So, Iraq! You say in the book: “It’s a country few people would choose to visit, but for me that’s one of the best reasons to go there.”
Well, you know what it’s like: you always want to go to the places other people haven’t been, don’t you? It’s curiosity, and I think that, from a distance, Iraq is one of the most curious places. What did I know about it other than what I’d seen [on the news]? The horrors of the occupation, the civil war, Saddam Hussein – all these things seem to have battered this country. That’s what I knew already, so I thought, let’s go see it and find out more.
A lot of people are confused about the situation in Iraq and its history; they can’t get their heads around it.
Yeah, it’s a confusing place. The British put it together to safeguard their oil deposits, which were the biggest in the world at the time. They merged together various tribes and religious groups. They’re all there in Iraq; it’s no wonder that they’re confused! We decided to follow the Tigris River because it has all these rather wonderful historical connotations, and because it kind of united all these various peoples that were brought together
