In 'The Book Of Collateral Damage,' An Accounting Of What Baghdad Lost

The novelist and poet Sinan Antoon grew up in Baghdad, Iraq — a city that's known many years of sorrow.

He was born to an Iraqi father and an American mother, and lived there until 1991. That was the year of the first U.S. invasion of Iraq, when he hid in the basement of a restaurant as U.S. bombs fell.

Antoon later moved to New York. But after the United States bombed Baghdad again in 2003, and took over Iraq, Antoon went back to make a documentary film.

He stayed at a hotel, since its generators guaranteed electricity with which to recharge the filmmaking equipment. Staying at a hotel also emphasized that Antoon was no longer at home in his hometown — that Baghdad had changed through years of sanctions and war.