Escape from Baghdad!

Two down on their luck black-marketeers, Dagr and Kinza, have inherited a very important prisoner: the former star torturer of Saddam’s recently collapsed Ba’athist regime, Captain Hamid, who promises them untold riches if they smuggle him to Mosul. With the heat on, they enlist the help of Private Hoffman, their partner in crime and a U.S. Marine, who undertakes to help them escape the authorities. But getting out of Baghdad is no easy task. The city is crawling with traps and alive with 5000 years of history. Soon they are embroiled in the search for a serial killer and the mysteries of an ancient watch that doesn’t tell time. Hounded by religious fanatics, crazed librarians, alchemists, special elements of the former Iraqi secret service, not to mention the United States army, the odd foursome must survive long enough to discover the truth. And in this place where life is constantly under siege the truth may be, quite simply, the secret to eternal life. With a satiric eye firmly cast on the absurdity of human violence, Escape from Baghdad features more than a few shades of Heller’s Catch-22 and David O’Russell’s Three Kings while doing something all-together shocking: giving voice, ribald humor, and some epic firepower to people most often referred to as ＂collateral damage.＂

Saad Z. Hossain writes in a niche genre of fantasy, science fiction and black comedy with an action-adventure twist. He was published in the anthologies What the Ink?, and Six Seasons Review. He has written numerous articles and short stories for The Daily Star, New Age, and the Dhaka Tribune, the top English daily newspapers in Bangladesh. He’s a monthly columnist for the Daily Star literary page and lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh.