Note to the Reader from M’s Story

By Laura Waddington

The words contained in this book are almost exactly as M told them (he spoke in Arabic and his wife translated for him). There are no changes to the order of events nor omissions. But the drawings are only from my imagination and can therefore be considered fiction. It is for this reason, and because I didn’t want to lull the reader into believing that I have any more ability than you to picture or depict M’s torture, that I have kept in certain drawings what I realised later were illogical or inaccurate details, for instance the plate from which M ate dust and stones (I lacked the courage to draw anything but a decorative cop-out, stones resembling beans). Meanwhile the guards’ uniforms have no basis in fact.

The murals and interiors are inspired by photos of Saddam Hussein murals that I found on the internet, many of them taken by American soldiers during their occupation of Baghdad or while stationed at the captured military base at Taji. A few are near copies; others are largely from my imagination.

The house with the tree, where M is portrayed sitting at a window, at the beginning of the story, is not where he and his wife and baby daughter lived during their time in Amman, and where he recounted to me his imprisonment. I chose not to depict the location for security reasons. It is, instead, where several other Iraqi refugees whom I came to know during the months that I spent in Amman stayed, and where I listened to and recorded many other testimonies and stories.

I have, to my great regret, not kept my promise to name the men responsible for M’s torture. When M told me his tale, he did not know what had become of them and presumed they might have been killed in the war. After my return to Europe, a man whom I understood to be the officer whom I have called “Commander X of the Republican Guard” began to appear on the public scene. He was living in Amman and being consulted in depth by the American establishment. I watched him interviewed on international television and read him quoted in The New York Times. He was useful, and I had no means of contacting M to ask him what he would like me to do. Amidst the death threats and assassinations that plagued many of the Iraqis whom I encountered, and the concern that M had voiced for the safety of his family remaining in Baghdad, I have erred on the side of caution.

There is no way for you to know if the initial “M” belongs to the person who told me this story.

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