April 8-14, 2004

books

Thura al-Windawi

by Rebecca Bellville

When 19-year-old Thura al-Windawi started a diary of her life in Baghdad on the eve of war last spring, she kept it for the same reasons people have had diaries for generations.

"I was writing it for myself," says al-Windawi, a student at the University of Pennsylvania. "I write what I see." Writing also gave her a way to release her anger about the war in Iraq, she says.

While al-Windawi kept diaries before, it was her moving account of the increasing chaos in and around Baghdad that caught the attention of a British journalist who helped al-Windawi get it published. It is now a book, simply titled Thura's Diary (Viking, 160 pp., $15.99).

The book describes her everyday life as schools close, bombs fall on Baghdad, and the Iraqi people struggle for a normal existence in an environment that is anything but normal.

Al-Windawi details the increasing presence of American soldiers in her city and the death of a 16-year-old childhood friend after he tried to help people who had been hurt when his section of Baghdad was bombed. She tells of lighter moments, such as learning to bake bread during a weeklong escape to the countryside and her 17-year-old sister protesting their mother’s request to wear a head scarf outside. However, the book’s most common thread is the constant fear that permeates a city under attack. Al-Windawi still thinks about the bombing that happened near her house, she says.

"I remember one vision that I always see. The whole wall was shaking and the wall was cracking," she says. "I remember my mom and my sister thinking, "What do we do?' and my dad has no answer."

She says an attack sounds like a drawbridge opening and closing. "I can still hear the sounds in my ears," she says.

After learning of al-Windawi’s story, the admissions department at Penn offered her enough funding for four years there, and she started classes in August as a freshman. She attended the Baghdad College of Pharmacology before coming to Penn and is now studying similar subjects, she says.

Al-Windawi says she is neither satisfied nor angry that coalition forces went to Iraq. While Saddam Hussein has been captured, there is still plenty that needs to be fixed. She can keep in touch with her friends and family, she says, but "it's so hard, just the feeling that you get bad news but I cannot do anything."

Still, she is grateful to be at Penn and finds Philadelphia "very big" and "a wonderful place to walk around."

Eventually, al-Windawi says she wants to return to Iraq.

"The message that I want from my diary is that I want peace," she says. "After I came here, people are different and everyone has a good heart inside their hearts, and I want to take this message back to Iraq."

Thura al-Windawi will read Wed., April 14, 4:30 p.m., Penn Bookstore, 3601 Walnut St., 215-898-7595.