First Impressions

First Impressions

My first impressions of Baghdad Without a Map, based on the first couple of passages, make me not want to read this book. The first impressions is the hardest to change because it creates bias. The first impression will always provide me with a biased opinion towards the book so that every time something important happens it is like “well I question this story’s reliability because he is always getting high. How can he remember this?” To start off the book Horwitz spends two full chapters talking about Qat. He even gets high and enjoys the unusual feelings of the drug. But, the primary reason I don’t want to read the book is because of the reinforcement of my own biased views prior to the reading. My biased views were that the Middle East was not good for anything except the excess amount of guns in the country. When Horwitz asks a native “what arms are out there?” the response was typical my views.
“At a guess, he estimated two rifles and two daggers per adult male. ‘Slightly less for teenagers.’ And that was just small arms. ‘You’ve got your submachine guns, your hand grenades, your mortars- maybe even your flamethrowers,’ he said. Some tribal sheiks stocked big-ticket items as well: bazookas, tanks, surface-to-air missiles.”(30)
This response is typical in my mind because so many Arabs, given 9/11, are portrayed as terrorists. First impressions have clearly biased me when reading this book. I think that as interesting as it is to read about the people with whom we are “at war” from a semi-different view.
-C.W.