BAGHDAD — Hashem (a pseudonym), told Al-Monitor, “I married a widow who works as a schoolteacher and lives in the city of Karbala. I did so because I needed a woman from the same academic and cultural background as mine, as I was fed up with my illiterate wife.”
Hashem said that he graduated from the Arabic department at the University of Baghdad in 1982 and then married his cousin while living in the countryside on the outskirts of Baghdad.