irregulars and American special forces faced Iraqi regiments. Turnley traversed the Kurdish war zones to encounter a string of increasingly hostile Sunni-dominated towns and arrived to witness the fall of Baghdad.".

Baghdad: The City in Verse captures the essence of life lived in one of the world’s great enduring metropolises. In this unusual anthology, Reuven Snir offers original translations of more than 170 Arabic poems—most of them appearing for the first time in English—which represent a cross-section of genres and styles from the time of Baghdad’s founding in the eighth century to the present day. The diversity of the fabled city is reflected in the Bedouin, Muslim, Christian, Kurdish, and Jewish poets featured here, including writers of great renown and others whose work has survived but whose names are lost to history. Through the prism of these poems, readers glimpse many different Baghdads: the city built on ancient Sumerian ruins, the epicenter of Arab culture and Islam’s Golden Age under the enlightened rule of Harun al-Rashid, the bombed-out capital of Saddam Hussein’s fallen regime, the American occupation, and life in a new but unstable Iraq. With poets as our guides, we visit bazaars, gardens, wine parties, love scenes (worldly and mystical), brothels, prisons, and palaces. Startling contrasts emerge as the day-to-day cacophony of urban life is juxtaposed with eternal cycles of the Tigris, and hellish winds, mosquitoes, rain, floods, snow, and earthquakes are accompanied by somber reflections on invasions and other catastrophes. Documenting the city’s 1,250-year history, Baghdad: The City in Verse shows why poetry has been aptly called the public register of the Arabs.