Through searing stories of loss and destruction, to revealing tales of daily hardships, this collection of short stories and poems puts flesh, heart and soul to the rounded numbers we hear in the news.

In Iraq: The Untold Tales, one family tries to celebrate a birthday under the threat of routine raids. A teenage girl receives an unusual gift from her father. A man leaves his home at sunrise to join a half-mile lineup for gas. A farmer awaits a lull in the bombings so he can bury his dead in the neighbourhood soccer field. A mother sends her son to buy bread and later finds his bicycle abandoned on the side of the street...

"Whether Bayan Khatib seats us at the kitchen table stuffing grape leaves with teasing teenagers, or takes us on a heart stopping ride on a rickety bike with a middle-aged mother, we're fully there.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

No Longer Available

Edition: 1st Canadian ed.
Names: Khatib, Bayan 1979-
Iraq:the untold tales / Bayan Khatib.

Publisher: Toronto: Life Rattle Press, 2007
New publishers series 1713-8981
ISBN 978-1-897161-38-8
1. Iraq War, 2003 -- fiction
I.Title. II.Series
PS8621.H367173 2007 C813'.6 C2007-902021-6