An Iraqi voice for freedom silenced only by his death

Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace

Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq

Michael Goldfarb

Carroll & Graf: 354 pp., $25.95

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AHMAD SHAWKAT had run afoul of Saddam Hussein’s regime countless times yet he held out hope that his country would one day be free. The university professor augmented his classroom teachings with evening salons where he subtly encouraged students to think critically, to learn about democracy, to use their minds to analyze their lives and to be ready to govern when the glorious day of Hussein’s ouster arrived. His poetry and short stories, some with veiled derogatory references to Hussein, got Ahmad arrested and tortured repeatedly.

By the time National Public Radio correspondent Michael Goldfarb met the 52-year-old Iraqi, who was the reporter’s translator during coverage of “major combat operations” in Iraq, Ahmad had been stripped of his livelihood. “This was the regime’s worst torture, deeper than any pain he had suffered before. His entire identity was bound up in his teaching,” Goldfarb writes in “Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace.”

When they meet, Ahmad is living in a kind of exile in the Kurdish region of Erbil, waiting for Hussein’s removal so that he can return to his home in Mosul and again encourage free thought. Through the initial days of the war, Ahmad’s glee and excitement build with every passing hour. When Baghdad and Kirkuk are captured, and Hussein’s regime in Mosul evaporates “in the middle of the night,” it’s safe for Ahmad to go home. The two men journey to Mosul, finding little more than destruction and neglect.

Goldfarb offers a moving, forceful account of Ahmad’s life under the dictator’s thumb. He tells of his own experience with Ahmad as war comes to Iraq and, finally, of the tragic consequences that arise from Ahmad’s desire to set his people on the path to democracy.

When Goldfarb returns to London, where he is NPR’s bureau chief, Ahmad knows he has his work cut out for him as a grass-roots activist. The two men, who have formed a friendship neither expected, one based on mutual respect and admiration, bid each other farewell.

Ahmad moves back to Mosul and works ceaselessly to educate the Iraqi citizenry. He is surprised at every turn by how habituated his compatriots have become to the dictator’s rule and how unwilling they are to do things differently. “In planning for the war, in waiting for the war, what no one understood on either the American side or the Iraqi side was how profoundly a quarter of a century of living under Saddam had affected people,” Goldfarb explains. “The United States had destroyed Saddam’s regime on the streets of Iraq. But in people’s inner places -- their hearts, minds, and souls -- the dictator’s rule still existed.” And in trying to reform his people’s thinking, Ahmad earns one too many enemies and is murdered.

Upon learning of his colleague’s death, Goldfarb returns to Iraq, and with the help of Ahmad’s journalist daughter, Roaa, he tries to piece together the factors that shaped -- and eventually put an end to -- an extraordinary life. The resulting narrative is a poignant account not only of the man’s life and death, but of an astonishing midlife friendship formed between the author and the Iraqi. Though both men have come to maturity under vastly different circumstances, they have more in common than they initially realize and develop a deep bond.

“Ahmad’s War” also looks at the way education and the ability to think for oneself is a powerful, often threatening tool, especially to those in power. Ultimately, the book is a stirring tribute to a man who wanted the best for his people and worked tirelessly to those ends, and a poignant reminder, in the midst of this never-ending war, of the shared humanity that binds us together.

Whether one supports or opposes the war, Goldfarb’s book helps explain, at a person-to-person level, what is transpiring in Iraq and why.

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Bernadette Murphy is a regular contributor to Book Review and the author of “Zen and the Art of Knitting.”