Exploiting women, harassing them, pushing them into prostitution and leaving them to sleep near toilets so they suffer from encroaching diseases. What is happening to women in Iraqi prisons?
In Iraq, bats are known as Saḥayyir Al-Layl - “The one that stays up at night”. Long misunderstood and often viewed as ill-omened creatures that are the harbingers of bad luck. At dusk, when bats would appear in the sky, mothers would call their children inside, warning them that a bat might cling on to their face. Yet how much of this fear is rooted in reality? And where did the bats go?
Without my father, I would always be seen as a minor in the eyes of a state that officially recognises me as being in the first quarter of my twenties. Even though I am an adult. My eligibility is also questioned whenever the question that never leaves me is asked: Why are you here alone?
From golden toilets to the taste of candy and even to love, Iraqis are cursed with memories of Saddam Hussein and his regime. We delve through those memories, with writers from across different generations, to uncover the implications and the horrors of the Ba’ath regime.
