We used to watch executions. I mentioned that in one of my stories. There was a piece of open ground near the area where we lived and we used to play….

We in Iraq have not descended from another planet. Just as people in many other countries have gotten over the tragedy of war, Iraq will get over its….

How can one talk in a classical language about a child who's torn apart in an explosion in the market near his school? People in Iraq don't talk abou….

I studied at the Academy during the years of economic sanctions. Life was almost dead because the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the civilized world we….

I didn't start publishing literary texts until I had left Iraq. At the Academy [of Cinematic Arts] I was busy with short films..

There's no violence worse than the violence of Iraq. For the last fifty years Iraq has been living a nightmare of violence and terror. It's been a ho….

It's ridiculous and painful to use the Arabic of an Iraqi poet who lived centuries ago to describe what we in Iraq are suffering today..

I'm talking about the essence of humanity. Hope is mixed into the blood of every human being, everywhere and in every time..

Whenever we went out to film in the street we would end up in the police station and in the offices of some other security agency. They deliberately ….

Some Iraqi writers are more daring today and have excellent imaginations and their material is rich in human experience. But the Arab prizes, once ag….

When my stories were translated into other languages and received good reviews in the international press and won prizes, some Arab festivals and new….

In art class at school we learned how to draw tanks and soldiers opening fire at [Iranian leader Ayatollah] Khomeini and his beard. They didn't teach….

Migration was not the only unpleasant experience I went though. I was born and lived in a country ruled by a brutal dictator whose wars never ended, ….

I live in a small country in Europe - Finland - and I don't speak English well and I had nothing to do with publishing houses in the West. I lived in….

The trail of "secret migration" was a shock to me. I knew a little about the difficulties, just bits of news in the media..

While I was studying film at the Academy, the problems started. I wasn't a political activist directly in the time of Saddam [Hussein], because the d….

I began writing and became attached to writing at an early age. I began by writing poetry and experimenting with dialogues: modest plays, in other wo….

"Secret migration" across borders is a form of human degradation and evidence of the depravity of the human conscience..

All the children in the world, when they go to school, have the right to study in their mother tongue. But we go to school and run into literary Arab….

For seven years I wrote and published my texts on the Internet and no Arab festival invited me and no Arab publishing house wanted to publish my book….

You learn something from the classics but your feelings and your imagination operate in the domain of the colloquial. We need to think seriously abou….