Sketching Iraq
By
George Bahgory
The time has come for me to take out my sketchbook of Iraq. It may be a sad time to do so, but it is undoubtedly time.
Time to exercise my modest share of solidarity. To identify with the plight of the people I lived with in 1975 and 1980, at the Wasti Plastic Arts Festival and the Baghdad Biennale, at the Irbid Poetry Festival and on many other occasions -- people whose generosity and warmth and distinctively grand Abbasid vernacular made my frequent visits to Iraq a staying pleasure, even a form of homecoming whose memory I have endeavoured to preserve -- but equally, and that is the important thing now, to identify with their courage, their resilience, their abiding love of life
Time to take out my record of those journeys and look through them and add to them. To balance pictures of conflict with images of contentment, daily life. To sit among the people, as I once did, on the floor, and sketch myself in them. Sharing my sketchbook of Iraq, I pray for my far-away family, I know they are doing their best to cope, and I am sure that their best is good enough.
