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After checking in at my hotel, we spend the day wandering around downtown Baghdad. I’m trying to gauge how much things have changed since I was here last, back in March. We’re hanging out in the park, underneath the massive sculptural mural in Tarir Square. Businesses are open; the streets are relatively clean and bustling. People seem as friendly as ever. One shopkeeper kisses my shoulder when I tell him I’m American. Esam advises me to tell Iraqis that I’m Canadian. I find myself oddly resistant to telling this lie. I haven’t yet encountered overt hostility. Ive met a lot of Iraqis while out drawing. If they haven’t been happy about my nationality, they’ve politely kept it to themselves. Yet it would be foolish to imagine that I’m safe here.
A couple of nights later I meet my friend Naseer Hasan, a poet, who works at a city architectural office. Ive brought him two books by authors he asked for: Derek Walcotts Omeros, and the collected stories of Luis Borges. Naseer has been translating Borges into Arabic, and puzzling over some discrepancies he’s found in English versions on the web. Just words, he muses, flipping through the pages. I cant tell you how nice it is to have these. We talk about the situation here. Naseer is surprisingly sanguine. You know, I feel as though we are emerging from the tunnel, after all these long months.
I spend a lot of time at Ahmed Al Safi’s studio, down in the working class neighborhood of Bab Sherji. I take a bus here in the mornings (actually a van that someones operating privately along the standard routes). I shout out “Nozil!” when I want to get off, though I recently discovered that I’ve been mispronouncing the word for some time and have been shouting “Victory!” which must have mystified, if not irritated the other passengers. I buy fresh bread and cream from the local stores and then call up to Ahmed, to let me in.
The last of Baghdad’s famed Shena-Shiil houses are falling apart. Like most of Baghdads artists, Ahmed loves the old houses, and mourns the recent loss of four buildings, to a fire set by an angry pimp. He thinks that the city should give the abandoned buildings to artists to turn into live and work studios. The sanctions were boom years for Ahmed. He sold out several shows of paintings and sculptures, both to UN and NGO personnel as well as to Iraqis. For a time he was rich by Iraqi standards. He wishes he’d bought some property then, when the dollar was sterling against the Iraqi dinar. No one is selling much art now. Ahmed has a wry sense of humor, which comes through despite his broken English.
As we’re sitting over tea he tells me a story about his time in the Iraqi army: “There is an officer. He is from Falluja, but he is good guy.
He want me to paint scene of Falluja. But I say, No, I cannot, I never was in Falluja. He say, Yes, its easy: There is a bridge. So, I paint bridge. He say, here there is a street, very straight. OK, I paint a street. Here, he say, there is tire shop. I paint that too. He, very happy! He cry, Yes! This is Falluja!” Ahmed, Esam and I are having lunch at a local Bab Sherji restaurant. My presence at these places always elicits interest. When I get up to wash my hands, someone asks me where I’m from. “He’s Canadian”, says Esam. “Is he Jewish?” asks the stranger. “No”, says Ahmed. “Dont you know Jews look like us, with the same big noses?”
That evening we go to the swimming pool at the Al Hamra Hotel. Esam and Ahmed have been suggesting this outing for several days and at last I have the time. The Hamra, like the Palestine, is one of the fancy hotels that well-heeled news organizations set up in. The pool is outdoors, surrounded by a patio for eating and drinking. There is a $5 charge to use the pool, a substantial amount for Iraqis. Esam is already in trouble with the restaurant here for leaning back on one of the cheap plastic chairs and snapping the legs. He’s reminded that he still owes them a new chair.
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