Book review: Baghdad Fixer by Illene Prusher
In the days after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the world's press checked into one Baghdad hotel, the Hamra. Here, you would find the foreign correspondents sitting on plastic chairs, typically glued to satellite phones. The majority spoke no Arabic.
by Ilene Prusher
Halban
It is this Baghdad of 2003 that forms the backdrop to Ilene Prusher's gripping debut thriller. The hero is Nabil al-Amari, an English teacher in the Iraqi capital who begins working as a fixer for Samara Katchens, a US journalist covering the invasion. Fixers were an indispensable part of the western media's war in Iraq, serving as translators cum personal assistants.
Seen through the sensitive, courtly Nabil's eyes, the foreign correspondents seem a self-centred and faintly absurd bunch - obsessed with gadgets, excessively informal, and pretty much oblivious to the religious and cultural sensitivities of the Middle East. Over time, his view of Samara shifts: from diffidence to curiosity to respect, and then to a sort of hopelessly romantic protective love.
Prusher also gives a vivid portrait of Baghdad in the traumatic aftermath of invasion. American bombs have trashed many key government buildings. And then there is automatic gunfire, one quick-fire burst answering another "like the call of birds in the trees".