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The Martyrdom of Ahmad Shawkat
The Tragic Story of an Iraqi Idealist
Michael Goldfarb
- Publication date
- 1 Mar. 2024
- Print length
- 390 pages
- ISBN-13
- 9781915023070
- Dimensions
- 203 × 127 mm
£18.95
The Martyrdom of Ahmad Shawkat
The Tragic Story of an Iraqi Idealist
John Brady, San Francisco ChronicleGoldfarb does us an immense service with his sensitive, multifaceted portrait of a democratic, secular Iraqi patriot…Among the best of the growing number of accounts of the Iraqi war.
Dexter Filkins, New York TimesA sad and necessary book that distills all of the country’s blighted hopes in one man. Shawkat…was one of the good guys.
About the book
Ahmad Shawkat was an Iraqi Kurd who edited his own radical magazine—Bilattijah— after the fall of Saddam Hussein and who wrote enthusiastically about Iraq’s future as a state free from tyranny, secular and religious, having been imprisoned and tortured four times by the regime.
When Michael Goldfarb went to Iraq the cover the Second Gulf War for the US’s National Public Radio in 2003, Shawkat became his translator, guide and close friend. They planned to stay in touch after Saddam was toppled and Goldfarb returned home.
Their plans did not work out. Shortly after the USA declared victory, Shawkat was shot to death outside his office in Mosul by members of one of the Islamic terror groups he had railed about. His killers have never been caught but Goldfarb swore to memorialise Shawkat’s life in a book, first published in 2005, now republished under a new title. It is a tragic story of an Iraqi idealist and potential role model.
Endorsements
Bernadette Murphy, Los Angeles TimesWhether one supports or opposes the war, Goldfarb’s book helps explain, at a person-to-person level, what is transpiring in Iraq and why.
Greg MitchellIn the end, Goldfarb – a supporter of the US war and caustic critic of Saddam – concludes that the death of his friend is symbolic of the American failure in Iraq, from not preventing the looting after the invasion to the continued inability to provide security to the freed people.
Robert BatemanOccasionally … there emerge individuals who rise above the surface and remind us all what is right and true, and why humanity will always have hope…Ahmad Shawkat was such a man. A Kurd raised in Mosul, a poet and a humanist, he was a lighthouse of inspiration for those who knew him. Now Ahmad’s story may do the same for all of us through the vivid portrait painted with Michael Goldfarb’s pen. The tragic story of his life, and murder, is on e that no historian or solder, no statesman or humanitarian, can afford to miss … Read this, and you will understand.
Gavin EslerA great piece of work.
Michael Goldfarb
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