Born to an Iraqi-Christian father and a British mother, and raised in Britain and Canada, Leilah Nadir has never set foot on Iraqi soil. Distanced from her Iraqi roots through immigration and now cut off by war, the closest link she has to the nation is through her father, who left Baghdad in the 1960s to pursue his studies in England. His Iraq is of mythical origins; his beginnings are in a garden at the family home that now lays vacant. Nadir's Irag is so close and yet so far. Using her father's memories, Nadir recounts her family's lost story, from Iraq at the turn of the 20th century during the British occupation, to the Iraq-Iran war and the Gulf War. Through her cousins, still living in Baghdad, she experiences the thunderous explosions of the present-day conflict. Then Nadir's friend, award winning photographer Farah Nosh, who has visited Iraq, brings home news of Nadir's family, as well as stunning photos of civilians and their tragic stories.
Leilah Nadir Knihy
