ON 9 APRIL 2003, I STOOD ON THE ROOF of my building in Baghdad, looking at the clear sky. The city was quiet; the Americans had stopped their bombing early that morning. In the distance, I saw a helicopter, hanging low over the houses. Unlike the chubby Russian ones that we were used to, which swayed left and right like giant flying rams, this one was nimble, like an angry wasp.

Thirty-five years of Saddam Hussein’s rule had dissolved overnight, collapsing without a trace. Baghdad, that city of fear and oppression, was free for an hour, suspended between the departure of the dictator and the arrival of the occupiers.

In the years before the war I had been living in a small room, barely large enough to hold a single bed, a writing table and a trunk. A nook at one end housed the sink, the stove and the toilet. For decoration, I had painted one wall a bright orange-red, which amplified and radiated the hot Baghdad sunlight. The old air conditioner had died and I had no money to fix it. In the summer of 2002, the room was stifling hot, and I felt the walls were closing in on me. I hadn’t paid the rent for six months. As an architect working in private practice, I was paid $50 every few months. In the years of sanctions, I was doing ugly work for ugly people who had the money to afford their ugly houses. I wanted to leave the country, to travel and walk through the streets of different cities, but I was a military deserter and, without documentation, I could not get a passport.

I had not been tortured by the mukhabarat, the regime intelligence service, nor did any of my family vanish into a mass grave but, like the rest of the nation, I was trapped with no hope and no prospects. What if, we wondered, the Leader were to become mortally ill one day? How would our lives change after his death? Would we be ruled by one of his sons? Would that be better than this? Worse? I had felt that my life was seeping slowly away in that hot and oppressive place I called home. Now, aged 28, it seemed that a different life might be possible.

I went down to my room to listen to the news bulletin