A Stranger in Baghdad
London, 2003. An Iraqi-English psychiatrist receives a visit from a mysterious man. He asks about her mother, Diane, whom he had known years ago in Baghdad while he was working for the British foreign service.
In 1937, Diane was a young Englishwoman, and Ibrahim a young Iraqi doctor who she met at London’s Guy’s Hospital. She was a trainee nurse, and he was about to return home to Iraq. In an England on the brink of war, theirs was an unusual love story. Not a romance, but rather a plan driven by Diane’s boredom with her staid upbringing and her frustrated desire to see the world.
The stark reality of her life in Baghdad is different from her dreams of a new, exciting existence. Diane’s every movement is watched by an unfriendly family and her nursing abilities ignored. She is very much an outsider consigned to an uncomfortable presence in her husband’s family home. Diane finds herself living in an Iraq about to implode politically and its British overlords expelled. Revolution is in the air. Her husband is physician to the royal family, and Diane becomes governess to the crown prince. The British foreign service wants her to spy on the activities of the king and his political advisors.
A Stranger in Baghdad is not a political novel. It is a beautifully written tale of love, sorrow, and human striving. It speaks eloquently of the “outsiders” of a society, generational conflict, and the problems inherent in cross-cultural families.
Loudon is an elegant writer. This book should be on everyone’s must-read list. It lacks only one thing: a sequel.
