FROM BERLIN TO BAGHDAD: They Stole You, Iraq

In the spring of 2003, as Baghdad burned under the weight of invasion, a poet returned from exile in Berlin carrying not a weapon, but a camera. That poet was Amal Al-Jubouri, and her film From Berlin to Baghdad became the first Iraqi documentary to bear witness to the looting of the National Museum and the burning of the National Library and Archives. Filmed in the chaotic aftermath of the American invasion, the documentary was not a planned production but an act of moral urgency—a testimony to what Al-Jubouri has called "the murder of memory." This book tells the story behind that film: the perilous return to Baghdad, the encounters with archaeologists, librarians, and witnesses, and the creation of an image that travelled the world—two Iraqis weeping before the shattered face of a king. Part memoir, part historical record, and part philosophical meditation on loss and survival, From Berlin to Baghdad: They Stole You, Iraq stands as both a document of destruction and a hymn to endurance, a reminder that even when history is looted, memory resists