REUTERS/ Feature:
Iraqi author portrays “black rain” of war/ by Claudia Parsons / Manama-Bahrain/ 9/2/2003

Iraqi novelist Betool Khedairi watched the last Gulf War in London through the eyes of the Western media and letters from Baghdad that described "an unending chaos of fear, terror, and darkness".
"I was devastated because my family was inside and I was outside, seeing the darkness and the balls of fire and my country being destroyed. We were just paralysed," said Khedairi after a reading passages from her book "A Sky So Close".

The novel is the story of a girl born in Iraq of an Iraqi father and British mother. The author says it gives "a glimpse of how the Western eye looks at an issue and how the Eastern eye looks at the same issue".

Interest in the book, in which the main character experiences the Iran-Iraq war living in Baghdad and then the 1991 Gulf War from the distance of London, has risen amid the prospect of another U.S.-led war against Iraq.
"In the past six months I've noticed that people are interested in the East-West theme. They are genuinely interested in having an insight into the Iraqi culture and the Iraqi human being, not only the Iraq of the newspapers," said Khedairi after a book reading in the Gulf state of Bahrain.

Passages from the novel are eerily familiar from the present day as Washington threatens to launch another war against Iraq over its alleged weapons of mass destruction. At one point the main character sits in a cafe reading newspaper headlines that say: "Final deadline approaches" and "Proposals for Negotiation, and Failure of Negotiation". She attends peace rallies as the United States builds up a huge force in the Gulf region.

Khedairi's own life is mirrored by her main character. Her father was Iraqi, her mother Scottish. Now 37, she lived in Iraq until the age of 24 before moving to London and then to Jordan. She says the book is not autobiographical but draws on her experiences, particularly at the time of the Gulf War. "That was the point when I was taking care of my mum. She had cancer, and I had double agony there. I would sit by her bedside, watch the news and write my heart out, combining actual facts with the fiction I had in my head."

RAINING BOMBS :
Like so many, Khedairi is hoping there will not be another war. "It will be the biggest disaster in the history of warfare. Already the 1991 Gulf War was a disaster, this will have even worse effects," she said.
"We've been through it before so if it does take place we know exactly what's going to happen, and it's no fun living that feeling over and over again like a black scenario."
In the novel her unnamed narrator receives letters from Baghdad describing the chaos of war. "It's raining bombs. You can't imagine what we're going through.
A black rain covers the gardens, the streets, and the rooftops, resembling black decomposing remains; it makes the days uglier than the nights," she writes.
"A young man looks for his fingers blown off amid the debris. A dog carries its discarded paw as it hops three-legged across a ditch -- the water a dirty pink colour."

The first part of the novel, dealing with the childhood of the main character, shows the sharp cultural differences between her parents. Khedairi says she had no political agenda when she wrote the book but she hopes it can help bridge the gap between East and West.
"My friend said earlier some people actually think we still use camels in this part of the world," she said. "As a writer if I can't change anything...at least I can give a bridge between cultures for people to understand each other more," she added. "You feel paralysed, you can't really do anything but you try your best."

Khedairi has nearly finished work on her second book which deals with the effects of the United Nations sanctions on Iraq since the Gulf War. She hopes to publish it simultaneously in Arabic and English within about a year.
"It's about the effects of the aftermath of the embargo on the infrastructure, causing imbalance in the social structure. It's a kind of psychological study of where the normal civilian was and what has become of him after 10 or 12 years," she said.
"I wouldn't call it controversial, I would call it experimental."