Baghdad has the unusual ability to force its visitors to open up about the past and its pains. The ability becomes more pronounced when the friends choose to have dinner on the banks of the Tigris, only to find out that the current resort was once one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.

A journalist can occasionally be plagued by a certain subject during their career. It seems I have been cursed with the issue of assassinations. I was very close to danger during one assassination and was on the other end of the phone when another figure was assassinated.