New Life among the Arts in Iraq

According to an article by Ulrike Putz, Bagdad,
the Iraqi art scene is 'slowly blossoming' once again. This is of no small significance as some say that the 'state of art is closely linked with the state of their nation'.  Certainly the images in a variety of art forms captures the emotions, the heart of the Iraqi people.

The article by Ulrike Putz also points out that safety of Bagdad's artists whether they are sculptors, painters, playwrights or poets, are protected by the Iraqi army as they assemble over tea and a hookah to share stories and concerns. To learn more about the re-emergence of art in Iraq go to: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,690433,00.html.

Qasim Sabti, artist and gallery
owner and expert on visual arts in Iraq. 

An example of the work that is on display at Sabti's
gallery.  Work ranges from traditional like this one to
abstract.

IRAQI Artists In EXILE

Bags of Bones

What good luck!
She has found his bones.
The skull is also in the bag
the bag in her hand
like all other bags
in all other trembling hands.
His bones, like thousands of bones
in the mass graveyard,
His skull, not like any other skull.
Two eyes or holes
with which he saw too much,
two ears
with which he listened to music
that told his own story,
a nose
that never knew clean air,
a mouth, open like a chasm,
it was not like that when he kissed her
there, quietly,
not in this place
noisy with skulls and bones and dust
dug up with questions:
What does it mean to die all this death
in a place where the darkness plays all this silence?
What does it mean to meet your loved ones now
With all of these hollow places?
To give back to your mother
on the occasion of death
a handful of bones
she had given to you
on the occasion of birth?
To depart without death or birth certificates
because the dictator does not give receipts
when he takes your life.
The dictator has a skull too, a huge one
not like any other skull.
It solved by itself a math problem
that multiplied the one death by millions
to equal homeland.
The dictator is the director of a great tragedy.
he has an audience, too,
an audience that claps
until the bones begin to rattle ¬
the bones in the bags,
the full bag finally in her hand,
unlike her disappointed neighbor
who has not yet found her own.

You can find more poetry by Dunya Mikhail at:

http://iraq.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=16531

Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project

Rooster and Woman

The mission of the Iraqi and American Reconciliation
Project (IARP) (in association with the Muslim 
Peacemaker Project) is to promote reconciliation between 
the people of the United States and Iraq in response to 
the devastation affecting Iraqi families, society, and 
culture. IARP recognizes the common humanity of the
people of Iraq and the people of the United States. The 
goals of the IARP is to:

1) Build bridges between the people of Iraq and the 
United States through art, education, health, and cultural 
exchange programs.

2. Provide material support to the Muslim Peacemaker 
Teams (MPT).

3. Raise consciousness in the American public about the 
well-being of average Iraqis, their daily lives, and their culture.

To learn more about the Iraqi and American Reconciliation 
Project please visit their website at: http://reconciliationproject.org.

At the Border by Choman Hardi

Choman Hardi is a young

Kurdish poet and was chair of 

the Exiled Writers Ink, a 

community of established 

refugee writers.

source: Open Democracy,

http://www.opendemocracy.net

“It is your last check-in point in this country!”
We grabbed a drink.
Soon everything would taste different.

The land under our feet continued,
divided by a thick iron chain.

My sister put her leg across it.
“Look over here”, she said to us,
“my right leg is in this country
and my left leg in the other”.
The border guards told her off.

My mother told me: We are going home.
She said that the roads are much cleaner,
the landscape is more beautiful,
and people are much kinder.

Dozens of families waited in the rain.
“I can inhale home”, somebody said.
Now our mothers were crying. I was five years old,
standing by the check-in point,
comparing both sides of the border.

The autumn soil continued on the other side,
the same colour, the same texture.
It rained on both sides of the chain.

We waited while our papers were checked,
our faces thoroughly inspected.
Then the chain was removed to let us through.
A man bent down and kissed his muddy homeland.
The same chain of mountains encompassed all of us.

Iraqi Women's Art Exchange

The Iraqi Women's Art Exchange is committed
to "providing Iraqi women with the opportunity
to work with various art materials for self-
expression, the exploration of their creativy, the
joy of learning, and the development of greater
self-esteem."

The IWAE was launched by professional artist
Jan Ross, from Kennesaw, GA with inspiration
from Danielle Colson who had been deployed in
Iraq at Camp Adder.  Together the women work
with other organizations to create an environment
by which Iraqi women can learn, display their art
works and share their creative ideas.

To Learn more about the non-profit Iraqi Women's Art Exchange please visit their website at :

http://www.iraqiwomensart.org

In My Spare Time by Fadhil Al-Azzawi

During my long, boring hours of spare time


I sit to play with the earth’s sphere.
I establish countries without police or parties
and I scrap others that no longer attract consumers.
I run roaring rivers through barren deserts
and I create continents and oceans
that I save for the future just in case.
I draw a new coloured map of the nations:
I roll Germany to the Pacific Ocean teeming with whales
and I let the poor refugees
sail pirates’ ships to her coasts
in the fog
dreaming of the promised garden in Bavaria.
I switch England with Afghanistan
so that its youth can smoke hashish for free
provided courtesy of Her Majesty’s government.
I smuggle Kuwait from its fenced and mined borders
to Comoro, the islands
of the moon in its eclipse,
keeping the oil fields intact, of course.
At the same time I transport Baghdad
in the midst of loud drumming
to the islands of Tahiti.
I let Saudi Arabia crouch in its eternal desert
to preserve the purity of her thoroughbred camels.
This is before I surrender America
back to the Indians
just to give history
the justice it has long lacked.


To learn more about Fadhil Al Azzawi and his poetry:
http://iraq.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=424

Every Morning the War Gets Up from Sleep by Fadhil Al-Azzawi

Fadhil Al-Azzawi, Iraqi writer
who was jailed in the 1970s
now living in exile.
Mr. Al-Azzawi is an accomplished
novelist, poet, short story writer
living in Germany today.

Ah! This is Baghdad: I move through it every day, to and fro,
While I squat in this cold exile. I look for it
In the demonstrators who move along Rashid Street carrying banners,
In the strikes of textile workers,
To whom we throw bags of bread and political tracts.
At dawn, carrying paint, we spray the walls with our slogans:
"Down with Dictatorship!"
In the coffee-houses extending along the river on Abu Nawwas,
In the fishermen by the bridge,
In the monument of Jawad Selim which is riddled with bullets, 
In Majid’s coffeehouse, where the geniuses and informers sip tea,
Where a poet expelled from college gazes at a window
Behind which three Palestinian girls gaze down the street forever.

Ah! Every morning the war gets up from sleep.
So I place it in a poem, make the poem into a boat, which I throw into the Tigris. 

This is war, then.

Baghdad Things by Mohammed Jafar

This is just one of several paintings by Iraqi artist 

Mohammed Jafar represented on the website of

Iraqi Art, a non-profit organization dedicated to 

providing "a much needed, more comprehensive

and humanistic view of the people and cultures

in which these artists live" and "to promote 

understanding and compassion fo people who 

live under tyranny and oppression."

from http://www.iraqi-art.com

The Iraqi Children's Art Exchange

The Iraqi Children's Art Exchange brings together children and
youth in art-inspired projects that give the children of war a way
to express themselves.  The ICAE encourages freedom of expression
just for the pleasure of it but often the artwork helps children
communicate their feelings and concerns of living in a war torn
country.  The mission of the ICAE is to"bring the ideas, views,
concerns, hopes and dreams of children and youth into the critical
discussions and decisions of our day."

To learn more about the ICAE please go to their website at:
http://www.iraqichildrensart.org.


Copyright © 2009 Iraqi Children's Art Exchange

Ya* Ali by Nedhal Abbas

No photo was available of
Nedhal Abbas.  However,
this image speaks for
all Iraqis. Ms. Abbas, mother
of two, wrote her first book,
"Dreams of Invisible Pleasures",
in 1999.

          This is by no means

The whole story

We can see the end
Not the process
The consequences
Not the causes

In Najaf
At Imam Ali’s** shrine
A sad recognition of…
What? I ask.

Ya Ali
A woman mourns
Cuddling her dead son
Looking at the sky
Not the shrine
As if...
What? I ask.

A bomb falls

On a house
Not the shrine
Al hamdullilah
Thank God

Ya Ali
In the haunting miles
Of Wadi Assalam***
Gravediggers
To bury their fear
Conjure the blessings of
The murdered Imam.

F16 strikes

Silence no more
Noble, dispassionate,
Unsentimental
One and a half million Dead
Bound to no one
They murmur
Ya Ali

In the Sahan****
By the shadow of the Imam
A young fighter
Rests
An old book in hand
He reads
“Proclaim the truth”
“Stand by the oppressed not the oppressor”*****.

Apache helicopters fire

Thick black smoke rises
Smell of burnt flesh
Fills the air
Is he someone we know?
I ask.

Yaaa Aliiiiii
I hear no answer.


For more of Nedhal Abbas' poetry please go to:
http://www.stateofnature.org/poemsIraq.html

Chemical Weapons by Saadi Yousef

Saadi Yousef is one of
the most prolific Arab
poets.  He is described
as a revolutionary poet
and has lived most of
his life in exile from Iraq.
l

Chemical Weapons

In March, the Kurds were in the tranquility of the impossible
Dresses of Spring,
Faces of Spring, But the singer was dead.
The clouds that descended like black mustard in the lungs,
The clouds that tied the knot of death around the lovely morning,
The clouds that curdled the devil's bread in the pupil of the sunset,
Do you think they will pass through the thicket of cypress
And touch the date palms?



For more poetry by Saddi Yousef please
visit: http://nzpoetsonline.homestead.com/sy12.htm.

My Mother's Kitchen by Choman Hardi

I will inherit my mother’s kitchen,
her glasses, some tall and lean others short and fat

Choman Hardi is a young

Kurdish poet and was chair of 

the Exiled Writers Ink, a 

community of established 

refugee writers.

source: Open Democracy,

http://www.opendemocracy.net

her plates, an ugly collection from various sets,
cups bought in a rush on different occasions
rusty pots she doesn’t throw away.
“Don’t buy anything just yet”, she says,
“soon all of this will be yours”.

My mother is planning another escape
for the first time home is her destination,
the rebuilt house which she will furnish.
At 69 she is excited about starting from scratch.
It is her ninth time.

She never talks about her lost furniture
when she kept leaving her homes behind.
She never feels regret for things
only her vine in the front garden
which spread over the trellis on the porch.
She used to sing for the grapes to ripen,
sew cotton bags to protect them from the bees.
I will never inherit my mother’s trees.

The Prisoner by Dunya Mikhail

Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi
exile whose poetry include
 her observations and feelings
about war.  Dunya has been
writing poetry since she was
a teenager in Baghdad at
the start of the Iran-Iraq War.

The Prisoner by Dunya Mikhail

She doesn't understand
what it means to be "guilty"
She waits at the prison's door

until she sees him
to tell him "Take care"
as she used to remind him
when he was going to school
when he was going to work
when he was coming on vacation
She doesn't understand
what they are uttering now
those who are behind the bar
with their uniform
as they decided that
he should be put there
with strangers of gloomy days
It never came to her mind
when she was saying lullabies
upon his bed
during those faraway nights
that he would be put
in this cold place
without moons or windows
She doesn't understand
The mother of the prisoner doesn't understand
why should she leave him
just because "the visit has finished"!

as translated by Salaam Yousif and Liz Winslow

You can learn more about Dunya Mikhail by going to:
http://iraq.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=14378&x=1