High Tea in Mosul: The True Story of Two Englishwomen in War-torn Iraq - Softcover

This fine book, gracefully written, helps humanize the war in Iraq, Too often that horrific conflict can become so overwhelmingly grimy as to seem abstract. High Tea in Mosul helps bring that story down to earth. Lynne O Donnell's story of two Englishwomen married to Iraqi men offers an extraordinary insight into life under Saddam and the sheer terror of life in the country today. It is also chronicles two remarkable tales of travel across a deep cultural divide to create stable, loyal marriages. Should be read by everyone who wants to get past the angry rhetoric about the war to a deeper understanding of the human beings caught up in it. - Michael Goldfarb, author of Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq --Christian Parenti, author of The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq

Lynne O'Donnell is a fine writer and a brave woman. She has a powerful story to tell. --Roger Alton, Editor, The Observer

An excellent, insightful work that demonstrates how much was lost in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and a powerful examination of the suffering endured by the people who live there. --Con Coughlin, author of Saddam: His Rise and Fall

In April 2003, as war in Iraq was reaching its climax, Lynne O'Donnell was among the first Western journalists into the northern city of Mosul.At the city's hospital, the senior heart surgeon introduced her to his wife - Pauline Basheer, a middle-aged mother-of-two from Lancashire who has lived in Iraq for almost 30 years. Whilst having tea, they were joined by Pauline's friend, another Englishwoman who arrived in Iraq in the mid-70s, crossing the border from Turkey with her husband, Zahir, whom she met as a student at Newcastle University. This book tells the extraordinary and emotional story of two Englishwomen, who married Iraqi men they met in Britain and accompanied home to Mosul. There, they assimilated, learned Arabic, raised families and lived within traditional Iraqi family structures. But they also endured the rigors of Saddam's regime: food rationing, thought police, anti-Western discrimination, and almost constant war. As well as revealing life in Iraq as never before, their stories tell an extraordinary personal journey.