This book describes a journey, a war, and some people caught in its whirlpool. Over a hundred and one days, from January to April 2003, I tried to present everything I experienced in Baghdad.

In such a journey, the journalist is constantly on duty. The news appears at any moment. The reader only sees the outcome, while the articles do not reveal how they were written or what was left out.

In the ten years I have worked as a journalist in war zones, I have never faced conditions more difficult than in Iraq. Before the war, the problem was specific: it said nothing. Iraqis spoke in riddles or used pompous clichés, out of fear of saying something they shouldn't or revealing their thoughts.

Then, we were confronted with new difficulties. These fell from the sky, sliced through the air with a whistle, and exploded beside our ears. I then tried to see what happens to a people when the dam breaks. What do they say when they can suddenly speak.

My reports from Baghdad are my own, as I understood them based on my admittedly inadequate experiences. However, events can be interpreted in many ways. An Egyptian journalist certainly presents the facts of the war in Iraq differently than I do.

For the Iraq war, there is no truth; or better, there are millions of narratives, based on true facts and perhaps just as many lies. My mission amid the chaos of war was not to judge, to guess, or to analyze - I had to see, to ask, and to tell.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]