Iraqis begin to emerge from the dark
Filed Under Curtain Rods | Posted on December 15, 2007
The plot has more than its fair share of tragedy, and no one knows when the happy ending might suddenly need rewriting, but actors at Baghdad’s National Theatre have high hopes that their new play, The Story of Iraq, will pull in the punters when it opens this Tuesday - it is, after all, their first performance since 2004.
Three years after kidnappings, a car bomb and threats from religious extremists brought the curtain down, the theatre’s players have at last deemed it safe to tread its dusty boards once again. Their play, which tells the story of those dreadful times, is just one of many signs that life in Baghdad may be finally returning to normal.
“For years we lived in danger, because the religious extremists disapproved of people dancing and performing on stage,” said the theatre’s dance instructor Hannah Abdullah, 38, as she put a mixed troupe through their paces in the darkened auditorium.
“Three of our dancers were kidnapped for that reason, and we could only perform outside of the country. But now things are better. The play tells about all the car bombings and killings, and how the mothers of the dead wept many tears. But it finishes with the sun appearing and everybody forgetting about the civil war.”
All the same, security on the door will be very tight. The national theatre is in Karrada, a bustling commercial suburb that is one of the city’s more peaceful districts, yet even so, the building still looks more like a jailhouse than a playhouse.
It is surrounded by grey, 10ft-high concrete barriers - erected after a car bomb attack in 2005 - and its staff are closely frisked on their way in by dozens of armed police.
Tuesday’s play, one half of a double bill that also includes a children’s variety show, will also be a matinée-only affair. “Evening performances are still not possible because people are too scared to come out at night,” said Mrs Abdullah.
None the less, the fact that Baghdadis now have time to devote to things other than mere survival is fuelling “cautious optimism” among commanders in the city’s US-guarded Green Zone, just across the muddy waters of the Tigris from Karrada.
The feeling is that the “troop surge”, which brought an extra 30,000 American soldiers to Iraq in March, may be yielding success in ending the vicious sectarian violence.
The figures quoted are still unremittingly grim - 500 civilian deaths in October alone - but it is a long way from the worst month, last December, when around 3,000 civilians perished. US own casualties are also at their lowest this year: 37 American troops died last month, compared with 126 in May.
For Iraqis in Baghdad, a trip to the theatre is not the only one of life’s pleasures that has returned. Off-licences, most of which were bombed out of business by Shia militants, have re-opened, picking up a steady trade among customers anxious to calm shattered nerves.
“We shut the shop for two years, because there was no safety and no customers,” said Samir Nasser, whose stock of Lebanese-made “Lordian” and “Highland Bird” Scotch whiskies is back in demand. “Now lots of people who fled abroad are now coming back, and they want to celebrate.”
Meanwhile, at Karrada’s Al Rasheed wedding photography shop, the proprietor Zahra Raouf, 47, is catching up on a two-year backlog. The Islamic extremists who once held sway in many areas frowned upon the drums, trumpets and dancing of a traditional Iraqi wedding, but now that they are largely gone, couples are enjoying belated nuptial celebrations.
“One couple I know in Al Doura (a Sunni district controlled by al-Qaeda) got married in secret two years ago, and it is only now that they have felt safe enough to get the wedding photos done,” she said. “They already have two children.”
Also enjoying business as usual is barber Malik Abbas, 33, who can once again offer customers a shave as well as a haircut. “The Islamist people killed some barbers for shaving people, because they said razors didn’t exist at the time of the prophet Mohammed,” he said.
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