The Weight of a Mustard Seed: The Intimate Life of an Iraqi Family During Thirty Years of Tyranny

General Kamel Sachet was a favourite of Saddam Hussein's, a hero of the Iran-Iraq war, head of the army in Kuwait City during Desert Storm and the governor of the province of Maysan. But when it came time for his sons to do their military service, he refused to let them join the "criminal" organization that he had given his life to. Sachet realized, too late, that he had become a participant in the terror regime that had strangled his country and destroyed its people.
Through the story of Kamel Sachet and those around him-his wife; his sons and daughters; his friend, a psychiatrist; the head of the Republican Guard; a director of Abu Ghraib prison-Wendell Steavenson shows the choices Iraqis have had to make between exile and collaboration, God and jihad. In the spirit of The Bookseller ofKabulandStasiland,The Weight of a Mustard Seedcaptures the universal humanity and the tragedy of unintended consequences.