walrus march 2008 iraq art

8/14/2019 Walrus March 2008 Iraq Art

1/6

the walrus

72

Seeing the Iraq Museum strippedbare, says Iraqi painter HanaMal Allah, one of the few artists

to continue working in Baghdad dur-ing the occupation, was like having myheart ripped out.

Television viewers in the West mayrecall the horric images of looting in

April 2003, the early days of the inva-sion of Iraq, dismissed casually by Don-ald Rumsfeld with his infamous Stuffhappens remark. But for Iraqis suchas Mal Allah, whose beautiful, scorchedcanvases seem literally imprinted bythe ongoing war, the destruction andlooting of the Iraq Museum was not

art

a culture in exile

Baghdads artistic exodus

by Hadani Ditmars

just a national catastrophe; it was agrim foreshadowing of the cultural de-struction to follow.

I am going to light a re in para-dise and to pour water on to Hell, theeighth-century Iraqi woman poet, sing-er, and Su saint Rabia wrote, so thatboth veils may vanish altogether. Asthe res of conict engulf Iraq, I am re-minded of this verse by Rabia. But thewords of poets are cheap now, as trad-itional music is drowned out by theclamour of automatic weapons, bombs,and the divisive rhetoric of those whobelieve God is on their side. Rabiaswords capture the essence of what it

Al-Shahbender, Mutanabi Streets literary caf, was destroyed by acar bomb in March 2007.Photograph by Hadani Ditmars

is to be an Iraqi artist today, caughtbetween a battle for survival and thestruggle to overcome the image ofIraq the cradle of civilization asan empty landscape of terror.

While life under Saddam and sanc-tions was harsh, artists, writers, andperformers found ways to survive. De-

spite hardships created by the embar-go and the excesses of a police state,the theatre scene thrived in the 1990s,pushing the envelope politically withlayered language and double meaningsin ways the state-run press could not.Dozens of private art galleries opened,and the stoic Iraqi National Symphony

Orchestra played on, albeit with frayedviolin strings and cracked oboe reeds.

Now, thanks to the fatal combina-tion of Islamist militias, criminal an-archy, and violent occupation, theculture that sustained Iraqis throughhard times has broken down, perhapsirrevocably. The theatres and galleriesthat once helped make Baghdad a cul-tural and intellectual capital of the Arabworld have closed. The book market onMutanabi Street once the centre ofIraqs literary scene and animated dis-cussions on everyone from Mahfouzto Whitman has been bombed, anda de facto ban on live music has meant


2/6

73

march 2008

that even al maqam al Iraqi (tradition-al Iraqi sung love poetry) is no longerheard, not even at weddings. The na-tional orchestra, which attempted afew furtive post-invasion concertsunder armed guard, has been silenced,and many of Iraqs artists have joinedthe roughly 2 million other Iraqis who

have ed death threats and chaos for alife in exile.

Artists in Iraq have always been a lit-mus test by which to measure the

state of things. Even as oil companiesand black marketeers prospered dur-ing the embargo years and artists werereduced to a stark choice between foodand canvas, medicine and violin strings,they managed to hang on. Culture wasa form of resistance to bombings,

Saddam, and sanctions, and to theharsh circumstances of life for the 95percent of Iraqi society that was notpart of the Baathist elite or the presi-dents inner circle. Physical infrastruc-ture can always be rebuilt, but howdo you rebuild a culture and societytraumatized by decades of war, sanc-tions, oppression, and occupation?

Indeed, what hope remains for a re-surgence of Iraqi culture from the ashesof war and despair when its creative

and intellectual resources have van-ished? Sadly, the siege mentality thatinspired Baghdadi artists in the 1990shas been replaced by fear and chaosthat inspire only prot making in thebooming security market. When Ithink of the state of culture in Iraq to-day, I think of a once-promising youngcellist friend who used to dream of aninternational performing career. Nowhe is working as a mercenary.

And, most poignantly, with thevoices of poets and players silenced,there is no one left to document thevery death of culture in Iraq. Thosewho have not been killed or exiled aredoomed to have their fates articulat-ed by sound bites of televised horror.The caricatured reduction of 27 millionpeople to mini-Saddams that once typ-ied mainstream media portrayals ofIraqis before the invasion has been re-placed by a terrible new cartoon: Iraqisas mad suicide bombers, magicallytransformed from secular to sectarianwithin a few years of occupation. The

victims of the new terror are labelled asits perpetrators.

Even before the 2003 invasion, therewere disturbing signs. Due to the

twin terrors of sanctions and Saddam,fundamentalism, poverty, and violentcrime were on the rise, and Iraqs pub-

lic education system once the bestin the Arab world was in a sham-bles. A whole generation of angry, un-employed youths who could not affordto get married was seduced by Holly-wood action movies and the promiseof Islam. Women, who had only a dec-ade earlier constituted half of the civilservice and 40 percent of doctors, sawtheir role in public life eroding, a fore-shadowing of their post-invasion real-ity that saw the constitution rewritten

along sectarian lines and Iraqs secularand relatively liberal civil code substan-tially replaced by sharia law.

In the fall of 2003, I met up withmany of my artist friends to see howthey were faring. I found playwrightOmram Tamimi drinking chai at theNational Theatre newly manned bygrim-faced armed guards and de-spairing of the new self-censorshipthat has followed the invasion. WhenI asked him why no one was writing

new plays about the invasion or the oc-cupation, he replied, Before, we hadone Saddam, and we knew who to beafraid of. Now we have dozens, andwere afraid of whom we might offend.Six months later, the National Theatrewas closed and Tamimi was living inexile in Cairo, working as a stagehandon an Egyptian soap opera.

It has never been easy for artistsin Iraq, conrms Saadi Youssef, anelder statesman of Iraqi culture, manof letters, and nomadic exile in his earlyseventies whose calling card lists hisUxbridge, London, address and sayssimply, poet. Youssef knows where-of he speaks: he was persecuted andimprisoned for his Communist Partymembership in the 1960s and 1970s,when the cia was supplying Baathistswith names of Iraqi Communists, aswell as for his outspoken poetry.

As Youssef points out, there wasa brief golden age for the arts in Iraq,which roughly coincided with thereign of Saddams predecessor, Ahmed


3/6


4/6

75

Tamimi despairs o the new sel-censorship that has ollowed the invasion. Beore, we had one Saddam,and we knew who to be araid o. Now we have dozens, and were araid o whom we might ofend.

Hassan al-Bakr. Until his demise, in1979, newly nationalized oil revenueswere funnelled into public art, literarymagazines, theatres, and galleries, as

well as a successful campaign to elim-inate illiteracy.

Things began to change as Saddamrose to power. Hundreds of thousandsof young men were sacriced on thebattleeld with Iran, and cultural re-sources were drained for the war chest.The thirteen years of draconian sanc-tions that followed Saddams invasionof Kuwait made life miserable for Iraqicivilians while entrenching the regimespower, and posed new challenges for

Iraqs artists. But now, sighs Youssefwith melancholic resignation, decry-ing the lack of security and the end ofthe once-secular state, this is the worstits ever been.

Adnan al-Sayegh, another Iraqipoet exiled in London, concurs. Afterfleeing Iraq under threat of deathwhen one of his poems offended Sad-dams regime, al-Sayegh decided to re-turn to his homeland in the spring of2006. At a public reading in Basra, an

armed Shia militiaman walked in andthreatened to cut out his tongue, callinghis poem Slightly Mischievous Ver-ses sacrilegious. Terried, al-Sayeghed back to London. After Saddam,we thought there would be freedom,he explains from his central Londonat, but its still dangerous to publisheven now.

A friend of al-Sayeghs, a poet and journalist, wrote an article about al-Sayeghs spring reading in Basra andthe incident with the militiaman butwas too afraid to put his name on thearticle. We are afraid now, says al-Sayegh of artists in Iraq, momentar-ily forgetting his own recent exile, ofincluding any religious element in ourwork. Artists cannot depict a mosque intheir paintings; writers cant write any-thing about Islam. We are all afraid ofoffending the extremists. Yet the priceof exile is particularly dear for writers,he suggests. While music and visualarts can transcend words, the speci-city of language and place more often

than not get lost in the translation to anew life far from home.

I have an old friend, recounts al-Sayegh, a director of a magazine in

Iraq his name is not for publish-ing, please he sent me an email last

year saying now nally that Saddamis gone, please send me your poemsto publish. We were friends for twenty

years. He was against Saddam as well,so my father sent him the poems, and afew days later he said, If I publish thesepoems, my magazine will be burned tothe ground within forty-eight hours.

We were waiting all this time forfreedom, continues al-Sayegh, the

tension rising in his voice, and thesepeople, these extremists, take it awayfrom us before we can taste it. Im afraidfor the life of my friend now. When myfriend sent this email, I was confusedand didnt understand why he couldntpublish my poems. But after I went toIraq in April and was threatened my-

self, I understand the situation. Its justchaos now.

W

hen an old theatre contact of mine

in Baghdad put me in touch withMuqdad Madlom, a sixty-year-old writ-er, photographer, director, and actor,I was glad to discover that some Iraqishave not lost their famous sense ofhumour.

Madlom sent me a series of screen-plays he had been working on that cen-tre on tragic tales of soldiers forced toght in a war they dont want, and leav-ing behind beautiful love interests, thecentral theme of every maqam ever

written. One of his screenplays, TheBombs Nipple, is about a soldier pull-ing the clip from a grenade and ashingback to his lovers breasts.

Before the invasion, Madlom was anactor at the National Theatre, and earlyin the occupation he was the managerof a new television station. Now, he

Ar t


5/6

the walrus

76

wrote, Im the head of the drama de-partment at Iraqi state television, butIm going to leave because the drama onthe streets is greater than that on TV.

He also said that he cant work with re-ligious fanatics . . . its impossible. Thereis nothing I can write about. Even fora brave new broadcaster, it seems, it is

year zero in Iraq.One morning I eagerly opened an-

other email from Madlom. He apolo-gized for his late response to my lastmissive, stating matter of factly, myson got shot in his arm today, he is acamera man. sorry, muqdad

In his last email to me, he promised

to write within 4 days . . . i have to man-age few things with my son . . . Im stillwaiting.

Baghdadi playwright and directorHamid al-Maleky, who was harassedunder Saddams regime for havinga friend in the opposition and laterforced to write the screenplay of Sad-dams life for Iraqi state television, wasrecently threatened by thugs he be-lieves were from al Qaeda. He ed toSyria for his own safety, and because

a creative life had become impossiblein Iraq.

The invasion brought about therise of radical Islam, he tells me, rail-ing against the new tyranny of peoplehe calls bowers in reference tothe Muslim prostrations and thesepeople are against art. Of course heequally blames the appalling lack of se-curity and stability for the demise ofIraqi culture. But the censorship of thenew radical Islamists, he says, is moreterrible than that of Saddam . . . At leastwe knew what Saddam wanted, but wecant understand what these religioustypes are after.

Now, from the relative safety of Syria,he continues to write screenplays fora Cairo-based, Iraqi-run station calledAl Baghdadia. A current project is aboutan Egyptian who goes to Iraq to ghtUS troops something al-Maleky sayshed never be able to write from Bagh-dad. As for the arts in Iraq, they are onpermanent vacation. For now, he says,the culture of death holds sway.

London-based Iraqi cultural activistand artist Rashad Selim, who helps

run the International Network for Con-temporary Iraqi Artists, points out that

it is not merely Islamic extremism thatis threatening Iraqi culture and society,but a larger political strategy, the Salva-dor option, adopted by the Americansafter John Negroponte took over fromPaul Bremer.

This was a deliberate policy, saysSelim, by which paramilitary deathsquads were formed to destabilize Iraqand to foment sectarianism. Anyonewho was politically outspoken bethey academics, journalists, poets, or

artists became a target of these deathsquads. The end result was to create a

state of total chaos and terror, and thede facto destruction of any public in-tellectual life.

More than 340 academics have beenmurdered in post-invasion Iraq, andwhat is truly frightening about theassassins, often hooded or maskedin balaclavas, is that we dont knowwhos doing this and why, says Selim.Whats going on, he says, isnt justabout the death of Iraqi culture itsabout a larger struggle between theforces of civilization and barbarism.

Life is hell now in Iraq, conrmsHana Mal Allah, as if the horror sceneson the news needed any embellishment.Nevertheless, it is intriguing to hear thisfrom a forty-nine-year-old painter whochose to continue living there.

Although almost all of the galleriesin Iraq are now closed and Mal Allah

Im the head o the drama department at Iraqi state television,but Im going to leave because the drama on the streets is greater.

balint zsako


6/6

77

Ar t

exhibits mainly in Jordan and Europe,until recently she created most of herwork from her home studio in Bagh-dad. She holds a Ph.D. from the Bagh-dad College of Fine Arts, where shehas lectured for years. For Mal Allah,her artwork is an afrmation of Iraqiculture and of her own identity, in the

midst of destruction. Everything wehave built has collapsed . . . public lifeis completely broken, and most of myfriends have emigrated, she says. Butthere is one way to say to the new bar-barian, We will survive. That way is:we must create and produce mean-ingful work.

The new series she is working onconsists of distressed tableaux of green,black, and red that suggest a scorchedIraqi ag, bloodied and battered but

still deant. Now I am painting withthe tools of destruction, she says. Herwork uses old bullet casings, burnedand blackened canvases, and surfacesslashed by knives in a way that is atonce visceral and violent yet subtle andsensitive. Mal Allah also creates largeworks on wire-framed tissue that canbe collapsed into a seven-centimetrecube suitable for hasty smugglingout of war zones. So far, my most suc-cessful work was from my exhibition in

Amman in 2005, she says. That is thefate of the Iraqi artist to create underthe very worst circumstances.

Mal Allah contends that, unlike thesiege of Sarajevo, which inspired

a virtual cultural renaissance, the cur-rent situation in Iraq is a fear-fuelledcreative black hole. But ironically, thewar has spawned an interest in Iraqi artand culture in the West especially inthe US and the UK, the two countriesthat led the invasion. Just as the bestpieces looted from the Iraq Museumoften ended up in private collectionsin the West, so are the jewels of Iraqsliving culture arriving in European andAmerican capitals.

When I last spoke to Mal Allah, shehad given up her Baghdad studio forpermanent residence in the UK. Hermost successful show to date, Sophis-ticated Ways: Destruction of an AncientCity, was a collaboration with RashadSelim at theAyagallery in London thispast summer. Three of her pieces were

purchased by the British Museum.In fact, London has developed a

lively Iraqi culture in exile, with suchrecent productions as Hassan Abdul-razzaks play Baghdad Wedding. Thestory of three young Iraqis caught upin a tragic post-invasion love triangle, itchronicles the demise of a culture and

society by proxy.How long will it be before the exiles

can return, and with them the spirit ofan ancient nation? Will they ever re-turn? And if not, what real hope isthere for reconstruction?

I think of a young composer friendwho, amid the deprivation and isolationof the economic and cultural embargoin the late 1990s, produced a beautiful

symphonic poem called Heartbeat ofBaghdad. The piece paid homage tothe spirit of Baghdad and its people, aplace that had survived centuries of in-vasions, occupations, coups, civil wars,and sieges. When I met him after the2003 invasion, he was not in the moodfor music. The situation is too grave

now, he conded, for me to think ofanything but survival. The last I heard,he was driving a taxi in Amman.

Perhaps the only hope for the fu-ture of Iraq is that somewhere outthere he is still writing, composing,playing imagining a new symphonyfor his homeland. That somewhere outthere he is keeping the ame of hisculture alive.S

walrus march 2008 iraq art

Documents