Mayada, Hija De Irak

Jean Sasson first met Mayada in 1998. She traveled to Baghdad and Mayada was her official interpreter.
They soon became friends and Mayada started to tell her the atrocities of Saddam Hussein. Mayada decided that she wanted to expose her story to the whole world and denounce the brutality of life in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. She asked Jean to write the experiences. Mayada lived several months in a cell, along with 17 other women, that she calls shadow-women. Most of them were totally innocent. They were tortured again and again until they confessed to everything they were charged with. Some of them died without hope of ever being free. The ones that survived were kept alive by their friendship, and the stories Mayada told them to make their pain and misery more bearable.