Salmiya

When this happened I visited Damascus where I got to know an Iraqi professor who was visiting the city too. The shocking pictures induced considerable disturbance, and I have reported on that almost significant emotional event some time ago. President G. W. Bush apologized for the mistreatment of detainees in Abu Ghuraib on May 6, 2004. But that was not well-perceived in the Arab world. Shockingly, the American hostage Nicholas Berg was beheaded one day later by the dastard slayer Abu Musab al-Zarqawi . I remember the horrible video which immediately circulated on the internet. And that I was more or less forced to see it by an Arab colleague who obviously wanted to teach me, the Westerner, a lesson. Zarqawi was killed in a US bombing raid exactly 2 years ago. Berg's assassination added a new, indeed catastrophic, dimension to the war in Iraq. The award winning semi-documentary Standard Operating Procedure by Errol Morris can now be seen in movie theatres throughout Europe. Thi...

Where had I been in late April 2004? I remember (as an almost significant emotional event* ) an afternoon in Damascus. I had invited an Iraqi Professor of Geophysics to my room in the Cham Hotel. I was a tourist, and he had just brought his family with the car from Holland, where he worked, to Baghdad. Right now, he was on his way back to Amsterdam in order to quit his job and then permanently move to Iraq. He had some hope of getting a position at Baghdad University. The stopover in Damascus provided him with the opportunity of visiting some of Islam's holiest places. Dr. Saad had noticed me when entering the Umayyad Mosque, one of the most awesome buildings in the Islamic world. It was my first visit of a mosque ever, and I had been stumbling into the smooth as glass-like courtyard, when I suddenly heard his warning: “Better remove your shoes!” With an apology I did, and when I entered the gorgeous prayer hall itself, I met him again. We chatted, about Kuwait, Iraq, Holland, Germ...