Dancing in the No-Fly Zone: A Woman's Journey Through Iraq [Paperback]

Hadani Ditmars (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2005

When Hadani Ditmars first went to Iraq in 1997 for the New York Times, she was shocked at what she saw. Six years of the worst sanctions ever inflicted on a modern nation had brought the people to their knees. Yet there was so much more to the "cradle of civilization" than misery and suffering. In the midst of despair she found art, beauty, architecture, music. She discovered orchestras who played impassioned symphonies on wrecked instruments, playwrights who pushed the limits of censorship, artists who spent their last dinars on paint and canvas, families who still celebrated weddings by dancing to maqam-traditional love songs.

Ditmars travelled to Iraq again and again, reporting on every aspect of life. In September 2003, she returned to Baghdad to find the people she had met over the years and see what had become of them since the U.S. "liberation." Dancing In The No-Fly Zone is the story of that trip, interwoven with tales from her earlier visits and of the people she met along the way: actors and artists, mercenaries and businessmen, street kids and sufis, even the "king in waiting." It includes a visit to Abu Ghraib prison, in which Ditmars is given a tour of the Saddam-era execution chamber by the U.S. general who was later dismissed after the abuse scandal broke.

As the situation worsens and the violence intensifies, Ditmars spends a miraculous evening with a group of Iraqis who sing and dance along to a performance of maqam. A people who have suffered so much yet maintain such resilience deserve to have the full depth of their humanity portrayed. Hadani Ditmars captures this spirit in Dancing in the No-Fly Zone.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There is a place where a non-profit agency arranges for homeless people to live in an abandoned swimming pool, where a 12-year-old diabetic boy works in a shoe factory to buy insulin, where a woman who was once an engineer now defends her property with a Kalashnikov, and where a musician continues playing Beethoven's Sonata in G-minor while missile strikes light up the night. Canadian journalist Ditmars toured these and other lesser-known quotidian realms of post-invasion Iraq in 2003, and in this book shuttles back and forth between her pre-and post-invasion reporting trips to create a portrait of a land that is now more dangerous than ever, especially for Iraqi women. Ditmars does not flinch in the face of irony, nor is she shy about her politics and anti-American perspective as she presents a persuasive and sympathetic case for her point of view, but the book would be richer if these stories were better balanced and anchored to a deeper historical-political context. A reader who is already familiar with the complexities of contemporary Iraq will reap the greatest benefit. Nonetheless, the world Ditmars reveals to general readers is both fascinating and heart wrenching, adding often overlooked human stories to the war in Iraq. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Iraqi teenagers have never known a time without war; the present conflict is the third war the country has been subjected to in 20 years. Furthermore, a report to the United Nations reveals the bitter truth: children were better off under the rule of Saddam Hussein, and one-fourth of Iraqi children under age five are now chronically malnourished. As Canadian journalist Ditmars relates her experiences in Iraq then and in 2003, she reminds us of the consequences of years of sanctions and now of war. On an almost regular basis, parents are forced to sell precious art and family heirlooms to buy medicine for their children, some women are forced to prostitute themselves in order to feed their families, and others are abducted and never heard from again. It seems that women, like children, actually fared better under Saddam. Although artists still create and musicians still perform, these are desperate times for the Iraqi people, and Ditmars portrays their plight with great sensitivity and respect. Pamela Crossland
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 263 pages
• Publisher: Olive Branch Press (September 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566566347
• ISBN-13: 978-1566566346
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,276,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Travel > Middle East > Iraq

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tell me and tell me the truth, April 10, 2006

By 

ndib (Arizona) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Dancing in the No-Fly Zone: A Woman's Journey Through Iraq (Paperback)

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance - and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth?"
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov

Early in Dancing in the No Fly zone, Hidani Ditmars cites Madeleine Albright's famous reply when asked about UNICEF's estimate that 500,000 children died during the sanctions on Iraq: "I think it is worth the price." Dancing in the No fly Zone provides a chilling look at exactly what that price is.

Ditmars visits Iraq in 2003 and reports on life in the streets of Iraq, strewn with garbage and washed by raw sewerage. She tells her story through visits with Iraqis: business men, artists, press handlers, and mothers. And she tells it without apology.

She is at her best when telling the stories of mothers trying to hold her families together, alientated husbands and starving children.

As one Iraqi says near the end of the book, Iraq has gone steadily down hill since Saddam came to power in 1968. She does niether glorifies nor demonizes. She simply tells us how Iraqi people fared under sanctions, and she lets Iraqi ambibvalence about the American overthrow of Saddam and our subsequent occupation of Iraq speak for itself. Above all she toasts the spirit of the people she clearly loves.

We hear on the news about the utter lawlessness in Iraq, about the lack of medicine, the lack of electricity and clean water. No matter what one thinks of our intent in removing Saddam, one must admit that we have not delivered on our promise to the Iraqi people. I never really knew what life under sanctions were like. Children suffered, maybe fewer than 500,000 but certainly more than 1. Does it really matter who is most responsible for their suffering?

As to the previous reviewer, Michael Rubin is mouthpiece-for-hire, a consultant to the infamous Pentagon propagandists the Lincoln Group. His is an Iraq of 3.5 million cell phones, political debate, and Internet cafes in dusty hamlets. Ditmars Iraq is an Iraq of a long-suffering people who when asked to choose between the past and the present choose the future.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars unique, November 7, 2006

By 

Farrah Karapetian - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dancing in the No-Fly Zone: A Woman's Journey Through Iraq (Paperback)

there aren't any other books on iraq like this, nor are there any other books like this on war or women... hadani ditmars has written a complicated account of her experience in a country whose culture she appreciates. she writes in a way that does not "other" the iraqis or emphasize the foreign nature of their being, but rather describes their situation in terms that are flatly human and contemporary. the book is both serious and fun, written with an almost conversational voice. she manages to communicate facts of the iraqi predicament that include both the everyday and the bureaucratic, oscillating in tone between ironic detachment and real grief.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Soldier's Perspective, June 9, 2008

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R. Speight - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dancing in the No-Fly Zone: A Woman's Journey Through Iraq (Paperback)

For the past 15 months I have been Iraq, mainly Baghdad, serving as a gunner for my unit. I received Hadani Ditmars' book "Dancing in the No Fly Zone" from a friend of mine in Canada. Before reading the book I had an understanding that a lot of the problems Iraqi's faced were caused by American actions in the past.

What she has written hasn't really changed how I feel towards the Iraqi people. I do not hate them, though I do say insensitive things with my squad, and I do not look down on them. When I was younger I wanted to be a minister to help people, but now, I am a soldier in Iraq, and my biggest regret is that I haven't helped any Iraqis. I wish I could have, but our mission prevented us from really helping the people of Iraq.

I would have enjoyed actually talking to any Iraqi, but that was impossible as well. Her book helped me see the people of Iraq, not as victims, or as terrorists, or however else they are portrayed in the media, but as people.