Saadi Al Saihood, an Iraqi businessman and prominent philanthropist, was born in Baghdad in 1954. A father of three sons and a daughter, his family hails from the province of Amara. He began his career humbly, selling newspapers at age 11 while attending school part-time and taking night classes. He also helped with his father’s laundromat business, which he named The White Robe, inspired by the film The Robe.
Read MoreThe United States, Europe and other nations are undergoing significant demographic change as immigrant groups once considered minorities move toward majority status. Among them are fast-growing communities from Asia and North Africa. In several Michigan cities, Chaldean Iraqi Americans are part of this transformation.
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Though it happened decades ago, the tragedy that once made headlines across Iraq still lingers in memory. Khariya Gergis Mattia was intelligent and beautiful. Though she had many suitors, she never married. Around 1960, while she was in her early twenties, she moved to Baghdad to study education.
Read MorePoetry has long stood at the heart of Arabic culture. For its earliest speakers, it was the primary means of recording belief systems, oral history and philosophy. Originating on the Arabian Peninsula more than 1,500 years ago—well before the rise of Islam—Arabic poetry has since become a global art form.
Read MoreLong before cookbooks, before sugar or tomatoes or even the idea of a “dessert course,” the people of ancient Mesopotamia were cooking with remarkable sophistication. Between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—often called the cradle of civilization—food was not merely sustenance. It was ritual, identity and an offering to the gods.
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