Communal kitchen, three shampoo bottles in the bath, a shared window - it would appear to be an entirely normal shared apartment - that is if there were not harem pant clad watchmen standing in front of the door wielding machine guns. Susanne Fischer and her flat mates live in Northern Iraq, in Kurdish Sulimania - a place of relative peace in a country gone awry. They hail from the most disparate countries of the world and have come to train Iraqi journalists, to teach them freedom of opinion and independent reporting. At home each woman would have an apartment, friends, perhaps a husband. They have left this all behind for a temporary life with strangers.

Recorded Monday, May 21, 2007 at Goethe-Institut Chicago.