On record:
Sleeping splendour
By
Michael Jansen*
On my last night in Baghdad, I attended a peace concert put on by the chamber group of the Baghdad Symphony Orchestra. The musical evening took place at the elegant villa of Pakistani oilman, Murtaza Lakhani, located in the diplomatic enclave in the Mansour quarter of this sprawling city. Murtaza's co-host, the UN Development Programme's local representative Francis Dubois, donned an elegant gold-trimmed abaya for the occasion and greeted each guest with a bow and handshake. The event was hurriedly arranged to honour Hans von Sponeck, the former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, and members of his team, who have been trying to arrange for distinguished international personalities to visit Iraq with the aim of averting war.
As the musicians tuned their instruments, we chose seats towards the front. The performers -- playing piano, viola, violin, cello and clarinet -- took their places and began with one of Antonin Dvorak's Slavic dances. On the wall behind them hung a painting of two actors' masks on a dark background. Outside the sliding glass doors in the garden, attendants fed fires in two metal braziers planted on the terrace near the swimming pool. The flames leapt and swirled to the rhythms of the music. It was a magical hour, a moment for pondering. This concert was, almost certainly, the last in Baghdad before the bombing begins.
The musicians played a Bach meditation, a polka by Smetana and three classical compositions based on traditional Iraqi songs. "Lovely Baghdad" conjured up the image of the ancient, grey-brown Tigris winding through the city and the sounds of traffic rushing along its spacious boulevards, winds whispering among the palm fronds and water splashing in the basins of numerous fountains.
Before hurrying through the Iraqi capital's traffic-clogged streets to the concert, I spent an hour at Beit Al-Iraqi -- the "Iraqi House" -- a craft and culture centre at the end of Abu Nawwas Street, which runs along the eastern bank of the Tigris. The owner of the house, Amal Khedairy, had invited me to attend a slide show by a leading Iraqi architect whose name I never learnt because I arrived late and left early. His public buildings, universities, commercial blocks and government offices marry ancient Mesopotamian and modern styles, traditional yellow brick with white painted concrete. His private houses feature courtyards, wood, stone screens and enclosed balconies like those of Beit Al-Iraqi, built in the early years of the twentieth century. Most of the buildings he showed us had been constructed after the 1991 war, under the constant threat of military actions and sanctions. On the eve of its third war in 23 years, Baghdad remains a wondrous city.
Galleries are crammed with paintings, some remarkably good, most bearing the individualistic stamp of Iraqi painters. I am proudly told that they are considered to be the best in the Arab world.
Mohamed Ghani, Iraq's most famous sculptor, now 74, said decent oil paints have to be smuggled in from Amman because of sanctions. In his studio he displays models for pieces under construction. His works are based on ancient seals, the legends of the 1001 Nights and Arab folktales. My favourite is a fountain on a traffic island on busy Saadoun Street depicting a peasant woman, surrounded by water jars, pouring water from a jug.
Ghani and his wife had just returned home from Bahrain, where he has been commissioned to construct a huge bronze fountain. "We couldn't stay away," he remarked with a shrug. "War has become a habit. We lost the windows, but survived the last war. Que serra serra."
Although "whatever will be will be" seems to be the philosophy of most Iraqis these days, their commitment to their country and their creative energies are irrepressible. "We will rebuild what they bomb," Ghani asserted.
The majority of Iraqis are urbanites, heirs to a 7,000 year-old civilisation, not roaming tribesmen like the Afghans. Baghdad is a thriving city of 4.5 to five million, not a bombed out ruin like Kabul. Baghdad is a magnificent metropolis. The Paris or Rome of the region. Its avenues are broad, tree-lined and punctuated with dramatic artifacts. The domes of its many mosques, great and small, are covered in delicate patterned ceramic tiles. Baghdad's public buildings are massive monuments comparable to the grand red sandstone secretariats built by Sir Edward Lutyens in New Delhi. Indeed, Rashid Street's granite columns and the walled bungalows of the residential quarters remind one of the British Raj. Here only the smell of India, a blend of spice, incense and dust, is absent.
The winding Tigris dominates Baghdad. Almost any journey involves crossing the river over at least two of the city's six bridges. As I stood on a wall near the fish market watching small motor launches laden with passengers make the crossing, my driver Raad said that two key bridges had been taken out by US bombers early in the 1991 War. Baghdadis predict that all six bridges could be hit in the coming onslaught. People will have to revert to coracles and motorboats to get from one side of the Tigris to the other.
The aim of US military planners will be to divide the city and confine its defenders to quarters where their bases and barracks are located. But this will also seal civilians into their neighbourhoods, making it impossible for the wounded to get to hospital and for aid agencies to provide food aid to the hungry. Many Baghdadis are preparing to be home-bound for an indefinite period, stocking up on bottled water, cooking gas and food, and digging wells in their gardens so they will have water for washing and cleaning. While Iraqis fear the thousands of tonnes of explosives they expect to rain down on Baghdad during the first hours and days of the US offensive, they are even more afraid of the chaos and anarchy they believe will follow the onslaught on the city.
Twelve years of sanctions have taken a moral, as well as economic toll, particularly on the extremely poor. Some fear complete desperation will drive the underprivileged to looting and pillaging amid the breakdown of order. Iraq might even collapse into civil war. Amal Khedairy summed up the feelings of most Iraqis when she said, "This government has a hold on the country. The people who may come here to rule do not understand how to control Iraq."
* The writer is a Middle East analyst who publishes in several newspapers including The Irish Times, Middle East International and the Deccan Herald (India)
