Listening to National Public Radio during my drive this morning (as I normally do) I heard the last installment of a series running on the Morning Edition program – the audio diary of a young dentist in Iraq detailing his daily struggle to live in Iraq.

The previous 4 installments ranged from the jubilation of Iraq’s win in the Asian Cup Football tournament to his feeling over his parent’s insistence that he leave Iraq – and them – for a country where being a doctor will not get you killed.

The final chapter was aired this morning – Iraqi Dentist Learns of Torture, Death of Friend. A good friend of his is abducted and ransomed. $70,000 is the fee, which is negotiated down to $20,000. Not a paltry sum by any means, and one that must be scrounged from neighbors and family members. The ransom is paid – an unthinkable action if it were to happen in the United States – and after a week or more of waiting to hear from the kidnappers… his friend is dumped in a local market, beheaded, tortured and broken.

Just imagine for a moment living in such a world. A world where doctors live in fear and grown men are snatched from the streets by gangs of men. NPR reported that 650 Iraqis in August alone were killed in Baghdad in this manner.

In the end, the dentist attempts to leave Iraq for Jordan, but upon landing in Amman, he is denied asylum and is put on a plane back to Iraq, where he is forced into hiding, where he remains today.

All of this serves to remind me that despite my own personal struggles – I am blessed in comparison – and it strikes me like a hammer every time I think of it.

A couple of years ago, at the urging of Najati, I read Joe Sacco’s account of life in the Palestinian state, aptly entitled “Palestine”. Sacco is an award-winning journalist, which is kind of odd because his medium is not newspaper or television or even radio, but rather the graphic novel. “Comm-ick books” you might say, but if you’d give over an hour or two to read “Palestine,” you’d think differently. “Palestine” details the day-to-day struggles of the ordinary people in the Palestinian state in the early 1990′s (before the most recent intifada) with unusual detail — gritty, gruesome, and often comic.

This time, he has published a short 8-page report from Iraq alongside American troops, entitled
Complacency Kills (32meg PDF). Again, he manages to detail the real-life details of war and its effects on the average person with stark detail and wry humor. Well worth the read.

If you are interested in any of Sacco’s stuff, I highly suggest good ol’ Fantagraphics. Also, here is a good interview with Joe Sacco.

“Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.” — Harvey Pekar.