Echoes and flutters
Safynaz Kazem meditates on some melancholy Iraqi tunes
Before everything else let me point out that, as soon as my ear registers the word "Iraq", my eyes begin to swell. To a greater extent than I could have imagined, I am linked to the people of this land, flanked by two rivers as if to symbolise its place between heart and mind. I lived among them from 1975 to 1980, and when I left it was less by way of abandonment than of flight. Solidarity. For, since July 1979, a horrid plague took hold of them, eating away at their existence, consuming generation after generation.
For five years while I was in Baghdad I taught drama to students of the English Department of Mustansariya University. I taught 25 hours a week, and wished I could teach more. I taught both morning and evening classes, from second-year students to those about to graduate. Classes A, B and C. And if someone were to ask me about the happiest moments of my life, I would definitely point to those hours during which I spoke about Hamlet and Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet and Waiting for Godot. I would joke with my students: while other teachers complained of too many working hours, I'd explain that my feeling was that not only did I get the chance to talk to my heart's content -- a definite pleasure -- I was also given a salary.
The faces of my students have never left me. The word "Iraq" brings to my mind the images of those conservative young women, hiding opinion and fluency along with smiles, and wearing gold and diamonds at eight in the morning; it also brings to mind their male counterparts, whose impulse towards vitality was curbed by respectability, for respectability is a high value in Iraq. No one gives up his or her respectability, not even the humble dispenser of shalgham (boiled turnip) dipped in dibs (molasses), who offers this hot at the university gates and to whom everyone would flock respectably -- it being a very popular breakfast. For my own part, though, I almost died when I tried it.
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The author, second in row from right, attending her students' commencement in Baghdad
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Beneath both respectability and conservatism, there was the bobbing spirit of life. Through stiff lips flowed the liquid of the mawwal and the maqam, tunes that combined vitality and pain, producing a taste familiar to everyone. For five years, preceded by an intensive 10-day visit in 1969, I lent my ears to Iraqi song -- to voices that were broadcast or live, trained or spontaneous, slow or spirited, but all of which invariably distilled an essence, a strength. To this day I have kept a beautiful song by Fadel Awwad, which I recorded from Iraqi television in 1976: "Had I known what would come/ I wouldn't have lived with them/ I have not tasted sleep/ Since we were separated." The able, well-trained and powerful voice then breaks into a long, melancholy moan, only to give in again to a fast tempo.
There is something beautiful, staid and eloquent about the Iraqi vernacular Arabic that tends to be lost immediately on being translated into a different language or dialect; it is something with which the distinctive Iraqi vocal apparatus, with its grandiloquent echoes and sensitive flutters, readily interacts. The resulting sound is an attractive, tidal flow, alternating between clarity and obscurity. You could describe it as epic, eternal, or mythical. The important thing is that it is deep-set and unique, forming its own aural dimension. A rare treat. No sooner does an Iraqi family gather at a spirited moment than all those present break into collective song. Unselfconsciously, they perform popular and traditional songs, all the musical heritage that has effortlessly been passed down to them. And if you happen to be present, you will feel as if you are being carried along on the back of a camel, or aboard a river boat, joyful and steady.
One characteristic song I learned in 1969 and spread among my friends in Egypt went, untranslatably, like this: Shi mali wali/ Bouya ismallah/ Metaadhiba fedunyaya ya baba (I have no guardian or support in this world, father, and I am tortured). In the present context I can communicate only the words. The tunes, the inimitable tunes, elude me. Together, the words and tunes encapsulate the infinite combination of arts, cultures and civilisations that have settled between the two rivers, or merely passed through, leaving their mark on the land. In listening to a single song, it is as if you are encountering the multitudes of components that make up a country.
Some 25 years after my last meeting with him, when I had a reunion with the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish the first thing he said to me was, "Shi mali wali". As if it was a codeword, the secret mantra of our friendship. I also understood that it is a word he ceaselessly seeks out in the heart of every Iraqi he meets. But for Iraqis who, like Egyptians, are painfully homesick once they are away from their country, even if they stay within a mile or two of its borders, it must be a terrible catastrophe to find themselves scattered across the face of the earth. It is true that in homesickness there is plenty of scope for poetry and music, which help recall the features of one's homeland, but it is equally true that hearts laden with festering wounds might not have it in them to sing.
I myself was unable to touch my Fadel Awwad recording until 20 desolate years had passed after my departure from Iraq.
