Reminding the Americans of the price of their foreign policy and the consequences of their involvement in Iraq is one of the main aims of writing The Pavement of the Murdered Ones. Ibrahim El-Masri is not only a career journalist with well over 20 years of experience as a television newsman. Ibraim is a renowned poet, novelist and writer with nearly 20 books to his name, and this edition in English of his book ‘The Pavement of the Murdered Ones: An Arab Journalist's Observations in Iraq' which came out a few weeks ago in Los Angeles, should therefore receive a well-earned attention as it combines all the merits of Ibrahim's abilities, knowledge, experience and talents. The book's material, or as the title calls it ‘observations', were gathered during two lengthy assignments that took the author to Iraq in 2003 and 2004. In his introduction, the author states that his targeted readers are not only Arabs but more importantly Americans in general and decision makers in particular. Ibrahim writes: "As I watched Americans protest the war in Iraq and read the public opinion polls and heard the debates in the United States Congress, I felt they lacked a necessary understanding of the perspective of the other—the perspective of those of us who live in the region that America and its military invaded either in its search for weapons of mass destruction or in its mission to spread democracy. I mean, of course, Iraq." In thirty chapters spread over 242 pages, the author detects in such a profound and poetic language much of what is still evident in Iraq ten years after the initial sighting was made. The cycle of terror tops the list of what is yet to become a part of ordinary Iraqis' daily life. Under the title of ‘The Efficacy of Car Bombs' writes Ibrahim: "It was a quarter till nine in the morning in Baghdad when suddenly a dry and howling voice twisted through the streets, followed by the sound of several explosions and then a total silence. From the window of the office where I worked, I saw the plume of smoke rise like a hateful black mushroom. I had been talking to a young Iraqi lady who worked as coordinator at the office when the explosions went off, and she froze on the spot, her face cringing with a look of horror. "A car bombing," she said. Every Iraqi working in the office said the same thing. The tragedy had bestowed on them the expertise to discern the difference between the sound of a car bomb and the sound of rockets and time bombs. An Iraqi commented on the July 14th bombing which occurred at the entrance to the Green Zone, saying, "This isn't jihad. Those who call this jihad are only fooling themselves—I mean, not a single American was hurt, and the only people hurt were Iraqis. I swear to God, this is not jihad, they are waging jihad against the Iraqi people! They want to exterminate the Iraqi people!" Ibrahim El-Masri draws heavily on the art of television news reporting especially the ‘story-telling style' which he mastered over the years, hence the many specific individual characters through which he builds up our consciousness towards the events in Iraq. Characters like ‘Jawad al-Shammari's Hideout', ‘ Zaynab's Story', or ‘The Kurd Who Climbed up the Mountain' all as significant to the overall picture as they are unique. Next to the uniqueness of characters is the diversity of the settings where their actions and drama and take place. From Baghdad to Al-Basra, and from Al-Ahwar to Karbala'a and Solaymaneyya the book moves to depict the human tragedies. This geographic endeavour combined with poetic-sharp visions and insights won the book, in its Arabic first edition in 2006, the Ibn Battuta Award for travel writing, which is sponsored by the Arab Center for Geographical Literature's Exploring the Horizons Project. Reminding the Americans of the price of their foreign policy and the consequences of their involvement is one of the main aims of writing such book. "Whether they support their nation's war in Iraq or not, Americans should always remember that their nation, whatever its intentions or interests, is directly responsible for much of the proportion of peace and war there is in the world. Many of the wars, conflicts, and disputes that rage in many countries are the consequences of the actions of the United States." Is ‘The Pavement of The Murdered Ones' then an anti-American book? Not the least. The final chapter of the book carries the title ‘Peace Be upon You' and is dedicated to Nicholas Berg, the American Jewish young man who was slaughtered by Al-Qaeda's fearsome terrorist Abu Musa'ab Al-Zarkawi in 2004. If the book carries any condemnation, it is to terrorists and to those who create them. "Those murderers know nothing of the religion they hide behind. Were you corrupting the land with the innocent dreams that brought you to us? We see you, the image of slaughtered dreams, before the glint of a killer's knife under the dim lights. Oh Nick Berg, peace be upon you. Peace be upon you the day you were born, the day you were slaughtered, and the day you are resurrected."
