Shahrazad - Stories for life

Translator and writer, Basim Mardan, was a young librarian at the university in Mosul when the Americans invaded Iraq. A former student of English and linguistics, he was one of the first to celebrate the end of Saddam Hussein's psychopathic regime. He took a job as a translator for the US Marines, full of hope that he and his friends could help to construct a free and democratic Iraq.

Hope was quickly extinguished. The library at Mosul University was torched. He was branded a traitor. His family was terrorised. The CD of a friend being decapitated was left on his doorstep and he received death threats every day. Every household in Iraq was invaded by fear and Mardan went into hiding. His wife gave birth to a son and he returned to Mosul to work for a students' rights organization, until a close colleague was murdered. This time he left Iraq, finding safety for his wife and his child through Kjell Olaf Jensen, President of International PEN in Norway.

The Dance

By Basim Mardan

I was sitting in my usual corner in the bar, wasting my moments, trying to rediscover my world again, this time through the bottom of my glass of beer. People around me did not exist, and the music echoed as if it was coming from a distant place. The sounds were very vague, very unclear and completely meaningless, Not only because they were spoken in a language that I know very little about, but also because of this state of mind that I sometimes get. When all my senses are not in any way functioning, and there appears this wall that blocks my brain from receiving any sign from the rest of me or from whatever that's around me, you can cut me with a knife and I will not feel a damn thing.