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Book market in Baghdad (Photo: Susannah George)
Iraqis used to be great readers of books but government censorship under Saddam Hussein caused many Iraqis to mistrust the written word. Now there’s a freer flow of information into and out of Iraq and Baghdad’s bookstores are showing new signs of life. Susannah George went browsing for us. Download MP3
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LISA MULLINS: The cultural heart of the Middle East was once Iraq. The capital city Baghdad touted first rate universities and one of most well-read populations in the Arab world. Saddam Hussein changed that. The former dictator persecuted writers, poets and artists. Now, seven years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, information flows freely in and out of the country. And that’s especially evident on Mutanabi Street, known as “the book seller’s street.” The World’s Susannah George reports from Baghdad.
SUSANNAH GEORGE: There’s a renown saying in the Arab world, “Cairo writes, Beirut prints and Baghdad reads.” Saad Eskander, the director of the Iraqi national archives, says that these days the more appropriate saying is…
SAAD ESKANDER: Cairo writes, Beirut prints and Baghdad destroys.
GEORGE: Eskander says that Saddam’s brutal and ignorant dictatorship changed the Iraqi mentality. People distrusted the written word. Under Saddam 90% of the national archives were censored and there was only one official account of Iraqi history. Eskander concedes that the culture is slowly changing. This is the Shabander café on Mutanabi Street. It’s a local spot for Iraqi writers and intellectuals. Hajji Muhammed has owned the café since 1963 and at nearly 80 years old he’s seen Baghdad change around him. Today, business is good. The café is packed. Muhammed brags about the wide variety of clientele sipping tea and smoking water pipes.
SPEAKING ARABIC
GEORGE: Muhammed says talk was subdued during the Saddam years, political discussions were non-existent. Today, he points to members of the Baghdad bar association, a university president, poets, journalists and writers, some deep in thoughtful discussion. He says that the café has always been seen as common ground, but that didn’t protect it from the violence that engulfed Baghdad during the height of Iraq’s bloody civil war.
SPEAKING ARABIC
GEORGE: Muhammed says that in March of 2007 a suicide bomber exploded just a few feet from the café’s doors. The blast took out windows, destroyed shops and killed four of Muhammed’s sons and one of his grandsons. Their pictures now hang at the café’s entrance.
SPEAKING ARABIC
GEORGE: Muhammed points to each picture and slowly reads out their names. Since that 2007 attack, the street has undergone massive reconstruction and a revival of sorts. Store fronts were rebuilt and fresh paving stones line the pedestrian walkway. Piles of used books lay just steps away from the air conditioned bookshops with alphabetized inventories, in Arabic and English. At one stall the shelves are lined with books on political theory and social commentary. This selection would have been unheard of ten years ago. Ahmed A’Saab is a journalist from Fallujah. He’s been coming to Mutanabi Street every Friday for the past 20 years. The street continued to function under Saddam’s rule, but the books available have changed dramatically.
SPEAKING ARABIC
GEORGE: A’Saab says the biggest change is that now there are books that talk about politics, Iraqi history and community. Under Saddam you would never be able to find books on political theory and the so-called history books had only one point of view. Across the street at the Abdul Rahman bookshop, Imaad Makee says his best selling author is Ali Wardi. Wardi is an Iraqi author who died in Baghdad in 1995, but still maintains widespread popularity.
SPEAKING ARABIC
GEORGE: Makee explains that Wardi is popular because he writes in an exciting way about a variety of subjects, community, history, logic, politics and philosophy. Wardi is considered the grandfather of Iraqi sociology. He completed his most influential works in the ‘50s and ‘60s, before Saddam’s rise to power. But his work is still considered relevant to Iraqis today. A’Saab, the journalist, agrees. Saad Eskander, the director of the Iraqi national archive, says that it’s no surprise that Ali Wardi, someone who writes about Iraqi identity, is a top seller on Mutanabi Street.
ESKANDER: We don’t know ourselves. It means that Iraqis are in search of the truth about themselves. That’s why people started to read a lot of books on Iraq’s history, society, the issue of what is the true identity.
GEORGE: Eskander goes on to say that this self exploration is building a foundation for social discourse in Iraq and that maybe in a generation or two Baghdad will no longer be a city that destroys, but one that reads. For the World, I’m Susannah George.
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