Jonathan Mirsky

Our women at the front

issue 07 April 2007

In the horror that is the Iraq war reporters usually broadcast from the safety of the vast Green Zone where Coalition civilians eat, sleep, make policy and issue statements. What we see on television are pictures taken by non-white photographers; the face-to-camera commentary usually comes from within the Zone. We can only surmise what life is like for Iraqis and along with the guessing there creeps in an I-don’t-want-to see-anymore fatigue.

Now comes Lynne O’Donnell who, as Joseph Conrad insisted about good writing, above all makes us see. A foreign correspondent with considerable experience in China, she now works for Agence France-Presse in Hong Kong. In 2003 O’Donnell found herself in the northern city of Mosul a few weeks after the American invasion of Iraq. There she met two English women, married to Iraqis, who had lived in Iraq for about 28 years.

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