by Hala JaberViking Canada
When Hala Jaber was sent to Iraq by the London Sunday Times, charged with finding an injured child to represent the face of the Iraqi war, she little knew that this would be the hardest assignment of her career. The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles is written straight from the heart of a long time war correspondent whose objectivity deserts her as she trails through hospitals after the attack on Baghdad.
In 2003, Baghdad was preparing for war. Pregnant women hurried to the hospital to deliver early if they could. Newborns were taken home and the city prepared for the worst. But no preparations were enough to protect the innocent from what was to come. It was beyond imagining and civilian casualties were high.
Jaber’s search for a poster child of the Iraqi war brings her to a understaffed hospital where she finds two children with their mourning grandmother - Zahra, badly burned and struggling for life, and her infant sister who survived unharmed. The rest of their family was killed. As Jaber watches Zahra’s desperate fight for life, her need to help these two innocents almost overwhelms her. “I sensed an obligation to remember every one of them, for Zahra, for myself.”
Often horrifying, at times funny and always tender, The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles is an intense, personal account of events that have not yet taken their place in history books. Jaber’s training as a correspondent and her compassion for the children of Iraq speaks straight to her readers’ hearts. She does not sanitize events. Her reporting is detailed, personal and powerful as she tells the stories of men and women whose greatest need was to protect their families from harm. Nor does she shirk from showing us the terrible grief of those who survive to bury their dead. “My tears … are burning in my soul … an everlasting reminding of my anger.” The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles is a testament to the futility of war and terrible price it exacts from those most defenseless.
Hala Jaber was born in West Africa and grew up in Beirut. She was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2005 and 2006, and won an award for her work in Iraq. She lives in London.
