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• Voices in the Wilderness Reflection
• An Appeal for the Release the Italian and Iraqi Aid Workers Abducted in Baghdad
• Observing the Heavens Between the Bombs, by Ra’ad Ali Abdul Azziz
• A Plea from Ed Kinane
• For More information please visit freeourfriends.blogspot.com

Astronomy in the War

by Ra’ad Ali Abdul Azziz

Astronomers are always and every where searching for dark places, usually away from the cities and the light pollution, for their observations. In my case, dark places were coming to my house and this is my story.

I am an amateur astronomer from Iraq, living in Baghdad City. I learned the sky in late 1970’s when I was 7 years old. Baghdad is a very big city and it was full of lights and fun at that time. In the other hand, I couldn’t see the constellations and fine stars from my house in this city. At that time I collected several maps and charts for the sky, but I couldn’t use them in a good way.

By Ed Kinane

September 8, 2004

This afternoon I learned that my friends, Raad and Simona, were abducted (along with another Iraqi and another Italian) from their Bridges to Baghdad office in Baghdad. This did not come as quite the shock it might have because recently Raad had emailed our mutual friend Cynthia that their office had just been shelled (fortunately with no casualties.)

I first met Simona at the Al Fanar Hotel in March and April, 2003. She was among the remarkable staff of Bridges who, at great risk of their lives, deliberately chose to remain in Iraq during the invasion and bombing of Baghdad.

I only met Raad three or four times – two or three times in late 2003 at the Bridges to Baghdad office and once when he and his lovely wife, Lubab, and their child, Ahmed, visited our Voices in the Wilderness house in Karrada, a neighborhood in Baghdad. After I returned to the States, we emailed back and forth several times.