[1] He was the editor of an anthology of 40 writers, "Iraqi Poetry Today", published by Zephyr Press in 2003[2] and author of the work of cultural criticism, "Black Orpheus: Music in African American Fiction from the Harlem Renaissance to Toni Morrison", Garland 2000.
After six years in prison, he was freed in a political amnesty and was allowed to return to school; he completed a BA degree in English at Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.
He graduated in June 1976 and left Iraq on a tourist visa; his mother paid a substantial fine, equivalent to approximately a year's income, when he did not return.
He joined the faculty of Grinnell College in 1992, where he was an associate professor of English, teaching courses in African-American and Arabic literature.
As is frequently the case with Iraqi intellectuals of the most recent generation, he was unable to return to Iraq after he left in 1976, except for a two-week trip into the northern Kurdish zone after the fall of Saddam Hussein.