Rating  - Creation of a Terrorist
Mohammed Moulessehoul, who writes as Yasmina Khadra, is a former officer of the Algerian army, an army that for the better part of the last two decades has primarily involved itself with fighting several well organized terrorist organizations within Algeria's borders. Some critics, including many Algerians, have accused the army of being as bad as the terrorists it professes to fight, labeling it little more than the government's own band of terrorists. Whatever the case may be, Khadra's experience certainly places him in the position to offer insights into the minds of those who dedicate their lives to the destruction of the West and everything for which it stands.
The Sirens of Baghdad, originally published in France, is the story one young Iraqi university student (the book's narrator) who is almost accidentally transformed overnight from a peacefully ambitious young man seeking to honor his family by his educational achievements into a human weapon of mass destruction. When the American invasion of Iraq reached Baghdad, this nameless student was forced to return to his remote desert village, Kafr Karam, to wait for a time that would allow him to return to his studies. His home is so remotely located that for a time he and the rest of those in the village were hardly touched by the war being waged in their country.
But, of course, time would bring the war even to a village as remote as his, and direct contact with the violence of war turned him into someone convinced that there was only one worthy goal left to him in his lifetime: revenge on the people who destroyed his way of life and, most importantly, dishonored his family in perhaps the worst way imaginable to an Iraqi Bedouin like him.
First he was stunned to witness the shooting of a retarded villager by American troops who mistakenly believed the man to be trying to escape from them at a roadblock. Only a few days later, even before he could recover from the shock of that death, an American missile struck a nearby wedding celebration, killing a number of women and children. But those events alone were not enough to turn him from student to avowed terrorist.
He reached his own personal tipping point when American troops searched his home and, in the process, almost inadvertently managed to dishonor and disgrace his family by the way they treated his father. The former student knew that revenge for a disgrace of this magnitude required blood to be spilled, and he immediately walked out of his village and made his way back to Baghdad so that he could spill as much American blood as possible.
As the narrator tries to connect with terrorist organizers who can use his willingness to die for the cause to their advantage, The Sirens of Baghdad describes life in occupied Baghdad through the eyes of others like him, men and women whose only purpose in life has become to maim and kill as many Westerners as possible before they die in the effort. What Khadra describes is a vivid portrayal of the dangers, intrigues and frustrations faced by American and Iraqi soldiers and those working with them to stabilize the country.
Although Yasmina Khadra does not attempt to justify what either side in Iraq is doing, he does tell his story only from the Iraqi point-of-view despite occasionally pointing out that American soldiers often insult Iraqi customs and cultural expectations more from ignorance of the culture than from spite or anger. Books like this one offer Western readers a rare opportunity to get inside the heads of those who live only to see our culture destroyed and, despite its relatively weak ending, this is a book that has much to offer to anyone struggling to understand the mindset of those so willing to blow themselves up simply to take a few Westerners with them.
Rating  - Powerful, Frightening and Enlightening
I read this book in French, having bought it in Europe, where it is prominently displayed in bookshops. I found it to be a frighteningly realistic portrayal of the life of ordinary Iraqis since the beginning of U.S. military involvement in Iraq. It really helps illuminate how anti-American feeling has been generated, through the description of the transformation of an ordinary man into a terrorist.
What struck me most of all about the book was the multiplicity of voices. These include the fanatical, militant terrorists who wish to assert Middle Eastern supremacy while destroying the West; the Bedouin woman who has left her village to become a doctor in Baghdad, and supports most of her relatives financially; her brother, who rejects her when he discovers she is living, unmarried, with a man; and the hero's friend, who tries to turn him away from the path leading to terrorism by reminding him that not all of the West is anti-Islamic, as exemplified by the popular demonstrations across the world in support of the Iraqis when the U.S. had announced its decision to invade. This is a truly excellent book that deserves to be read by everyone.
Rating - "A Thousand Times More Awesome Than the Attacks of September 11"
Yasmin Khadra (a female pseudonym for Mohammed Moulessehoul) in his novel THE SIRENS OF BAGHDAD takes the reader inside the head of a young unnamed first-person narrator who has been recruited for a secret mission, the nature of which he himself does not know when the story begins when he has just arrived in Beirut to carry out the mission: "All I know is, what's been planned will be the greatest operation ever carried out on enemy territory, a thousand times more awesome than the attacks of September 11. . . ." The rest of this chilling novel covers the events in this young man's life that get him to this appointment with destiny.
The narrator was a humanities student who had to leave the University of Baghdad when the American forces invaded Iraq and return to his home in the remote village of Kafr Karam. Gentle and nonviolent by nature, he lives a relatively quiet life with his sisters and aging parents. "I had nothing to complain about in my parents' house. I could be satisfied with little. I lived on the roof, in a remodeled laundry room." Although he had no television, he listened to a "tinny radio." Then three events occur that make the narrator willing to do anything to get vengence against the American soldiers whom one character describes as shooting first and verifying later. He witnesses the killing of a retarded youth about his age by American soldiers at a checkpoint when he starts running away. The Americans mistakenly believe he might be carrying explosives. Then an American plane drops a missle on a wedding party. Finally soldiers break into the home of the narrator's family looking for terrorists and commit an atrocity that "a Westerner can't undertand," as the family is disgraced.
The young narrator returns to Baghdad, a man on a monomaniacal mission, where he encounters more violence and ignorance from all sides, betrayal and where his views clash with that of his friend Omar who tells him: "No one owns the truth." Although certainly most Westerners will disagree vehemently with most of the young narrator's conclusions, this novel is instructive as to the hopelessness and rage that can blind someone who has experienced what the narrator has and turn him into an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist.
To call this novel unsettling would be a gross understatement. It is frightening beyond measure. We have to ask ourselves (without revealing more of the plot) if the narrator's mission is possible. We can no longer call novels like this science fiction. It should be read with another finely-written, nuanced novel, THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST.
Rating - Good Read!!
a sensitive book that shows that good does prevail! Takes you into the mind of a suicide bomber/attacker... the author does try to portray views of both sides of the war... ending could have been a little more detailed..
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