Nuha al-RadiNuha al-Radi, known throughout the Middle East as a consummate ceramicist, talented painter, and innovative sculptor, gained international acclaim for her Baghdad Diaries, an account of life in Iraq under bombardment and sanctions.
She was born in Baghdad in January 1941, when the world was at war and died in Beirut on August 31st while her homeland is once again gripped by war.
She received her early education at the Loreto Sisters' school at Simla, while her father served as Iraq's first ambassador to India. There she absorbed India's brilliant colours and sharply defined images which later blended in her work with the muted tones and fleeting mirages of her homeland.
After the Iraqi revolution in 1958, the family went into exile in Beirut. Al-Radi attended a Swiss finishing school before taking up ceramics at the Byamshaw School of Art and Chelsea Pottery in London. She returned to Beirut to work and teach at the American University of Beirut, acquiring a Mediterranean vision.
But these influences did not dim her Iraqi artistic integrity. Her work, like that of the mid-20th century Iraqi "pioneers", was rooted in her homeland, its landscapes, history, and folk tales.
The Lebanese civil war drove her home to Baghdad. Sanctions sent her back to Beirut in 1995. She exhibited in the Middle East, Britain, Germany, and Pakistan.
Having shifted from ceramics to paint in 1990, she turned to the typewriter with the outbreak of war in 1991 and kept daily entries in her diary.
She wrote as she spoke, achieving at the first stroke of a key the fluency many authors seek throughout their lives. She described how she, her mother, Suad, "Ma", her aunt, "Needles", and a dozen friends survived the campaign.
Al-Radi asked why Washington's bombers focused on Baghdad when "they were supposed to be freeing Kuwait", then quipped, "Maybe they need a map?"
Iraq was bombed into the pre-industrial age. Electricity and water went immediately, petrol was short. Iraqis had to consume or throw out stocks of fresh and frozen food, ride bikes, rely on kerosene lamps for light, gather wood and cook in fireplaces, and use the garden as a latrine as there was no water for toilets.
Al-Radi word-painted the scene with details. "The birds have taken the worst beating of all [from the bombing]. They have sensitive souls which cannot take all this hideous noise and vibration. All the caged lovebirds have died from the shock of the blasts, while birds in the wild fly upside down and do crazy somersaults."
Towards the end of the campaign, bombing was non-stop. "Nights and days full of noise, no sleep possible. What will happen to all of us now? For forty days and nights - a biblical figure - we've just been standing around with our mouths open, swallowing bombs, figuratively speaking, that is. We didn't have anything to do with the Kuwaiti takeover, yet we have been paying the price for it. Meanwhile Our Leader [nicknamed 'Suds'] is alive and well - or not so well, we do not know . . . Defeat is a rock bottom feeling.
"This morning, the forty-second day, the war stopped. They kept on at us all night long, just in case we had a couple of gasps left in us. It was the worst night of the bombing of the whole war, relentless - nobody slept a wink. The noise was indescribable. We shook, rattled and rolled."
Smoke and dust made her unwell, blood tests revealed that her platelet count was dangerously low.
Nuha al-Radi died of a rare form of leukaemia she believed was caused by depleted uranium and other poisons she inhaled during the campaign.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died from blood and other cancers since 1991. She died in exile, where she had lived most of her life.
In Beirut she could paint, swim, and speak her mind. She is buried in the martyr's cemetery under umbrella pines not far from the Mediterranean shore.
Nuha al-Radi born January, 1941, died September, 2004