January 30, 2008	Wednesday	Muharram 20, 1429

NEW YORK: Iraqi doctor turned film-maker Omer Salih Mahdi had the strange experience of seeing his life portrayed on stage this weekend at a preview performance of “Betrayed,” a play about Iraqis who worked for Americans.

“It’s really unbelievable to see this in the heart of New York,” he said afterward during a discussion on stage with playwright George Packer, a New Yorker magazine reporter.

“I watched part of my life flow in front of my eyes.”

The play is a fictionalised story of three Iraqis who worked for US authorities after the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Initially full of hope for the future, their faith in America is tested as they find themselves threatened by militants on all sides, and unwelcome in the United States.

Packer said the three were composite characters with elements drawn from many interviews he conducted with Iraqi interpreters who worked for Americans, risking their lives.

One of those was Salih Mahdi, a doctor who worked as an interpreter for Packer in 2005 and eventually gave up medicine when it became too dangerous to go to work. He turned to journalism and his film “Baghdad Hospital: Inside the Red Zone” won him a scholarship and is now studying journalism in Indiana.

“After the removal of Saddam’s regime, we really hoped life would change,” Salih Mahdi said. “We all hoped to have chances to improve ourselves through working with foreigners.”

“But this became a real crime, to work with foreigners in Iraq, this means it’s a death sentence.”

A key character in the play is a US diplomat. Packer says he is fictional but partly inspired by a former US adviser in Iraq, Kirk Johnson, who has drawn up a list of Iraqis who worked for US authorities now trying to flee to America.

Packer told the audience he had little hope of a change in policy under US President George Bush.“Of course I didn’t expect miracles but I thought this was one very narrow part of the war that professionals and journalists and advocacy and testimony could shame the administration into doing the right thing,” he said.—Reuters