It was the summer of 2004 on one of those boiling hot days in Baghdad. Mazin Al-Eshaiker was stuck in a major traffic jam in the city’s Karrada district. Assassinations. insurgent attacks and kidnappings were rampant, so he had bought a beat-up car to drive around the city and keep a low profile.
Suddenly he saw an opening ahead and made a quick U-turn. That’s when the American soldiers aiming their assault rifles descended on him, One yelled at him to get the eff out. An Iraq who had spent the better part of his life in southern California, his reaction was to curse back.
