Twenty years after the US invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the Ba‘thist regime, what kinds of historical narratives are starting to emerge among residents of Baghdad about the events of the recent past? How have their experiences with the new Iraqi state over the past twenty years colored Baghdadis’ perceptions of what their lives were like under Saddam Hussein, and how are they making sense of the profound disruptions their city has undergone in the years since 2003? We conducted structured interviews with sixty residents of Baghdad across four different neighborhoods in December 2022 and January 2023 to better understand how Baghdadis are perceiving, interpreting, and narrating changes that have taken place in their neighborhoods during their lifetimes. In light of these interviews, we offer preliminary insights about the politics of memory in contemporary Baghdad: how history, memory, and collective identities intersect in different ways for Iraqis in different parts of the city. How do residents of different Baghdad neighborhoods identify and describe the “good times” and “bad times” of the recent past, and what factors are influencing the construction of their historical narratives?

美国入侵伊拉克并推翻复兴党政权二十年后，巴格达居民开始对最近发生的事件产生什么样的历史叙述？过去二十年来，巴格达迪在伊拉克新国家中的经历如何影响了他们对萨达姆·侯赛因统治下的生活的看法？他们如何理解自 2003 年以来他们的城市所经历的深刻破坏？我们于 2022 年 12 月和 2023 年 1 月对巴格达四个不同社区的 60 名居民进行了结构化访谈，以更好地了解巴格达迪人如何感知、解释和叙述他们的社区在其一生中发生的变化。鉴于这些采访，我们提供了关于当代巴格达记忆政治的初步见解：对于城市不同地区的伊拉克人来说，历史、记忆和集体身份如何以不同的方式交叉。巴格达不同社区的居民如何识别和描述最近的“好时光”和“坏时光”，哪些因素影响着他们的历史叙事的构建？