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Michael Goldfarb reported for WBUR radio from northern Iraq during the recent war. He also wrote journal entries for the wbur.org website, chronicling life in Erbil and the Kurdish autonomous areas. Click below for the reports from this past April.

• RealAudio: American Troops Fire at Mosul Protestors • RealAudio: Iraqis Loot Mosul • Friendly Fire, Sporadic Fighting on the Northern Front • Erbil Diary Part I • Erbil Diary Part II

The war in Iraq divided public opinion all over the world, driving a wedge between friends and allies. The international debate hotly continues, mostly focused on America's intentions in Iraq. Often overlooked in these fierce discussions is what the war meant for the Iraqi people themselves. It has created uncertainty, unleashed pent up pain, spasms of joy, and the chance to demand the most basic rights.

But to truly understand what the war to overthrow Saddam meant you would have to follow it through Iraqi eyes. You would have to watch it in the flesh or on TV with an Iraqi. It would be especially interesting if that Iraqi had been driven from his home by Saddam Hussein and was counting the days 'til he could return.

Ahmad Shawkat is such a person and Ahmad's War: Inside Out is his story:
a diary of the conflict, a journey home.

Part II: In the North, War Begins Slowly -- Ahmad in Exile

The war in most of Iraq started bang on time. Saddam was given 48 hours to get out of Iraq. To no one's surprise he failed to run away. So the bombs began to fall.
But in Erbil the largest city in the Kurdish autonomous region of Northern Iraq, things were comparatively calm. Many Kurds had fled the city already. Saddam had been particularly brutal towards them over the years and, fearing chemical attacks, families had streamed up into the mountains.

A bonfire in the citadel to mark the start of Narooz. (Photo: M. Goldfarb)

Zoroastrianism is the religion practiced by followers of the prophet Zarathrustra, who was born in pre-Islamic Iran. The religion focused on fire as a symbol of truth or of gods. Click the links below for more information on the Zoroastrian religion.

• Zoroastrian.org • Zarathushtra.com • Zoroastrian Association of MIT • Introduction - From Perdue Univ.

As U.S. bombers sought out a "target of opportunity" in Baghdad. The festival of Narooz was being celebrated. Narooz -- New Year's -- is a holiday whose origins go back to the Zoroastrian religion, a fire worshipping, pre-Christian faith. In this part of the world oil has been seeping out of the ground and catching fire for millennia and people have been worshipping the phenomenon for as long as they've lived here.

In Erbil that's been a very long time. The city's citadel is built on the ruins of settlements going back to 6,000 B.C., making Erbil one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns on the face of the earth.

On the night the war started Ahmad Shawkat was sitting in the lobby of a hotel at the foot of the citadel. Erbil's handful of hotels had become job exchanges for any local who spoke English. Hundreds of reporters were in town to cover the war. All of them needed translators. Somehow Ahmad had failed to catch on with anyone. Perhaps because he looked too old, somewhere in his late 50s, perhaps because he was too courtly and diffident, not a quality that is helpful when working hostile crowds in a conflict. Or perhaps it was because his English was too literary.

A sign in downtown Erbil the day the war started. Reads: Future Iraq: Rule of Law, Justice and Tolerance. (Photo: M. Goldfarb)

Most people interviewing for a translator's job would tell you all about their local contacts and the news organizations they've worked for. Ahmad wanted to talk about his favorite American author, William Faulkner. It's not everyday in Kurdistan that you come across someone who can discuss the Compson family and the other denizens of Yoknapatawpha County. I decided to hire him. And he agreed to work with me on one condition: that we stay together until the end of the war. He wanted to witness the fall of Saddam up close. He had his reasons: Ahmad was living in exile from his home in Mosul over in Iraqi regime territory.

To begin with, the conflict was fought at night out on a vast, green plain which separates Erbil from Kirkuk, the oil capital of Northern Iraq and Mosul, the great population center of the area, both still under the control of Saddam's regime.

Peshmerga fighter and journalist watching and waiting for something to happen at Dola Bakir, on the road from Erbil to the oil capital of Northern Iraq, Kirkuk. (Photo: M. Goldfarb)

Each evening Ahmad and I would drive to some camp or other of the Kurdish Peshmerga local fighters who were America's coalition partners to wait, look, and listen for air strikes or artillery fire, some sign of fighting.

A favorite place to go was Dola Bakir, half-way between Erbil and Kirkuk.

But in these early days of the war there wasn't much to hear or see. The Peshmerga passed the night away singing songs and dreaming of the things other young guys on an adventure sleeping under the stars dream about. Like having a sip of whiskey. When the Pesh weren't singing they would prick up their ears and listen for the sound of war coming in on the wind: the occasional bombing run on Kirkuk, mortar and tracer fire from a ridge outline by the frail light of a million stars.

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