Perception Wars: Iraq from the Outside In

This book is Metti's journey to Iraq under extraordinary family circumstances. It describes personal and academic challenges he encountered by the need to acclimate to a new language and culture. This story is also a depiction of cultural rejection aggravated by assimilation issues: He was compelled to live in places not of his choosing; to master a tongue alien to his childhood; and to feel out of place every time he stepped outside the hospitable and generous embrace of his extended Iraqi family into the corporal punishment landmines of Iraqi education.

Dr. Jemil Metti was born on September 26, 1949, in Long Island, New York, to an Iraqi father, Philip Metti, and a Hungarian mother, Juliet Balinth. Following two years of Catholic boarding school, he was uprooted from his birthplace and transferred to Beirut, Lebanon. After being shuffled between three private schools, he was re-uprooted to Baghdad, Iraq, in 1957. There he lived for the rest of his thirteen political-tumultuous teenage years. Dr. Metti returned to the United States in 1970 at age twenty. He attended and graduated with a BA in political science and philosophy from Northern Illinois University in 1975; an MA in International Relations and Comparative Politics of the Middle East from SUNY-Binghamton in 1977; and an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction and Education Administration from Wayne State University in 1991. Dr. Metti had a practicing interest in broadcast and print journalism, real estate, and education. After a one-year stint with radio news at WWWS FM in Saginaw, Michigan, Dr. Metti's focus shifted to a career in education, commencing as an Arabic-English bilingual tutor in 1978. He simultaneously hooked up as a freelance reporter with the Romeo Observer (1980) and the Advisor Newspapers (1981-1990). In 1981, he also coanchored the first weekly Arabic TV program in the United States known to Middle Eastern viewers as the Arab Voice of Detroit. Between K-12 tutoring, K-College teaching, and administrating a K-12 ESL program, education and writing consumed most of Dr. Metti's career. He continues to teach U.S. government (high school and college) and international relations (college). He is currently working on a novel.