As 48-Hour Deadline Ticks Down, Baghdad Loses Its Bravado By Anthony Shadid | Washington Post Foreign Service | Wednesday, March 19, 2003; 3:33 PM
BAGHDAD, March 18 -- A cool, gentle breeze blew off the Tigris River, drifting over the white-washed walls of the Hawar Art Gallery. With his friends, Maher Samarai paused to appreciate the moment, then pondered Baghdad on the eve of what looks like certain war. As an Iraqi, the city is his capital. As a resident, it is his soul. And as it stands on the verge of violence, Samarai spent long moments staring out at the towering palm tree that stands over the gallery, its fluttering fronds providing shade and the reassurance of something normal. "For a week, I can't sleep. Really," Samarai finally said, methodically thumbing his string of blue worry beads. "I worry about the bridges, the homes, the beautiful buildings, our artistic scene that we built after 1991 that is going to be smashed. A lot of artists have left for cities outside Baghdad, and there is no guarantee we will gather again." His friends nodded in agreement, and savored the nostalgia. "Our art is like a white dove, and the B-52s are about to come to make them black," Samarai said. "I hate the color black." Baghdad has become an anxious, unsettled city, and the Hawar Art Gallery -- its stucco walls, stone patio and gate painted in a Mediterranean blue -- was a small window on its dread. For some of the artists there, the city was seized by fear as the passing hours of a 48-hour deadline ticked down, eroding the calm and bravado that had provided solace for residents for months. To others, Baghdad was frozen in time, overwhelmed by what is to come, putting off ordinary tasks like planning exhibitions, repairing a studio, buying supplies or contemplating a new course at the Academy of Fine Arts across the street. Samarai, for one, lamented canceling his plans to attend an art festival in Tunisia. But Baghdad has become a city of lives interrupted. It is a city still deeply scarred by the 1991 Gulf War, when a U.S.-led air campaign to drive invading Iraqi troops from Kuwait returned Baghdad to the Third World. And it is a city traumatized by 30 years of Baath Party rule. Nevertheless, President Bush's promise to Iraq's people that their "day of liberation is near" drew only smirks and disparaging insults from Samarai's group of friends, as they sipped sweetened lemon tea. "They're going to burn the forest to kill the fox. That's my idea," Samarai said. Samarai and his friends quoted the words of Maj. Gen. Stanley Maude, the British commander who entered Baghdad in 1917 to end Ottoman rule. The phrase, famous among Iraqis, translates as "We came as liberators, not as conquerors." Maude soon died of cholera and was buried in Baghdad. The British, they noted, remained in Iraq and in control of its oil for decades. "That's exactly what Bush said. Exactly the same sentence," Samarai said. "It's a flashback to when Iraqis were still without shoes, without clothes, and the oil went directly to other people's pockets. You can't trust the Westerners." Sitting around the gallery's patio, the more immediate worries of Samarai and his friends revolved around Baghdad. To many Iraqis and other Arabs, the capital is perhaps more an idea than a reality, with a past richer than its present. The painters, sculptors and ceramicists at Hawar looked beyond the city's concrete overpasses and martial boulevards, past the teeming, Shiite Muslim slum that takes its name from the Iraqi leader, President Saddam Hussein, and the urban sprawl that makes it a Middle Eastern Los Angeles. Instead, they waxed longingly about its soul, of the medieval caliph Haroun al-Rashid, of the poet Mutanabi, of the philosopher al-Hallaj. They talked of its Sumerian and Babylonian past. And they indulged in "hanin" -- an Arabic word that means longing and nostalgia -- recalling the artists and singers that brought a renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s to a city that had become a backwater. To all of them, Baghdad remains an exception. It rivals Damascus and Cairo as one of the Arab world's great capitals, they said, but is separated from them by a desert. It was once the seat of the Arab world, but thrives from the cultures of neighboring Iran and Turkey. "The city is in my blood, the ruins of its palaces, the mosques and the river," he said, over the soft strains of the call to prayer. "When I think of Baghdad, just the shadow of Baghdad, I think of gold and turquoise tiles. These two colors symbolize Baghdad." Karim Khalil interrupted him. A sculptor born in Baghdad, he said the city was its painters and singers in the 1960s. It was the Tigris River that weaves through the city. It was the palm trees that lay like a blanket across gardens and farms on its riverbanks. "Baghdad is me," he concluded. "Bush is not coming because he loves Baghdad," Khalil went on. "Americans don't care about Baghdad because it is not their city. They don't care if they destroy or demolish it. Baghdad is our city." His friend, Salman Radi, joined the conversation. "We all expect war is coming," he said. Radi said he feared it would be like 1991, when bridges, buildings and, most painfully, a civilian shelter were destroyed. He remembered the stench of rotting bodies. "And now they come again." Radi lit a cigarette. He had quit for two years, but started smoking again three days ago. "We don't know the truth, we don't know what will happen," he said, after taking a long drag. "There's fear inside me, for a long time. What will happen? All I can is that I don't know. Tragedies, I'm sure. But I don't know." That uncertainty pervades the city, as its streets began emptying and stores shuttered today in anticipation of an attack. Some of the artists groped for symbols of resilience, in a gesture it seemed to reassure themselves. One spoke of the palm trees that remain a dominant motif in Iraqi art. The desert winds bend them, push them to the ground, but they never break. Another spoke of the Tigris as a measure of national character. Whereas the Nile River provided life to Egypt with its floods, he said, the surging Tigris wreaked destruction. Resisting its torrents made Iraqis all that much stronger, giving life to well-deserved reputation for toughness. "It's like slavery," Samarai said. "We can't stand foreigners to run our country. It is horrible for us. What makes me really nervous is that when I was listening to Bush's speech, he talked and I couldn't smell any truth." A friend, a woman artist sitting nearby, got up to leave the gallery. She discreetly set down a clip for an AK-47 rifle on the table in front of him. She left without saying a word. "I borrowed the gun from a friend of mine," he said, in answer to his friends' stares. "I worry about thieves. I just bought a new car and a new computer and they're expensive. If I have to fight for my house, I will." At those words, Saad Hadi, an art critic and journalist sitting next to him, shook his head. "So many crises have visited Baghdad, and we have faced them," he said. "The soul of Baghdad will remain." "Baghdad is not a real city. It may be the only city that stands between reality and imagination. Paris and London, they are real cities, but when you mention Baghdad what comes to mind are the legends. Perhaps they'll add something new to the legend of Baghdad." � 2003 The Washington Post Company http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47329-2003Mar18.html ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] archive: http://www.mediascot.org/ambit info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
