Satish Jacob From Hotel Palestine

‘When I got up this morning, I had no inkling that today I would see the fall of Baghdad. A majority of journalists believed that the fighting would take days if not weeks to end . . . By midday, the situation took a dramatic turn. American artillery had broken through the Iraqi cordon of defences and the troops were patrolling areas on the West Bank less than two kilometres from Hotel Palestine . . .’ Satish Jacob was the only Indian correspondent in Baghdad during the US-led war to topple the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. From Baghdad’s Hotel Palestine, Satish’s spirited reports were the only eyewitness accounts of the drama of those days on Indian television. They were also special in that his perception of the events differed significantly from that of the Western media, more prone to uncritically accept the invading armies’ version of events. In From Hotel Palestine, Satish Jacob writes of a nation devastated on a whim, and explains Iraq’s role in the Arab world, the complex relationships that divide the region’s Muslims, Christians and Jews. Above all, he applauds the courage of the Iraqis in this war of unequals, and shows us that while Saddam may be a loathsome monster for some, he is a nation-builder like Turkey’s Ataturk to others.