The Big Interview: Dr Sana Murrani

From war-torn Baghdad to Plymouth: Dr Sana Murrani’s inspiring story of resilience and how she is amplifying the voices of those affected by the 2003 invasion
Dr Sana Murrani standing on the Hoe, Plymouth
 
The Hoe means many things to many people. Arguably Plymouth’s most celebrated vista, it has borne witness to countless stories – of arrival and departure, celebration and emotion – over the past 500 years and more. Sana Murrani can tick a number of those boxes. But as we walk with her from the city centre towards The Hoe, it quickly becomes clear just how much of a deep and personal connection she feels here.
“This was the first walk I did when I came to Plymouth,” she says. “I stayed in a building next to the chapel on Notte Street, and I asked the receptionist how far it was to the sea. I didn’t believe him when he said it was two minutes away. But as I walked up onto The Hoe, I was gobsmacked by the amazing outlook and view.”
Ultimately, The Hoe would go on to play a key role in several of Sana’s key life events – it is, after all, the venue she chose for her wedding. But such celebrations were far from her thoughts as she arrived in the South West in July 2003 when, after a lengthy journey and meetings with the British Consul, she became the first Iraqi PhD student to enter the UK since the invasion had started.
Sana has a clear recollection of the weather that summer being spectacular. Her arrival in Plymouth, however, was tinged with a sense of both privilege and guilt. Travelling here alone, she had left all her close family at home in Baghdad. She was now safe, away from the daily deluge of bombs and missiles. But three months after the invasion of her country had begun, the full extent of her physical and emotional scars were nowhere near to being revealed.
Slide photo of Dr Sana Murrani, age 1
Sana, age 1
Dr Sana Murrani, age 7 in Trafalgar Square
Sana, age 7 in Bath

“Baghdad tonight, under heavy bombardment on the day the war started.”

The opening line of the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News is, for many in the UK, the first they hear that the invasion of Iraq has begun. Sana needs no such update. For weeks, she and her family have been listening to increasingly crackly radio reports saying a United States-led invasion is coming. The people of Iraq are used to such things. The first Gulf War, very much within living memory means they have an idea of what might be coming. Preparations can be made.
In the living room of the family home, windows have been blocked to protect against the threats posed by shattering glass. Furniture has been pushed up against walls, mattresses and blankets laid on the floor. This is the family’s one safe space. A single room where Sana’s mother, father and sister hope to shelter … and survive. For the first three days, and nights, of the invasion, it is the only space they see.
March 2003 was not supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a time of celebration. After years of study at the Baghdad University School of Architecture, Sana had completed her masters just a week before the bombing started. For the moment, those thoughts had to be put on hold. However, her personal and professional experiences were stirring up all manner of complex emotions.
“It always felt like something of a double whammy,” Sana says. “We were living with the sheer fear of dying that every Iraqi felt. But as an architect, with every missile and bomb that hit the ground, I was thinking of the unmanageable damage to infrastructure, the loss of homes and famous iconic buildings, and heritage. I was being torn at from all sides.”
Sana and her family had always suspected they would, quite literally, be in the firing line. Their home in Al-Amiriyah district, to the west of Baghdad, was located close to roads to the country’s main airport, Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. For three days, bombs and missiles rained down on them. Three days of no sleep as the ground shook beneath them. Three days after which they knew they had to move to safety.
Initially, that was to a relative’s house away from Baghdad’s key military targets. Two months later, as the fighting continued, Sana left her family and crossed the border – first into Jordan, then away from the Middle East, and ultimately to the UK.
“During those first three days, all I was thinking was how are we going to survive this one,” she says. “I drew a mental map in my head of where the Americans would target, and how we could stay out of harm’s way. It gave me a way of navigating violence and trauma. That mental map has never left me.”
 
It is a cold April evening. In the heart of central London, Sana stands at the front of a crowded room. Almost 20 years have passed since she escaped Iraq for the relative safety of Plymouth. The anniversary of the invasion has just been marked by a number of TV documentaries and internet articles. Yet the stories being told here tonight are arguably more deeply personal, certainly less known, than anything put out through those channels.
Sana is addressing an audience of well over 150 people at the launch of her new exhibition, ‘Ruptured Domesticity’. Staged at the London School of Economics, thanks to support from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, it tells the stories of 15 Iraqis whose lives have been impacted by the 2003 invasion, and many other events in the country since. They include sectarian violence, atrocities, revolutions, the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of those who have been involved in the project are at the launch. Others join online to share their thoughts.
For Sana, the event is the culmination of many years’ research. The stories on display here are ones she felt compelled – and, after a considerable time, able – to tell.
The 15 spatial interpretations of traumatic events that people shared as part of the Rupturing Domesticity project (Credit Sana Murrani, University of Plymouth)
 
Sana Murrani exhibition
Sana Murrani's map
 
“When I left Iraq, the trauma was still raw,” she says. “My parents and sister were still in Baghdad. I couldn’t pick this up as a project to look into. It was not until the 2019 Iraqi revolution that I thought, ‘I need to write these experiences in a book. I need to document what happened’.”
Of those Sana has spoken to, the majority are still living in Iraq. They include people from different backgrounds, of different ages and from different regions. The reason for that was clear. Sana had a very clear picture of what had happened during the invasion in Baghdad. But how had people experienced it in Mosul, in Basra, in Kurdistan, and elsewhere? She also wanted to focus on women, whose stories – she says – are notoriously less vocalised than others.
The result is a series of maps, which those attending the launch events – and hundreds of others – got to see first hand at LSE during five weeks in 2023. Similar to the mental map Sana created as troops rolled endlessly past her family home, these maps tell individual stories. There are also pictures – a door penetrated by a bullet, a peaceful looking garden, numerous buildings reduced to rubble. All of them are images of daily life – hope, destruction, normality and trauma.
“This is a homage to Iraq,” Sana says. “It is for all the Iraqis still with us, and those who have lost their lives over the past 20 years. I hope the work will amplify Iraqi voices, their stories, memories and traumas. They have only had a brief encounter with the spotlight around the 2003 invasion, after all.”
While the exhibition in London may have finished, the stories amassed through the project endure. A digital archive includes the 15 maps created collaboratively by the researchers and participants, as well as images shared during its curation. There is also a book – Rupturing Architecture: Spatial Practices of Refuge in Response to War and Violence in Iraq, 2003–2023 – due to be released by Bloomsbury later this year.
That will include Sana’s own personal feelings towards Iraq, many of which are very similar to those she has heard through this project. There are buildings she remembers from home, and heritage sites she encountered during her architecture studies, that the events of the past 20 years have erased. She, too, still has family in the country. As such, this project is also an enduring homage to her life and those she has lost.
Displacement hero image
Sana’s research does not only focus on Iraq.
Much of it is channelled through the Displacement Studies Research Network , which she founded in 2017, and the Justice and Imagination in Global Displacement (JIGD) collective. Through them, she – and colleagues across the University and more widely – work with people from every corner of the world where injustices lay. It helps individuals come to terms with what has happened, to tell their stories, and to celebrate their past, present and future through all manner of media. It also looks for ways to use their experiences to bring about broader change that will benefit other displaced communities. As such, the many lessons learned through the Ruptured Domesticity project will continue to inspire and influence her research.

The impacts of war do not stop when the weapons are silenced or when the bombs cease to fall. By engaging deeply with the aftermath of violence – in homes, cities and at borders – new possibilities for sharing emerge, facilitating a process of living with and moving beyond traumatic memories and experience towards a hopeful future. It is through the acknowledgment and sharing of these memories that healing begins.

Sana MurraniDr Sana Murrani
Associate Professor (Spatial Practice)

Dr Sana Murrani