What we immediately found absorbing in "Hometown Baghdad" is not the fear, confusion or carnage we've grown to expect from documentary reports out of Iraq. It's the three men central to this series -- Adel, Ausama and Saif -- whose lives we see unfold in short, telling vignettes. We see them eat dinner and go to school, watch them go swimming and practice in their rock band. But in a war-torn, religiously divided city, even these simple actions are fraught.
On the fourth anniversary of our invasion of Iraq, when many of us have become hopelessly inured to reports of yet another bombing, the simple struggles of regular people take on a greater, more chilling power; we watch a way of life deteriorate before our eyes, and come to recognize the horrors of war in a way that the bold headlines or CNN news alerts no longer convey. We think you'll find them compelling and thought-provoking, and hope you'll write in to the Letters section to tell us what you think. The first three episodes appear in the left-hand column (and here). Additional installments will appear every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next few months.
The shooting of "Hometown Baghdad" was led by directors and producers Ziad Turkey and Fady Hadid over the course of the past year; the series was co-produced by New York-based Chat the Planet, which will distribute these videos, after a short period of exclusivity on Salon, to a variety of online outlets (including YouTube.com, Joost and the series' own Web site) for maximum exposure.
