Stories
Returning to Baghdad: A mother, a daughter, and the weight of a thirty-year absence
My mum left Baghdad in 1995. Born in 1969, she came of age under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, living through the Iran–Iraq War, the invasion of Kuwait, and the first Gulf War. When she was proposed to, she left in search of stability — a life she couldn’t imagine finding at home. She never returned. Three decades later, we boarded a plane to Baghdad together in October 2025.
