Booksaustion!

It is done. My Iraq book, that is. I am printing it off and sending it back to the editor tomorrow morning. 80,000 words; 200 pages; lots and lots of late nights. I've been averaging a 3am bedtime this past week. But hey--I wrote a book!

I don't quite know how it'll all work out from here--I hope that I have a better sense of things by the time I get my second, third, fourth, etc. books finished. I have that many at least in various stages of completion--it's just that I didn't know before how to actually get published. And I was doing it primarily for family before, or therapy, or...whatever.

I have to talk a little about completing the Iraq book in particular. As of this Memorial Day weekend, I am now four years out of Iraq. It is hard to read how at the very end of my time there, just after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, that Iraqis--and we--believed that healing might come, that perhaps the worst was over. No, it was not to be. Rather, Abu Ghraib and all that went into it launched us over into the abyss and we have yet to recover.

Still, here is one testimony, and many testimonies within it, for peace. Words that will now no longer be forgotten or silenced. Some words have never been public before. I was thinking of that, and what it may mean, as I went back through and filled in the spaces between the letters and human rights reports I'd written publicly earlier.

In the meantime, it's a funny feeling, having immersed myself entirely in that book for the past few days--immediately preceded by the jail article; immediately followed by the Iran article and two final papers for school. Anyway, in the midst of this, I realized how quickly I got pulled back into the feeling of being there--particularly as everything went to hell in spring of '04 (Abu Ghraib/Blackwater/Fallujah). The past little while, I've been sitting in my chair by the window, in mild Hyde Park, Chicago, and yet the hair-trigger anticipation that a bomb might blow up the car in the street, or the building nearby could go boom, or the person on the sidewalk will raise a gun towards the apartment--I'm a little on edge, I guess.

So, perhaps I will not feel so guilty for having sloughed off my writing for today. Perhaps a little TLC was needed instead. I walked around the neighborhood and documented the murals that are about to disappear; I enjoyed the weather; I ate Middle Eastern food (a kefta sandwich and shourb adas, lentil soup); I made sure to reply to all the lovely people who've invited me for coffee. And I needed to rest my neck, eyes, and wrists--all of which have been killing me this week. They are recuperating nicely as of this evening.

Tomorrow, then, back to work. There's more to get done.

peace,
Le Anne