Mayada, Daughter of Iraq: One Woman's Survival Under Saddam Hussein FROM OUR EDITORS
Mayada Al-Askari is a true daughter of Iraq. This self-reliant print shop owner traced her heritage to one of the most distinguished and honored families in the country. One grandfather fought alongside Lawrence of Arabia; the other is recognized as the first true Arab nationalist, publicly admired by even Saddam Hussein. Mayada's uncle was Iraq's prime minister for nearly 40 years; her mother, a high government official. Yet all her venerated forebears could not guard her from the tyranny of Saddam's system. In 1999, she was seized without warning and thrown into a tiny cell in Baghdad's notorious Baladiyat Prison, which she shared with 17 equally unlucky "shadow women." This book records her courageous story and theirs.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Jean Sasson, author of the international bestseller Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia, met Mayada Al-Askari on a trip to Baghdad in 1998. A year later, Jean learned that Mayada had been arrested and thrown into Iraq's Baladiyat Prison -- headquarters of Saddam Hussein's secret police.
Mayada's story, both past and present, is truly incredible. Her family was one of the most distinguished and honored families in Iraq. One grandfather fought alongside Lawrence of Arabia. The other was the first true Arab nationalist (admired greatly by Saddam Hussein). Her uncle was prime minister of Iraq for nearly forty years; her mother an important government official. In her youth. Mayada vacationed with Iraqi royalty. When Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party seized power in 1979, Mayada didn't foresee the devastation it would wreak upon her life and her beloved country. But she soon found herself alone, a divorced mother of two, earning a meager living printing brochures. She had no idea that she could ever become a target of Saddam's secret police ... until one nightmarish day in 1999. At Baladiyat, Mayada was thrown into cell 52 with seventeen other women -- nameless and faceless, from all sorts of backgrounds -- whose only shared connection was imprisonment without trial and the ever-present threat of torture and execution. To shut out the screams of other prisoners and to forget their fears, the "shadow women" passed each day by sharing their life stories. Mayada fascinated her cellmates with tales of her prominent family and of her own meetings with Saddam Hussein and Chemical Ali. Mayada has longed to share her story, but not until recent events was she able to speak out. Now, in Mayada, Daughter of Iraq, the searing and poignant story of one woman and her will to survive under the regime of Saddam Hussein comes to life. The names of the shadow women are still scrawled in charcoal onto the wall of cell 52 in the hopes that one day one of them would make it out to tell others of their existence. This is Mayada's courageous story, but also that of her sisters.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
When author Sasson (Esther's Child; Princess Sultana's Circle; etc.) was assigned Mayada Al-Askari as a translator on a 1998 trip to Baghdad, she had no idea she would form a lasting friendship with this fluent English-speaker and member of a prominent Iraqi family. When Sasson returned to the United States, the two women wrote letters and telephoned each other weekly until, in 1999, Mayada was arrested by Saddam Hussein's secret police for allegedly printing anti-regime pamphlets in her Baghdad print shop and imprisoned for nearly a month in Iraq's brutal Baladiyat Prison. Sasson's candid, straightforward account of Mayada's time among the 17 "shadow women" crammed into Cell 52 gives readers a glimpse of the cruelty and hardship endured by generations of Iraqis. Mayada stares down this ugliness as soon as she's yanked from her meticulously run shop into the prison's interrogation room: "She saw chairs with bindings, tables stacked high with various instruments of torture.... But the most frightening pieces of... equipment were the various hooks that dangled from the ceiling. When Mayada glanced to the floor beneath those hooks, she saw splashes of fresh blood, which she supposed were left over from the torture sessions she had heard during the night." Sasson's graceful handling of such stomach-turning material, including an overview of Iraq's political and social turmoil, is a tribute to her friend, who escaped to Jordan with her children soon after her release from prison. Although Mayada's story has a happy ending, the unclear fates of her cell mates serve as a painful reminder of how many innocent lives were cut short by Hussein's regime. (On sale Oct. 20) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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