Book review of book by Leila Nadir

     The Orange Trees of Baghdad; In Search of My Lost Family: A Memoir by Leila Nadir


       Leila Nadir is one of hundreds of thousands of people from other countries who've ended up in Metro Vancouver. In her fine memoir The Orange Tree of Baghdad she tells the story of modern day Iraq through the words of her extended family. For Nadir has never been to Iraq though her father Ibrahim was born there.
     "I feel Iraq in my bones though I have never been there," she writes. "I haven't smelled jasmine or orange blossoms scenting a Baghdad night."
    But her relations have lived in Iraq and they tell the country's story through their lives. In parts of the book they speak of the horrific violence unleashed by revolutionaries, Saddam Hussein's brutal police and army, ferocious American invaders and Sunni and Shiite militants. It seems clear from their lives that the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq has destroyed large parts of the country, though the Kurdish northern region  may have been spared most of the destruction.
    Nadir also also writes about her many relations and above all her father. He left Iraq at the age of 16 in 1960 and never returned . "We've always had war and invasion in Iraq," he tells his daughter near the book's end. One man who went back to Iraq told Leila's father, "Never go back. Just forget Iraq. Forget it."
    So Leila Nadir may never see the orange trees that perhaps grew in the backyard of her father's house. But she recalls them here to tell us a frightening story about her family and the fate of Iraq.