To many people in the west, the only face we can put to Iraq is Saddam Hussein’s. There are no Nobel prize winners, movie directors or pop stars that we know of, and the “ordinary” people of Iraq are equally unknown to us. George Capaccio has travelled in Iraq repeatedly since 1997, and in this article he tells us about the people he knows there, and about their hospitality, generosity, openness and kindness.

An example: Or the time I whipped up a real Italian dinner for Suha and her family. During the meal, she and her husband, who had never eaten spaghetti before, began playfully sucking on separate ends of the same strand until their lips touched and they gave each other a brief kiss. Their young sons were so embarrassed they didn’t know whether to cover their faces or leave the room.