Artists work to reClaim mosul’s Cultural life
MOSUL: The first thing musician Fadhel al-Badri did when Mosul was liberated from Islamic State last year was breathe a sigh of relief.
He then recovered his beloved violin and his oud, similar to a lute, from where he had hidden them in the frame of his bed. He said he hugged and kissed them “like they were my own children,” and played amid the ruins “a song ... for Mosul.”
On Saturday, Badri and other musicians and activists attended the first orchestral concert in the northern Iraqi city since the militants were defeated more than a year ago. The musicians played in a park where the militants once trained child soldiers and the music, a mixture of Western and Iraqi classical, wafted along the banks of the Tigris River.
“Music is my life. It’s amazing to hear it in Mosul again,” he said. The concert was conceived by Karim Wasfi, former director of the Baghdad Orchestra, whose visiting Peace Through Arts Farabi Orchestra played alongside local musicians.
Islamic State continued that crackdown, blowing up statues and monuments, said Ali al-Baroodi, a Mosul University professor and photographer.
“We continued to consume culture in secret: we would listen to music, trade books, films, music. That never stopped even though it was dangerous,” he said.
Baroodi and Badri belong to a community of artists and activists who have defied fears of fresh attacks to hold weekly book markets and photography exhibitions. In a bold move, that community has also painted murals around the city in a bid to reclaim public spaces.
“Mosul lost its identity, lost its features, lost thousands of its people with many more still under the rubble,” he said. “These efforts aren’t going to fix everything overnight but it gives us hope.”
One new cultural center is the vibrant Qantara cultural cafe, where the walls show paintings and photographs of Mosul’s rich history and its recent devastation. One wall depicts the crimes of ISIS, displaying a yellow jumpsuit worn by detainees as well as handcuffs.
Not every cultural institution in Mosul is seeing rebirth. The central public library, a research center that housed rare manuscripts including government records dating back to the Ottoman era, was the only one to survive Islamic State intact, even though it was used as a base. Librarians hid the most precious texts but 20,000 books were dumped in the basement. After East Mosul was liberated, librarians salvaged what they could and stacked books on makeshift shelves. But with no windows and holes in its ceiling, the library remains closed. Its halls, once filled with student researchers, are now caked in dust. Library head Jamal Ahmed said funds had been set aside to repair the library, but government repair efforts had stalled.