In the first novel by an Iraqi exile available in English that focuses on the catastrophic U.S., invasion of 2003, Iqbal Al-Qazwini dissects the traumatized psyche of a woman who fled Iraq decades earlier but still longs for her homeland.<BR>Like millions worldwide, Zubaida grimly watches the escalating bombardment, the lethal "shock and awe" on television. Immobilized by grief, she barely leaves her Berlin apartment; the unreal images of U.S. forces closing in on Baghdad link her to a war worlds away. But unlike most viewers, Zubaida remembers the cosmopolitan Baghdad of her childhood. Memories of her grandmother's love and of attending movies with her father alternate with nightmarish tableaux such as the public hangings in Al-Tahrir Square after a coup. Struggling to deal with the serial horrors unfolding on TV - and her own all-too-real ghosts - Zubaida takes refuge in an inner world, one in which she can almost go home again.