“When I close my eyes, I can see Baghdad’s streets,” Nahida al-Rammah, one of Iraq’s famous actresses, wept in a documentary interview for one of the post-war organizations, The Iraq Memory Foundation. Narrating how she was chased and tortured by the former regime’s dictatorship, she made me nailed to the feet in front of her heart-breaking image exposed on a wide hp computer monitor. With the sound of the lute playing through the computer speakers, I felt her tears were dancing sadly with the rhythm.
In the fortified blast-walled Green Zone, the foundation held its largest cultural and artistic exhibition on the third anniversary of the fall of Saddam’s dictator regime. As Rammah continued narrating her miserable life under the former dictatorship, 24 Steps to Liberty and I were gazing sadly. Our eyes were filled with tears strong enough not to fall down. Suddenly, 24 left the room. I followed leaving our American colleague, whom we accompanied, watching the interview. What we were watching was enough to remind us with how tough old days were. I couldn’t continue following him. He needed to be alone. He needed to smoke and compensate himself by himself.
Founded in 2003, the Iraq Memory Foundation expands on work begun by scholar and author, Kanaan Makkiya, in 1992 to preserve and analyze Iraqi ex-regime’s crimes. Makiyya’s foundation chose this day, Saddam’s fall anniversary, to expose its work through this gallery.
As 24, American friend, and I were walking in one of the halls, the paintings of some of the most famous artists were shining. They were talking as if their colors were penetrating the silence of the world.
“If you get the chance to buy one painting, which one would you choose,” our American colleague asked. I pointed out to the one with the brown house with wooden Shanasheel [balcony]. This painting reminded me with my Baghdad that I miss a lot. It showed how simple and beautiful it looked like with the Iraqi woman and her tunga. It reminded me with how beautiful life was back in the 1950s and 60s. How he, his friends and family lived peacefully. Another painting drew my attention, an image of doves in front of wolves trying to eat them.
The paintings, the sculptures, and the other documentary things were not the only things that brought tears to our eyes. The fact that these things had to be exposed in a gallery inside the Green Zone was an enough sign to remind us with the present time. Time when the elected politicians fight for positions while the people are being killed by hundreds of thousands. Such a huge cultural exhibition was opened to be seen by Iraqi and American officials only. No citizen fond of art was invited. My heart sank when I thought of my friends and relatives who were unable to see such a nice work. They were waiting for it. It came but there is no way they go and see it.
Flipping through the foundation’s booklet we were given made me more sad when I realized that people will not be able to enjoy their new projects as they will be established inside the Green Zone. The foundation was granted the right to use the Ceremonial Parade Grounds, where the two huge crossing swords lie, as a land for establishing a museum, memorial and a center of culture and scholarship.
Everybody knows that the security situation is going from bad to worse day after day, but this never prevented cultural activities from taking place outside the government’s and the American’s heaven, the Green Zone. Iraq’s first Children’s Culture Theater Festival has started in the Red Zone where the millions, not few thousands, live. It has not been attacked since it started. So why doesn’t this exhibition shed the light on a dark age among people, not away from them?!
For Dr. Makiyya and all the team working hard in Washington D.C. and Baghdad’s Green Zone, I say thank you for all the hard work you did and still doing but all Iraqis will be more happy to see your foundation become among them as it came from them and from all the suffering they went through.
Good Morning Treasure, and 24 Steps,
ReplyDeleteSometimes I come here before going to my favorite baseball news, and always aferwards. Baseball is fantasy, this is "reality".
One of my students, a 73 year old retired life insurance salesman, will, from time to time tell everyone one of the same stories about living through WWII in Tokyo. Watching the American B-25 conduct "strategic bombing" (over a 3 year period and destroy by one estimate 250,000 building and kill 80,000 people just in Tokyo....alot of neighbors.) Mr. Nagashima will say something with a cheerful look on his face..as is the Japanese custom.
"See the blowing, puffing chargers
Whose striking hoofs throw sparks;
The scouts that scour at dawn,
Those that raise a sudden storm of dust And cleave through the hosts of men" Sura Adiyat
I am standing there in front of the classroom listening to Mr. Nagashima, and I too can imagine looking up into the night sky and seeing a host of winking lights, and the sounds seeming to come from everywhere at once. Something shared by Mr. Nagashima from his experience and now in my imagination. And the flames. (As you probably know the bombs were a mixture fragmentation and incentary bombs designed to burn.)
From his experience, I can imagine looking out from the B-25 navigator's bubble to see the city in its glow ...would it look like Los Angeles does, on a clear night, flying down? No much more compact, with more home lights in every window. In Tokyo there is the Edo Museum, inside the large 3 storey room is a model of an entire neighborhood from the Edo times, about 1700's. Of course much of Tokyo had changed in material and construction by 1943, but the neighborhoods were similarly small and concentrated together, I am sure. An adult man's stature was about 5'5" and a woman's was 5'2" or so?
The artist and storyteller captures a reflection of the essence and presents it to us so that we can believe, at least for a moment, that we were there ...looking up from below at the lights, and navigating from above, as the cherry and orange flowers open up upon some home lit landscape of families (with hidden munition factories).
Its too bad the artists imagination is not powerful enough. I wish I could see Picasso's "Guerinica" in Madrid. And I am told that the German generals/political leaders had wonderful art collections. We need more than art, more than the endless number of Vietnam movies. There has to be a belief that we are truly one people.
Hi Baghdad Treasure and 24 Steps To Liberty,
ReplyDeleteMy parents are friends of Nahida Al-Rammah and I have personally been to her house on many an occassion (outside Iraq in the last ten years) and I know her sorrow is genuine. It is the same sorrow my family and many other Iraqi families I know share.
It amazes me when I read people's blogs in Iraq saying it was better when Sadam was there.
I understand it is sooooooo tough, hard, heart breaking, scary, unsafe, dangerous, and horrible to live in Iraq now, but I am still glad that Sadam is no longer in power. Iraq was a much better place before him and my prayer is that one day it will go back to that place and even be better with real democracy - no matter how long that will take - we will hopefully get there.
I hope to see that in my lifetime and I am still young so there is a good chance, but also these are crucial years for the future generations.
A long sigh, and another sigh, and then one more!
ReplyDeleteIt is not the time to show what we've seen yesterday. we have first to show people a better situation to enjoy. by then, they could compare the past with the present. otherwise, it is just a reminder of the past and the daily life we are living now. there is no point of exposing the brutality of the former regime, when we still live and must endure a brutal violence and live in a wounded, and unstable country. whats the point?
Good evening, I just finished dinner...too bad it wasn't pizza.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about you (plural) as I was watching a news story about the new world champion pizza thrower, a Mr. Noguchi. Man, he is good, and fast. Starting from a ball of dough smaller than a volleyball, but not much, he flattened it and began to work. Perhaps 2 minutes or so, he finished with a pizza that you can see his hand through it, and it is about 1 meter in diameter or more??. The guy is short too!
Watching that pizza floating inside the kitchen with small doughy waves as it fell towards his skillful hands. His hands seemed to say, "Come to Mama, pizza, Come to mama!"
With the wrists, I think the secret is in his wrist action, each time he spun the growing wheel with a flick-flick- flick of his wrists. And it would just leaped up, a white doughy flower, yes a pizza sun flower rotating in the room, rippling softly while spinning. larger and larger, each time I was thinking it was the last time he could catch and throw, then punch the center, more and more gently to expand the dough.
I was thinking of you 24 steps and Treasure...sure 'nough. I wish I could take you to that pizza shop...someplace in Tokyo.
24 steps, you make a good spiritually practical point. Now is not the time to say what a bad old man and bad old times those were. I appreciate the artist's voices and their opportunity, but... "it ain't over 'till the fat lady sings".
Treasure of Baghdad, the only people who were able to celebrate April 9 were the people at the Green Zone, they have a reason for that, they could not even do it in public, they were to embarrassed to show the Iraqis they were celebrating when the blood of the people who were killed in the streets and the mosques did not dry yet; every thing they are doing now is for them, the exhibitions, contracts, government positions..etc. are all for them, no one is thinking about those Iraqis that you remembered when you were there, when you were watching the monitor, you couldn’t see more tears that you already have and holding them tight inside your eyes, 24 steps to liberty, could not watch because he lived on this all his life and he heard and saw many like here in his life since he was a little kid so do you, we saw every thing in our lives and I wish that you will see happiness before you leave this life, I am sure that you do not know what does this word mean..
ReplyDeleteI know about that because,
I was there..
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHi Baghdad Treasure:
ReplyDeleteWould you be willing to be interviewed on our talk radio podcast? I am trying to find Iraqi bloggers who want to have their voice heard. If you are interested please let me know.
We have a number of Iraq podcasts in progress and you are welcome to join in to those at any time. Otherwise I can arrange a new onoe.
mattready@gmail.com
http://www.vaestro.com
Upon further review,
ReplyDeleteof the news I left you with,
and not prone to exaggeration, I have to make an additional comment.
It wasn't a sun-flower of a pizza
No Mr. Noguchi was throwing ...a conic section or maybe 2, of mathematic beauty. There is one on the way up the focus along the semimajor axis that runs through and above Mr Noguchi's hands for a moment....Then the pizza conic section inverts....so that the other foci exists above as it falls.
. Can't you see, with the math you took in high school, the semimajor axis that exists in Mr. Noguchi7s hands..close your eyes, there in the darkness shimmering into Plato's realm of the eternal....?
No, you say," No! I can't see, and I'm not blind, and I slept through math in school; and I never had to read Plato; he didn't help me when I tried to find a job. And I sit and watch my TV and no one on the sitcoms talks about hyperbolas, you fool!"
"Ok I'm sorry to use such dirty words around you. Do you want to shoot me? Are you angry enough? feel I have tried to belittle your intelligence? Yet, I'll tell you something l learned along the way. I taught your children in school your cute blond haired son, the one you think so pure, and I taught him math, and you said, 'Son, you study that math, it will get you somewhere in this world. YOu hear me?? You grow up and learn math."
So let's call it a BEACH UMBRELLA pizza shell he was tossing in the air, and punching softly with his hands, yes, punching softly into the center with the heel of his left hand and then his right for style,
before the pizza dough hyper-uhh saucer dropped down he caught it on the edges, in his fingers;
Flick-flick with his wrists to keep up the rotation, it Hovering, like a helicopter in his hands. YES a beach umbrella sized pizza shell rotating, no wings, nothing underneath so the TV camera moved there instead, showing the audience of NHK news,
the restaurant ceiling lights shimmering down through the dough, for us to see the round, church-like window Mr Noguchi has created. Not stained glass, no ruby reds and blues and gold light, but the light from pizza dough filtered.
Then Mr. Noguchi's performance was o was over in much less time than I have taken here, as I said, about 2 minutes. The pizza resting now across and over the edges of the table, drooping shape of bent space..no math, I promice.
I asked my family, all of whom can read Japanese, while I can't for any news about Mr. Noguchi.
ReplyDeleteIf you'll forgive my liberties with one of the news stories......it appears that one bank executive went to the restaurant after the showing on TV. He was asked to sit down and was brought a menu. But the executive, dressed in a very expensive blue, but almost black-blue suit, with tiny, wide-spaced, light blue pen lines woven in the material, the kind that are the latest fashion this year, said, "I'm not interested in eating anything at this restaurant , but I came to see the little man perform." The waiter-manager said, "What are you talking about?" The man said, "Your little man, the pizza thrower, I want to see his performance."
The manager was silently angry and he turned and went back to the kitchen and asked his employee, Mr. Noguchi to come out front for a minute. In front of this dark-suited executive, sitting there tapping his finger tips on the table as a sign to "hurry up". The restaurant boss explained to Mr. Noguchi what this man was almost demanding. A performance, and he wasn't going to eat the pizza! The manager asked, "you'll pay for the pizza?" "Of course!" the man almost sneered. For him, a few thousand yen is nothing. He would feed his dog a meal more valuable than the cost of this pizza. He took out his money clip, like peeling an orange he pulled off with his thumbnail, perfectly manicured, a 10,000 yen note. And flipped it with his wrist on the table as though it were a 10 yen coin. The manager was pleased. Looking at the 10,000 yen note, he was making a lunch menu profit of about 8,000 yen, no even more, because the toppings would not be used! Only the dough and Mr. Noguchi's time! The pizza dough, was perhaps 200-300 yen on a luncheon pizza. Mr Noguchi was looking at the note and thinking, "How much of that do I deserve? Certainly this exec. is not paying to see anyone else throw a pizza in this city." The manager never, even for a moment, thought that Mr. Noguchi should get anything above his 1,200 yen an hour (he was rasied 100 yen because of his championship). Pretty good for someone who started off at 800yen/per hour 4 years ago! For about 2 minutes he would be earning the restaurant a clear profit of about 9,500 yen. the equivalent of several hours work or several lunches. Business had already picked up alot since the broadcast and probably even more. But this was profit without use of resources!
The expression "One Picture is worth a 1000 words", is very true in this case. I appreciate and congradualte Treasure for selecting this. I think this photograph of "Grief", of Grieving Mother" of the Grieving Mother of Christ" (even though she is Muslim) has alot of meaning for us. There are many meanings for us. Treasure explained one or two or more meanings. This is what the artist tries to do: choose the subject and present it so that it means something for all of mankind. Her specific grief is really only the surface. There are many reasons to grieve. Even the poor children grieve over a dropped ice cream bar onto the sidewalk in August. If you stopped them at that moment, their grief would be shaking their souls as much as this woman grieves for the injustice of Sadam Husein.
ReplyDeleteTreasure mentions she is an actress, I would like to believe she is a GREAT actress. Her face seems powerfully expressive.
You know the Japanese LOVE sad stories. I don't know why Hollywood believes that a sad ending is a business risk, no one wants a sad ending. People go to the movies to escape life, so they want to be entertained and so they don't want to be sad when they leave the movie. Well no one wants to be sad ALL THE TIME. But a happy ending where the "little tramp" discovers a $100.00 bill on the sidewalk doesn't happen every day. And it doesn't happen to everyone.
You tell a group of Japanese girls that there is a "wonderfully sad movie, and bring a handkerchief" and I guarantee you that kind of message will sell thousands of tickets here in Japan.
Think of the Cherry blossoms. Do you know one reason why they are so dear to the hearts of the Japanese people? One symbolic reason is because the blossoms last (peak on one tree) only about 3 days! ONly 3 days! Can you imagine an American marketing specialist trying to convince Americans to buy a product that only lasts "3 days", and really to appreciate takes about 5 years to have a tree full enough with branches and buds, to watch for only 3 days?????
Sometimes my wife says, "Americans are like 'this' (and she is referring to some general statement) or Americans are like 'that' (and she makes another general statement)." I say, "No. No No. You can't generalize about Americans. We are not just like 'that' or only like 'that'. we are so diverse. we are the world....la la-la la. we are the world...Americans are like all kinds of opinions and tastes, and habits, blah, blah, blah". So I know some Americans, (Japanese-Americans?) love sad movies. But, I ask you which have greater popularity (as measured by repeated quotes from his plays) Shakespeare's trajedies or his comedies?