Baghdad
November 28, 2011
Last time I flew into the city it was late at night. Cradled in a deep leather seat on the now-suspended-and-I-hope-not-defunct Al Naser Airlines (piloted, charmingly, by the owner of the airline, who popped in to the cabin, almost bursting with pride, to say hello and shake hands with his passenger-guests). I spent the early part of the flight mesmerised by the calcified remains of an unidentified insect the size of a large grasshopper trapped between the two panes of glass in my window. Then two hours of conversation with the elderly Kurdish architect sitting next to me – designer of palaces and hospitals for Gulf potentates – before falling silent to watch an eerily dark city come into view, punctuated by flares of fires and small clusters of light powered from private generators.
This, my second trip, is a less scary teatime arrival, to a place that I feel I know and love. I'm flying courtesy of efficiently dull Austrian Airlines. But I enjoy another fascinating conversation, this time with a Professor of Technology from Baghdad University who tells me the full story behind Saddam's Big Gun. International espionage meets Ealing Comedy. When I let slip that I'm not staying in the Green Zone or in a hotel, he warns me to be on my guard every second, as I could be snatched at any time and held to ransom for a million dollars. He leans over and advises: 'Wrap yourself in an abaya at all times when you are outside and make sure the neighbours don't notice you going in and out. Don't ever walk anywhere alone. It only takes a second. The police are useless'.
Our lovely, loud neighbour Said is much more interested in discussing the football scores for his beloved Barcelona, or showing me the pied-brown homing pigeons he keeps on the roof than in plotting an al-Qaeda kidnap.
The weather is deliciously warm. And I feel the absolute necessity not to hide. The uncovered women and the groups of teenage girls who are beginning to appear tentatively on the streets of Karada deserve my solidarity. Here, in a country where in the 70s and 80s sexual equality was the most advanced in the Arab world, women are now rarely to be seen in the public sphere. And when they do appear, it is in a suffocatingly narrow range of identities – as modestly-dressed mothers in family groups, as black-clad old ladies or – on TV – as pouting, irritating sex bombs (who probably live in Jordan or Beirut) or as TV presenters shiny with surgery sheen. So no abaya.
We stroll along the wrecked, bustling streets of Karada, eat icecream and order mesguuf (fish smoked over tamarisk wood fires by the roadside). I see five short plays over 3 days in the first Experimental Theatre Festival since the war. Several of the plays involve two young men in Godot-like existential conversations. Controlled by a shadowy figure - a robotic woman who is receiving orders from 'the Director', or a tall, silent, white-suited man. The first example of post-war Iraqi theatre I ever saw, at a Festival in Carthage in 2010, was entirely psychotic and unwatchable. This is more reflective and has the energy of youth, but the scripts are old, the violence is casual, relationships cruel, and there are hardly any women. The theatre can't help but be dressed in the clothes of the country's traumatised reality.
On the afternoon of the last show at the Muntada theatre – a converted old Iraqi house on the banks of the Tigris - acrid black smoke plumes up from the direction of the Shorja market, where ten are dead and dozens injured in the latest mindless bombing.
We move to the National Theatre for the awards ceremony, in the presence of the Deputy Minister of Culture. Like all awards ceremonies, it goes on far too long. Three of the young actors cast in our Romeo and Juliet win prizes and cry. The Tunisian director of a visiting show makes an impassioned speech that gets loud cheers. We all cry. Our Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad is feted from the podium as an important moment in Iraqi theatre. I get a special mention and a round of applause for just being there. A quick, jostled meeting with the Minister in the auditorium as everyone heads for the exits. He is polite and very supportive. I try not to catch the portentous tone of the evening and say something about how excited I am that the cast for Romeo and Juliet will bring to the English stage both Iraq's finest acting talent and the promising younger generation we've just seen winning awards. He looks rather taken with the idea.
Back in Karada's main street after dark, there is a palpable festival atmosphere for Eid. Young men balance on the back of tiny trucks, serenading the traffic jams with drumming and songs. Mopeds whizz by without lights. Street vendors sell fruit and petrol from the side of the road and families head for restaurants. Flocks of sharply-dressed and preened young men roam the streets, tragically lacking any chance to show off to the opposite sex. So they moon about like gangly ox calves and shove each other around. There's a feeling that something might kick off at any time. Think Leicester Square with guns.
I am escorted home by Romeo, Mercutio and the Prince. We all tease Romeo about his one-word acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor. They are going to have a ball in Stratford and London next year.
The opinions in this blog are the writer's own.
by Deborah Shaw
| No comments yet
Share this