BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'THE FALL OF BAGHDAD' > Awaiting His Countrymen's Invasion

Review of book by a reporter for The New Yorker who traveled with John F. Burns in Iraq in Spring 2003

September 23, 2004
By JANET MASLIN
THE FALL OF BAGHDAD
By Jon Lee Anderson
389 pages. Penguin Press. $24.95.

n the eve of the American invasion, with much of the international press corps hastily leaving town, Jon Lee Anderson imagined what it might feel like to be on the deck of the sinking Titanic. The lifeboats were leaving, but he had chosen to say behind.

Mr. Anderson continued his brave reporting for The New Yorker. Now he has assembled a book-length description of what he heard and saw. In this measured, keenly descriptive account, hindsight gives way to horror as the early rumblings of war become reality and the city of Baghdad is changed beyond recognition. Every Arab in Mr. Anderson's account, from Saddam Hussein's personal physician to a cheesemaker on the street, reflects the dread, fury and frustration of feeling helpless in the face of this nightmare.

The early sections of this book are its least violent. But they are its most painful, since they are filled with prophetic comments about the grim consequences of an American occupation. Mr. Anderson, whose version of events begins in November 2002, repeatedly hears that Iraqis dislike foreigners, are suspicious of Americans and cynically expect to be exploited for the sake of their oil resources. The book also preserves many now-quaint assertions about the beloved and benign nature of Mr. Hussein.

Mr. Anderson chose to report from Iraq in relative freedom: he was not embedded with troops, although he went through obligatory training about the perils of chemical and biological warfare. (From his notes on warnings about nerve gas: "You're dead, basically.") Even so, he reports the presence of Iraqis assigned to keep an eye on him and the limits on what he was permitted to witness.

"You mean you and I can both see it, but we have to pretend it's not there?" he asks his driver in disbelief, at the sight of one of Mr. Hussein's overweening construction projects. The driver nodded, Mr. Anderson writes, "and from the tense expression on his face I could see that he was perfectly serious."

"The Fall of Baghdad" describes encounters with many alarmed and opinionated prewar sources. "With regards to the probable U.S. attack on Iraq," an Iranian newspaper editor tells Mr. Anderson, "we believe this is aimed at dominating a country that can be a source of cheap energy." He continues: "The U.S. has put its big feet in the region, with the toes in Afghanistan and the heel in Iraq, and we are somewhere in the middle, in the hollow of the foot, and we expect it to put pressure on us at any moment. We do not really believe all the U.S. talk about democracy and fighting terror."

It suits the author's own agenda to repeat such opinions frequently. But Mr. Anderson also knows when he is being spun or patronized: he describes the way one sheik "warmed to his role of Eastern savant, dispensing oracular wisdom to an unlicked cub of the West." Later on, as the talk turns to escape plans and biohazard protection gear, the "hemorrhagic flow of bluster and conspiracy theory" gives way to more pragmatic considerations. The author feels uneasy as an American in Baghdad, though he describes only "a strange, disquieting feeling" rather than a more reflective response.

Mr. Anderson functions as reasonably matter-of-fact observer, even when what he witnesses is overwhelming. As reporters are brought to Iraqi hospitals to view monstrous injuries, he lets the graphic details speak for themselves; no further comment is needed. When familiar places in Baghdad simply vanish, replaced by crater holes, he registers an uncomplicated disbelief. And when the strange mix of sounds - donkey, rooster, cruise missile - becomes overpowering, he is calm enough to hear a symphonic aspect. The guns of A-10 Warthogs, which fire 4,000 bullets a minute, have a special sound, after all.

This is not to say that the author is not frightened: he is, and he vividly describes the perils faced by a reporter in the midst of such danger. (Much of his time is spent with John F. Burns of The New York Times.) But he is also amazed at how little of Baghdad he had seen before, and he is an intrepid explorer of newly revealed places.

Mr. Anderson's accounts of much-described sights - like the dismantling of Mr. Hussein's statue, or a ruined Hussein palace strewn with, among other things, pictures of Britney Spears - are of less interest than his one-on-one encounters with people caught in the crossfire. He sees Iraqis who welcome American marines with cries of "Bush good" and "Mister good good." He also hears the shopkeeper who announces: "You should leave. Go away. I hate you." If the book's considerable strength lies in the candor of such moments, its weakness is for angry, repetitive ranting. Mr. Anderson's descriptions of unalloyed grief among Iraqi civilians and of the vagaries experienced by formerly powerful friends of the old regime are far more moving than his replaying of impromptu speeches. He has too willing an ear for the man on the street who proclaims: "Middle East peace should not be secured on the backs of the Iraqi people. The Americans should see us as human beings, not only as oil." However heartfelt such declarations may be, they have a practiced sameness on the page.

"The Fall of Baghdad" is as current as it is important: it goes as far as mid-June 2004. Although one of Mr. Anderson's acquaintances disappears mysteriously, and turns out to have been detained at the Abu Ghraib prison, the book does not venture into larger details about Abu Ghraib. That is another, even worse story.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company