"Iraq: Death of a Nation" examines how the U.S. invasion and occupation created a multi-faceted civil war in which the U.S. is now actively arming multiple factions. Last summer, the project focused on how Iraq's refugee crisis was created by the invasion and the fighting that has followed.
The Hospitality of Thieves
Published August 1, 2008
Today, the newspapers plant their flags on a mountain of corpses and a city of walls.
She empties her lungs.Capillaries blossom red. Color leaks back into lips.They move, but our ears are still ringing.Brace against the door frame for a secondary blastand pray that it never comes.
For five years, we let the asphalt burn our feet,breathed in the smell of sewage and blood,and waited for a spring full of tulips, a black shirt stained with salt, a red kaffeiya and coal black eyes. . .
In the lobby, he smiles while his hands fidget with the room keys'When I saw him bleeding from his chest,I swear I forgot how to speak - in Arabic and in English. . .my only son. . . I am an old man now. . . he was all I had.'
'They own the land, and now we are their guests on it.'
...
Today, on the edge of Amara.Flies swarm around the desk.He buckles his belt.Prison tattoos curl around his wrist and a shadow clouds his forehead.
Yesterday, on the edge of Falluja.The same room with the same old men.Nicotine teeth, gold watches and pearl handled revolvers.
It is, at least, a safe place to sleep.
After five years, we have lost even this - even the clarity of death.Nothing left but the hospitality of thieves.
David Enders, for the Pulitzer Center
Pulitzer Center Staff
Grantee
Richard Rowley of Big Noise Films has made four award winning feature documentaries with international theatrical distribution and dozens of short films and television pieces. He has reported from...
