High Tea in Mosul: The True Story of Two Englishwomen in War-torn Iraq

Two Englishwomen, married to Iraqi men they met in Britain and later accompanied back to the northern city of Mosul, tell their stories to a reporter in this unusual look at Westerners immersed in Middle Eastern culture and politics. Pauline Basheer, wife of an Iraqi heart surgeon and mother of two children, has lived in Iraq for more than 30 years, and her friend, another Englishwoman who also arrived in Iraq in the mid–70s. The book details how the two women got to know each other as they assimilated, learning Arabic, living within traditional Iraqi family structures, and enduring the rigors of Saddam Hussein's regime: food rationing, thought police, anti-Western discrimination, and almost constant war. Interviewed for the book in 2003, they describe their overlapping experiences in Mosul and share their individual perspectives on this life-changing experience.