Martyrsʼ Day: Chronicle of a Small War

Michael Kelly is an acute and entertaining witness. He traveled through much of the Middle East during and after the Gulf War, watching the bombs fall on Baghdad and waiting for Scuds in Tel Aviv, inspecting the gold bathroom fixtures installed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the emir's temporary palace in Kuwait City and dining with Kurdish chieftains in remote mountain camps in northern Iran. When the ground war began, Kelly rented a four-wheel-drive Nissan Safari, borrowed some camouflage pants and gas-proof rubber gloves, and set off across the desert, where he was mistaken for an advance party of the American army and surrendered to by a batch of bewildered Iraqi soldiers. In Kuwait after the liberation he listened to horrific tales of torture and rape, and walked among the grotesque remains of the bombed-out retreating Iraqi army on the "roads home". Later, when Kelly went to Kurdistan, he hiked into forbidden Iraqi territory and then traveled with various guerrilla bands at war with Saddam Hussein. He got out of Iraq by swimming across a river into Turkey in the company of smugglers. Kelly's story is witty, moving, and dramatically compelling, at once superb reporting and the very best travel writing.