Berlin
The day after Baghdad fell I was ordering coffee with a friend at Starbucks in Berlin. He is a freelance journalist and hails from Basra. His wife still has family in Iraq. When we mentioned to the young woman on the other side of the counter that we were celebrating developments, she looked a tad horrified. Najem had already told me about the neighbor who had knocked on his door to offer condolences. He and his wife, Inaam, had said that yes, they were afraid for their relatives because of the fighting in Baghdad—but they were elated that the American liberators had finally arrived. This provoked a lecture about an “illegal war of aggression.”
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