Matt & Elly begin to get to grips with the new experiences of Iraq, the coaching gets up to speed, they visit Babylon and find themselves really enjoying their visit.....until things go wrong.

Narrated in a light-hearted style, this true story of travel and sport is an entertaining and poignant account about a young squash coach and his girlfriend who travelled to Baghdad to coach the Iraqi national squash team in 1990, arriving just before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. 

For the first and only time, Matt McFahn kept a daily diary of his experiences that initially detailed coaching activity but progressed to the highs and lows of being part of a world crisis and being prevented from leaving Iraq along with all other foreign nationals.  He talks through the fun and the tears, the regime’s stronghold over the local population, seeing the military build-up to planning an escape route, Matt shares the camaraderie between fellow “Guests of Saddam” to get through a crisis that has similar connotations to the experiences and feelings many of us are dealing with during the current pandemic lockdowns.