Paul Gerard, an American journalist, is working on a thesis about some Middle Eastern religions, focusing on the communication between a large occupying country and a small nation entangled in occupation issues. When the US-led war on Iraq begins in 2003, Gerard is instructed by his newspaper to immediately leave New Jersey and head to Baghdad to closely observe and write about future events under the fervent title "Liberating Mesopotamia." On the eve of his departure, Gerard tells his wife that he is unsure whether his writing will be a popular work, a historical distraction, or rise above the current dismal narratives about great and small nations' relations.

Reflecting on the recent American war, "Shards in the Eyes of Baghdad" emerges, narrated by Jasim Al-Mutair through the protagonist Paul Gerard. The narrator uses the first-person perspective, presenting the story as a series of diaries, confessions, and thoughts that frame the novel's discourse. It reveals much awareness of the dominant state's control on war and peace - "America" - and the dominance of the Arab authoritarian ruler, "Saddam Hussein," former president of Iraq, and the singularity of authoritative discourse where the ruler speaks, and others must listen. As Saddam Hussein's shadow suited America, or rather was created by it to control Mesopotamia, the narrator seems biased toward Iraq despite being American, pointing out America’s grave error in invading Iraq: "The American decision-maker initially viewed the world with joyful eyes, not realizing the decision was the result of great efforts built on a warehouse of lies poured into the Pentagon and the CIA, suggesting America would face a disaster more severe than the harvest of September 11..."

Amid these events, the narrator details the numerous protests in art and literary capitals in the West, all decrying the war, along with scenes of some mothers of transcontinental soldiers expressing their fears before and after their sons’ departures: "What a disaster... our children might not return safely." In this catastrophic atmosphere, fate seems pregnant with serious events confronting Gerard from the moment he, alongside American soldiers, enters at a Kuwaiti border point until he reaches Baghdad after three long weeks in the desert before the war's end. The events unfold over two years until Gerard receives approval one night from his newspaper’s editorial board to leave the capital of a thousand and one nights, as he likes to call it, on an open vacation to sweat it out not at a hotel in Baghdad but at his desk in New Jersey, near his wife and two children.

There, he begins his journey with familiar writing, carrying many emotions, significant events, and diverse memories from a burdensome city. These will form his intellectual excursion once settled in New Jersey, focusing on crafting his anticipated book about events in Iraq from March 2003 to January 2005 and the dynamism of the American relationship with Mesopotamia. In his novel, "Shards in the Eyes of Baghdad," Jasim Al-Mutair once again proves himself a towering figure in Iraqi and Arab literary scenes alike.