Baghdad In Images

This was one of only two times I saw Americans in Baghdad. A convoy passes through Abu Nawas street. I was taking photographs of a sculpture of Shahrayar and Abu Nawas at the park as they sped past. The police officer warned me not to photograph them.

The second time was at the airport. A plane full of KBR employees (probably from the embassy) heading to DUBAI. The only time I was at an airport and the line-up for "foreigners" was longer than that of "locals". I mean LONG.

An Iraqi humvee at an Iraqi-controlled checkpoint. The soldier told me not to take photos despite the fact that there was no sign reading "NO PHOTO". The blast walls are painted with images of Ancient Sumerian Gods and Goddesses.
They protect the French Cultural Centre of Baghdad.

Checkpoints in Baghdad are useless. They pass a metal and explosives detector by your car every couple of blocks. Some of their detectors don't even work. If they catch a signal, you can get off with simply saying you have a metal filling in your tooth and a bottle of perfume.

Then we ask ourselves how these car bombs go off in a city that is littered with checkpoints.

Remains of a car bomb left as a souvenir.

I was re-aquianted with Haifa Street as I was forced to walk through it alone to get to the Ministry of Culture. The roads were closed due to tightening of security after the Ministry of Justice was bombed in October. It is (was) right up the street.

(This is Not Haifa Street- January 2009. By me)

He wasn't there to protect me. But I made it through just fine.



The Ministry of Justice, in case we forgot what a double car bomb looked like.
A daycare centre on the bottom level exists no more.

The "Rusafa" electricity control centre.
I bet their employees work 2 hours a day, just like the electricity in Baghdad.

Goodbye Baghdad.

I hope to meet you again one day where the streets don't need armed men to protect them from other armed men.



(BONUS PHOTO!)



2Pac is alive! He's in Baghdad chilling with Jesus, Avril Lavigne and Beyonce!

Retrospect

Its hard to believe that I was in my soul's land only fourteen days ago.

"Black Gold" somewhere between Baghdad and Basra

I wrote this on the plane flying over Iraq on December 9, the day following the quintuple synchronized explosions that rocked the city and left 150 mother's grieving, and 450 more tending to their wounded loved ones. How many more died of their injuries?

(...) How a group of human beings could choose to blow up hundreds of people is absolutely unbelievable and undefendable. What has happened to my country? How can I ever return after enduring such intense fear? Those who can overcome such fear are strong. I see my family and those around me, with nerves made of steel. They found my state of shock shocking.
I don't believe I have the strength to endure the utter destruction that unfolded in Baghdad on that black day more than once in my life. My people have endured hundreds and expect to endure hundreds more.
This makes me spoiled. And This makes the people of Baghdad a forgotten tribe, forced to fend for themselves.

Forced to Normalize the Abnormal.

On T.V., we watched members of parliament give their "thoughts" about the explosions.
E M P T Y words. Thoughts never stopped innocent people from being murdered on a day-to-day basis. Nor have "thoughts" ever stopped criminals from murdering the innocent.

Abu Ahmed is the name of the man who drove me around Baghdad most of the time I was there. His daughter, Ola, was injured in the blast near AlZawraa. She is in grade 1. All the windows in her school shattered, and she was injured in her head with glass and required stitches.
There are over 1000 students in the school. If they were not injured physically, can you imagine the psychological trauma that they suffered?
Abu Ahmed's daughter told him that she does not want to go to school anymore.

The elementary school is near the Institute of Fine Arts. The target for the bombing.

My cousin was telling me a story.
When her own daughter Nadine was in grade 1, an American rocket hit her school, broke through the roof of her classroom and got wedged into the ceiling fan.
All the students ran out of the classroom with the teacher.
Nadine was left alone in the corner of the classroom, with the unexploded rocket staring down at her head, crying hysterically in a daze.

That day, she too told her mother that she does not want to go to school anymore.

She is in grade 6 now.

Even the children of Iraq are stronger than me.

Tashkeel

December 07, 2009
Baghdad, Iraq

Today was my second visit to the Ministry of Culture. I met with the editors of Tashkeel, a magazine that is both produced and printed in Iraq about Iraqi modern and contemporary art.

I learnt much today that I very much want to share with the world, but it will require more time and dedication to my writing to truly give an detailed account of my impressions and my learnings at the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art. I had great privilege today to not only visit and view the works, but also to talk frankly with artists and writers that work within the Iraqi art scene. The experience I had there today and the information I received from these good people will affect me in my own practice forever, on many levels.

Art and cultural production in Iraq is not dead, despite the waning pulse line of the city's cultural life. Today I met people that work with a passion for the arts and culture of Iraq in environments and conditions that are... unfit. Stifling. Isolated. Underfunded (if funded at all). Dangerous. But they persevere, and for that, all of us who work in the fields of art and culture must applaud them.

The employees at Tashkeel have done a good job in archiving the works at the museum both on paper and digitally, and have a humble library. However, they need books, and resources to connect them to the world.

Although the magazine is produced and printed in house, they currently have no where to sell the copies. Hundreds of copies are sitting in the office, away from the eyes and minds of Iraqis and non-Iraqis alike to take in the fruit of their labour.

As I meditate on what I learnt today, I encourage my readers to read some of Dr. Nada Shabout's writings about the events that unfolded at the museum after the fall.

On related note, I had the pleasure of viewing more of the museum's collection of Iraqi art. My eyes devoured what was left of the fantastic pieces after the looting of 2003...

(Suad Attar, 1975)

I am madly in love with the works of Mahood Ahmed (below). I cannot describe the power that his works have over me.

A Sore for Sight, Eyes

December 06, 2009
Baghdad, Iraq

A practicing artist in Iraq today is one to be applauded. The daily struggle for electricity, gas, petrol, food and money leaves little time for artistic practice, let alone inspiration and access to materials. I went to the Ministry of Culture today and asked myself what they were doing inside their offices. There are many employees. There is little cultural life in Baghdad.

On the way to the Ministry of Culture we passed many sites of devastation. Al Beit al Iraqi, once upon a time a gallery and cultural center, is a sad site. The owner, Amal al Khudhairy, shed her tears publicly after an American "smart" bomb destroyed one of Baghdad's most treasured cultural spaces in 2003. It remains gated and vacant, with the sign whispering stories of Iraq's cultural past.

I stood below the Freedom Monument yesterday and I tried very hard to feel free.
What used to be called King Ghazi Square became Tahrir (Liberation) Square in the mid-50's. Lucky for the Americans, they didn't have to rename one of Baghdad's most remarkable landmarks after they claimed "Camp Victory" in 2003.
A bomb ripped through a building a stones throw away from the Freedom Monument some while ago. I don't know what I would have done had Jawad's Selim final masterpiece been scathed by the attack... how many hearts would have broken? How many sculptors would retire their tools? How many painters would burn their brushes?

The most disturbing part of my day was driving past what remains of the Ministry of Justice. Bombed only a few weeks ago on October 25th, on a day that became known to media consumers as "Bloody Sunday", at least 132 people lost their lives in that attack. I cannot express my sorrow and sympathy to those who lost their lives or their loved ones, nor can I speak more about the utter devastation of the site. I was left speechless, and will let the pictures do the same to you.

No one should have to witness or endure such murder, and tragic destruction. No one.

There is so much symbolism in this city that is unexplainable. To bomb the Ministry of Justice, with the statue of King Faisal I unscathed only meters away. His grandson, King Faisal II, was killed on July 14, 1958 in Abdel Karim Qasim's Military coup.

What used to be Saddam's Center of Modern Art became the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art after the fall in 2003. It is now the Ministry of Culture. Only the ground floor is used as exhibition space, currently holding 4 different exhibitions. The first was a joint exhibition of a father and his daughter from Karbala. Another exhibition was of a body of work by an artist called Karim Al Amery.

I imagined these artists in their studios, or their homes, working in candlelight as the electricity cuts off throughout the night. I imagined their tools, and how and where they buy their materials, where they find their sources and their inspiration. I imagined these artists' pride in having exhibitions in their native land, and wondered what their aspirations are to exhibit outside of Iraq.
I respect these artists.

As I was on my way out, I noticed a darkened room. I asked the man in charge of showing me around if I could enter, and he allowed me in.
Nothing can describe the joy I felt as I immediately realized that I was standing in a room filled with paintings and sculptures by Iraq's "Ruwad" (Pioneers).

Naziha Salim, Mohammed Arif, Shaker Hassan... their works in front of my eyes. My eyes went cross-eyed (inchiqalit, as we say) on a painting by Saadi al Kaabi, and another by Mahood.

The ingenuity and boldness, the confidence and courageousness of these works are unparalleled by any other Iraqi art I have seen, and I so wish that the state of Iraqi art on this native land will one day return to the level of the Ruwad. Because if the Iraqi artists had it once, we still have it, and will have it again. The artistic and cultural heritage that we have is so powerful but sadly it has been disrespected time and time again with the looting of our museums and the threats made to our intellectuals and artists. With so many of our cherished artists living outside of Iraq, art in the diaspora has flourished while art within Iraq became reduced to rubble, with no disrespect to the working artists that remained in Iraq and courageously continued their artistic practice.

Power to the people, through brushes, not bullets.

Breakdown

December 05, 2009
Baghdad, Iraq


I went to visit my aunt in Yarmuk hospital yesterday.
The security guard asks the visitors to put aside guns and cameras while inside the hospital. Pray that my aunt is better soon so that she can leave the dilapidated hospital and return home. The hospitals in Baghdad are not places to be healed, rather, they are places where you can get even sicker and contract diseases from the lack of hygiene.

I have so much to say but it is all broken up. So I will say what I have to say in pieces.


Life goes on.

The palm trees still stand proud.

The Iraqi people carry (too much) pride.

Al Rasheed street is in ruins.

Middle class neighborhoods of the past are now slums.

Saddam ruined this country.

The new generation of Iraqi youth are the hope.

Almost all Iraqis love their country greatly and deeply.

Iraqi real estate is expensive. (?!)

Family is precious.

The past is the past and Iraq will never return to its previous states. It can only create new versions of itself.

Baghdad is enveloped in walls.

There are hints of sectarianism everywhere.

Americans are hiding in their bases and are nowhere to be found on the ground. Only in the sky in their invasive blackhawk helicopters.

The Green Zone and the American Embassy are on prime Baghdadi real estate on a large stretch of the banks of the Tigris but they have obstructed any form of beauty with ugly blast walls that line the whole shoreline.

........................................

Notes From a Dying City

December 03, 2009
Baghdad, Iraq

Despite its reputation as a city of tragedies, Baghdad's pulse still beats on. Movements are slowly unravelling in a city that has been isolated for over 30 years. Blocked from all entry and exit points, the people of Baghdad, tourist-less, own their city. The alleys, the garbage, the dust, the old homes, the palm trees, the monuments the media made famous, are their own.
When its only your eyes that fall on filth, will you clean it or will your eyes become accustomed to the accumulation of decades of dust and dirt? When it is only your eyes that fall on beauty, will it cease to become beautiful or will you try to maintain its charm?
Those are the questions I find myself asking here in Baghdad, five years later.

Despite its reputation as a city of great beauty, Baghdad is still plagued by both random and organized violence, insecurity, and a foreign occupation. Flying into Baghdad, the view from the top was breathtaking. The landscape of the city is ancient. The criss crossing of the Tirgris through a maze of fertile land, a bustling cityscape, and ancient landmarks makes it crystal clear that the land that Baghdad is built on is special on many levels. Special enough to want to invade, and have for yourself.

Destruction defines this city.
Tragedies are plentiful.
The perseverance of the people is highly respectable, especially for those of us that have led relatively sheltered lives in politically stable environments. There is hunger and thirst, but the people are proud. Hunger and thirst both metaphorically and on a real level, of course.

The lack of a tourist experience in Baghdad has created a void too great to try to amend. In the past 25 years as a visitor to my native land, I have never seen a tourist. War tourists, perhaps, or what I find better defined as NGO workers, journalists or activists. War profiteers aplenty, better defined as opportunists with a macabre disposition. But a tourist who chose to travel to Iraq to visit ancient sites, tourist attractions, or cultural events? The closest we have gotten to that is a tourist like me; an Iraqi with a foreign passport who has been denied the chance to regularly visit their native land due to the past 40 years of it alternating between different wars, a brutal dictatorship, US interference, and economic sanctions.

I suppose this feeling comes strong to me right now because I have been a tourist in many of Iraq's neighboring countries in the past five years. I recognize that this is a privilege that not many Iraqi's enjoy. In the recent past, I have been a tourist in the UAE, Lebanon, Syria and Amman. These are countries that thrive on tourism, and the people develop an interaction with their visitors- they learn, they teach, they share, they serve and they grow.

My hope for my native land, at this point in my contemplations, is that one day the doors to this magnificent country will open up to people of all kinds so they can share in the beauty of Baghdad. I want people to see why I love Iraq so much. I want them to recognize that we are all from this land, that it belongs to all of us. The history here is undeniable, but today, there is a chokehold on this little chunk of land in the middle of the east. I hope that the future will loosen the grip of the greedy and give back to the needy, because we all need to see Baghdad before we die. Or yet, before Baghdad dies.

From an artists point of view...

I was really excited to see that my painting "Inanna in Damascus" had generated dialogue on Arabic Online newspaper ELAPH in the past couple of days. As an Iraqi woman, painter aside, I was interested to see what kind of discussion was stirred up by the exposure to a painting about Iraqi female prostitution, a crisis that I consider very important to expose. 

First and foremost, I must give my thanks to Dr. Suki Falconberg who was the first to respond to my painting by way of writing an article about it which subsequently got posted on quite a number of blogs, primarily American Chronicle. It was through Dr. Falconberg's article that it was translated to Arabic by Mohammad Hamed and posted on the ELAPH website.

I highly enjoyed reading the feedback, and they are words that I will take into consideration. However, a few comments disturbed me and I wanted to take the chance to stand up for my beliefs and for my representation of these beliefs. 

I do not paint for fame. I am not interested in how the market values my art and I do not want to be known for being a "controversial artist". I paint for my people, and I paint to generate dialogue amongst people. Not only from the art elite, but from the public, regardless of who they may be.

That is the reason I was excited to see that people responded to my painting.

Second, I would be the last person to exploit my country and the crisis it is currently passing through. I am not one to believe that one must stand up for their country for good or bad. I am not blinded by nationalism and I have no allegiance to a flag. I am an Iraqi woman and this history belongs to me, as much as any other person who would like to claim it. War is not an honourable event, and unfortunately for Iraq, its crisis is public. The injustices that the land and people of Iraq are passing through are results of many agents and players. 

I respond to these injustices by paint because I believe viewers should know about them and to be able to recognize who the key players are. At least to think critically about the images before them. 

Prostitution has never been a secret. There has been prostitution of women of all nationalities since time immortal. And I agree with many of the commenters that wanted to remind me that Saddam Hussein and his sons Uday and Qusay played a huge role in the shaming of Iraqi women. But this painting was not about Saddam. We are still suffering the consequences of Saddams 35 year reign, and this is one of its consequences. 

Every social problem that Iraq is suffering from is a consequence of Saddam Hussein, from illiteracy, sectarianism, to the shortage of electricity! But he is only part of the picture. It is not the big picture.

Alot of commenters asked me where I was when other injustices were happening to Iraq and its people. Well, this is but one of my paintings and there will be many more. I am a young artist and I still have much more to say.

Click here to be taken to the article on ELAPH.com

Click here to read the original article by Suki Falconberg

Treating The Void

My uncle inspires me. He is a doctor in Baghdad. In 2006, he was threatened with his life and the life of his family if he continues to practice as a surgeon in Baghdad's Medical City (Madinat al Tib). After a short fearful stint in Najaf, he returned to Baghdad, at his original post where he remains to this day, despite the threats on his life. Many of his colleagues have left, to all corners of the country and of the world to look for a better life, but he remained in Baghdad. In my family, three other doctors have left. He stayed. For it is his courage, his beliefs and his solidarity with his land and his people that has kept him there. I am honored and proud to be his niece. 

Warzones are no easy workplace. Most of the educated, intellectual, creative Iraqi's have left Iraq since the start of the war in 2003, joining the rest of our educated crop that left during Saddams stifling regime. You can find Iraqi doctors, architects, artists, writers and thinkers all over the world, but mostly in the U.K., U.A.E., Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and sprinkled around Europe and North America. The unfortunate result of the exodus of trained brains is a severe shortage in the intellectual, cultural and medical fields in Iraq. What happened to the reputation of Iraq as the standard of education and cultural thinkers in the Arab world? What is going to happen to the generations of Iraqi youth who have lost their right to be taught, trained and treated by the elders who have worked hard on educating themselves and educating others? Who will fill that void?

CLICK TO READ MORE ABOUT THE SITUATION IN MEDICAL CITY IN BAGHDAD

The Animal in Man

Robert Fisk recently penned an article on Margaret Hassan. She is not forgotten.

The Tragic Last Moments Of Margaret Hassan

By Robert Fisk

08 August, 2008

The Independent

READ The Tragic Last Moments of Margaret Hassan

Rally for Iraq

So yeah, there might be alot of NGO's and alot of humanitarian agency's and stuff and it all seems so far fetched for the average person to get involved with. At least thats how I feel most the time. I have my own reservations about NGO's and intentions and incentives. 

All this to say.... I found something for the average person who does genuinely want to help the Iraqi cause (whatever that cause may be- I have my own reservations about the Iraqi cause and intentions and incentives).

www.rallyforiraq.com

Buy a T-shirt with ''Baghdad University'' and your money goes into funding Iraqi's pursuing higher education. 

You got nothing to lose... If only everything we bought aimlessly had a higher purpose.

Lebabomb

Club 43, Gemayze, Beirut

The essence of this city cannot be expressed in words. The rush of culture and the beauty of this land has enveloped me since I arrived here a week ago. Despite the political instability surrounding the fate of Lebanon, you would never guess it. Sitting in cafe's, listening to Fairuz, and witnessing what many before me have witnessed before I even made my entry into this world... made me think of nothing else.... but Iraq.

If Iraq had not been swallowed up whole by the powers that be and the Power that was, maybe it would have continued to act as one of the major cultural centers of the Arab world. Maybe the books about Iraqi art that I find in the dusty second hand book shops wouldn't be old relics from the fifties and sixties, but contemporary publications from yesteryear. Maybe the old, crusty tourism guide to Iraq that I found in a Beirut bookstore wouldn't be an old relic from the past. Maybe I could see them myself for the first tragic time in 24 years. Maybe a non-Iraqi could be interested to visit the cradle of civilization and see where it all started in Uruk or Ur. 

Maybe, just maybe, Iraqi's here wouldn't be flocking to cities like Amman, Damascus, Beirut and Cairo as refugees but as ambassadors of art and culture, to join the flow of Arab art and culture. 

But Iraqi's have much bigger problems to deal with today than the intellectualization of our post-modern aesthetics. They have much bigger problems to deal with than interpreting post-war imagery because we are still AT war. With ourselves. With our neighbors. With our farthest counterparts in the West. With our histories. With our forgetful memories. With our traumatized childhoods. With our misled ideologies. 

If Beirut was able to resuscitate itself from crumbling into the abyss of a 15 year long civil war and emerge thirsty for life... maybe Iraq will have its chance to shine again.  

Iraq is Dying and No one is looking for the cure

No one is innocent, not in our eyes, nor in their eyes. Our tribal tendencies are at their height. 

I have endured close to two weeks of self contemplation within arms reach of my soul's land, Iraq, and I have endured the fighting urge to just pick up and go back every day. Its stronger than ever before, maybe because I know that this year is going to hold something very important for Iraq and its people. 2008. Let me clarify:

1958- Abdel Karim Qasim's military coup

1968- Baath party military coup with Hasan Al Bakr

1978- Saddamn begins his reign

1988- The Halabja massacre and the End of the Iran-Iraq war 

1998- The  UN inspections fiasco and "Operation Desert Fox"

2008- ??????????????????????????

This year, I will hold my breath. And I fear for the worst. 

Since I last set foot on my homeland in 2004, things have successively gotten worse and worse. The WORST part is that we are being lied to right to our faces. How could George Bush say that the war has made the world a better place on the 5th year since the start of this mess? Does he really think that we are idiots? 

In the past 5 years, I've seen things happen to my loved ones that I never thought could happen. The death threats, kidnappings, internal displacement, the fight for refugee status, the struggle, the exile, the murders... 

And thats just me, my family, our five-year history. 

All that and I'm not even talking about the psychological effects and the post-traumatic stress that every single Iraqi suffers from, born out of the "Shock and Awe" that they were forced to experience for a futile and ridiculous cause by the Bush Administration. As we were told. However, it would take the deaf, dumb and blind not to realize that this plan is rooted in history... Imperial history has been intertwined with Iraqi history for the past century. And it intends to be for the next century. This is a carefully studied plan, and they did not choose Iraq haphazardly. 

Read your history, educate yourself on the true intentions of American presence in Iraq.

In conclusion............ I'm bitter. 

I'm bitter because I still can't visit my soul's land. I'm bitter because I can no longer visit my home because there are strangers living in my house, going through my family photo albums and "acquiring" the only connection I still have to my homeland. 

I'm bitter because there is nothing I can do to help my family that is still struggling in Baghdad because none of our Arab Neighbors accept their presence anymore.

I'm bitter because our Arab Neighbors make it so damn apparent that those who did make it into their promise land have clearly overstayed their welcome. 

I'm bitter because I still can't taste, smell, and live within my soul's land. 

I'm bitter because there is nothing left in my soul's land.

Nothing.... no humanity, no pride, no cause, no respect, no innocence, no beauty, and no heartbeat.

I am a proud Iraqi woman, and I never thought I would ever say this. But I'm afraid that my bitterness has enveloped me beyond abayas and poosheyas. 

Iraq is dying and No One is looking for a cure to its disease.

No one is innocent. Not our neighbors in the East, the indifferent in the West, the American military, the US administrations (all of them), and especially not our own Iraqi brothers and sisters. Even our children have been stripped of their innocence. 

Utter and Total Speechlessness

I've been laying low on the blog tip for the past little while. I'm currently in the Middle East, between Amman and Damascus. I thought I would be able to write more since being here but I'm afraid its had an adverse effect. I've become a sponge, absorbing life here, trying to make sense of what Iraqi's are experiencing as refugees in both Amman and Damascus and the differences between those experiences. I'm not yet ready to write. I still feel like an outsider... Ajnabeeya. 

Inanna in Damascus

Welcome to my new painting, entitled Inanna in Damascus

I have created it for a very special exhibition that will be held at the University of Ottawa on March 08-15, 2008, entitled "Corrective Lenses: Challenging Representations of Women of Colour in Art."

I am very honoured to be a part of this show, the women involved are all inspiring and established in art, politics, academia and journalism... If any of you will be in or around Ottawa, make your way out to the U of O for the panel discussions and art starting at 4pm on Saturday March 08.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

This is the breakdown of my piece so you could have a better idea of what exactly was going through my mind:

"Inanna in Damascus" is a reinterpretation of “The Slave Market” (1867) by Jean-Leon Gerome. It has been re-imagined as the modern day depiction of the Iraqi prostitutes that are being exploited daily in clubs, brothels and hotels around Damascus.

The original Orientalist painting by Gerome is an apparent representation of a transaction between slave merchant and buyer of the 'slave' woman in the centre. It is set in an unnamed Arab country, but its assumed that it existed in Gerome’s imaginary Orient. I chose this particular painting to re-imagine for numerous reasons. It is these same connections of pimp and client, the soldier and the politician, and the Arab businessman that existed in the 19th century and today.

In "Inanna in Damascus", I chose to expose the sex industry that is currently running rampant in Middle East due to the consequences of the 2003 war in Iraq and the resulting exodus of refugees. Syria is currently housing the most refugees out of Iraq's neighboring countries, with over 1.5 million Iraqi's taking refuge there. Prostitution has become both an industry and a form of slavery, with stories of Iraqi girls either getting sold by desperate families, duped by shady 'pimps' promising them decent jobs, or out of the woman's lack of options as a refugee in a without a breadwinner and without the right to hold a working position. Inanna, the female figure, is the Sumerian goddess of sexuality and war, one of the most revered goddesses of pre-Islamic Mesopotamia. The painting represents the Arab World's most undiluted oppressor of Women, and also their most frequent client, the Saudi 'Wahabi' man. Also present is the American soldier, a reminder of the War across the border, and of the chaos that ensued out of his governments presence in Iraq. Finally, the pimp stands behind Inanna, while all four stand in front of a Syrian cityscape in the Ottoman-esque courtyard of a nightclub aptly called "Al Hurman", defined as 'the forbidden' from Arabic, with its roots in the words "Hareem/Harem" (def: women's quarters), and "Haram" (def: sin). 

Below is the original painting by Jean Leon Gerome, "The Slave Market" from 1867.

Divide and Conquer

There are very few good journalists working in Iraq that are A) Not embedded B) Not regurgitating mass information
Ghaith Abdul Ahad is one of these good journalists. Check out his work on the guardian.co.uk

LISTEN TO GHAITH ABDUL AHAD'S AUDIO INTERVIEW FROM THE GUARDIAN


To get a better idea of what Ghaith is talking about in terms of the neighborhood divisions, check out this map of Baghdad that the NYtimes has put together:


ASSESSING THE ‘SURGE’: A SURVEY OF BAGHDAD NEIGHBORHOODS

Nada Shabout

2007 was the year that I realized that there is a great academic that is doing Modern and Contemporary Arab/Iraqi art justice. Nada Shabout is a professor of Art History at the University of Northern Texas, and has recently penned a must-have book about Arab Art entitled "Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics"

CLICK HERE TO BUY IT FROM AMAZON

She wrote a great article about recent art in Iraq, public art specifically, and the new artist groups popping up. Read it below.

THE 'FREE' ART OF OCCUPATION: IMAGES FOR A 'NEW' IRAQ

Robert Fisk is A Helluva man

Our dear Mr. Fisk has written a very poignant article about the looting of archeological sites in Iraq... Please read it and be informed on one of the greatest losses of history, in history.

IT IS THE DEATH OF HISTORY

Do we even have a right to return?

You know, since the War started in 2003, with its all-around stupid name "Operation Iraqi Freedom", I never thought that the war would hit home as it did in the past five years. Hamdulilah, throughout the Iran-Iraq war and the sanctions, my family seemed spared of the tragedies all around. Instead of going into personal details, I'll tell you exactly what I mean by 'hitting home'. How about finding out that your home, in your homeland, is now 'home' to people you do not know or trust? 

Many Many Iraqi's are finding that, after being encouraged to move back to Iraq after their own stints as refugees are returning to find people, sometimes entire families, living in their home. The worst part is that the baladeeya (local community councils) have been giving people the right (and most of the time, the addresses) of these 'vacant' homes to settle in, without informing the proper owners. 

This opens the door to so many other problems that are both cause and effect of this squatter problem. Shia's being forced out of Sunni-majority areas, Sunni's being forced out of Shia-majority areas, local militias ganging up on households for whatever reason they seem not to fit the bill. What about the paperwork? Is the paperwork of the estate ownership being sold as well? What proof will the original homeowners have to reclaim their land in the near or distant future? 

Man...... what a mess....... what a mess........

CLICK TO READ AN ARTICLE BY BBC ABOUT THIS 

Iraq, the Cradle of Civilization

Watch this video with a cup of turkish coffee and contemplate how the war means so much more than what we think it does.

Be prepared... its long (about an hour), but worth every minute of your time. Its better than watching Entertainment Tonight back to back.

How many things are wrong with this headline?

"US may pause Iraq troop pull-out"

PAUSE.

The World is ending....

WOMEN IN IRAQ BURNING THEMSELVES ALIVE


Being an oil rich country is only a curse...................................

Thanks Yara

Wanna see my Art?

Most of you already know that I am a painter and a graphic designer/artist and an amateur photographer and a... ok, thats enough titles for now. I'll be putting up more art by fellow A-rabs and peers that are up and coming and should be seen. For now, here's me:

CLICK TO SEE IT ALL 

Prostitution, Iraqi style

When you have a minute, click these links and read about the plight of Iraqi prostitutes in Iraq and Syria. I'll be posting more about it soon....


PROSTITUTION IN IRAQ


THE NEW SLAVERY....


TEENAGE PROSTITUTES

Syria on my mind

Don't get it twisted... I'm still contemplating Mesopotamia... Syria being geographically part of this Ancient landscape. In todays mess of the Middle East, a new Baghdad has sprouted in Damascus. 

I found some interesting studies about the mass exodus of Iraqi Refugees in Syria. Check it out, you'll learn about 1.5 million new things. 

STUDY ON IRAQI REFUGEES BY HUMANRIGHTSFIRST.ORG


AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL ON THE IRAQI REFUGEE CRISIS

Sallaam!

Welcome to part one of part one. Welcome to Mesopotamian Contemplations, where I can finally put down all of my love, pain and anger that stems from and towards the mess that is now Iraq. Everything from politics, history, the refugee crisis, art and culture... keep tuned.