Baghdad Burning
... I'll meet you 'round the
bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
By riverbend
Written by river on May 31, 2006
Viva Muqtada...
It's fascinating to watch the world beyond Iraq prepare for the
World Cup. I get pictures by email of people hanging flags and
banners, in support of this team or that one. Oh we have flags
and banners too - the hole-ridden black banners all over Baghdad,
announcing deaths and wakes. The flags are all of one color,
usually - black, green, red, or yellow - representing a certain
religious party or political group.
A friend who owns a shop in Karrada had a little problem with
a certain flag last week. Karrada was one of the best mercantile
areas in Baghdad prior to the war. It was the area you went to
when you had a list of unrelated necessities - like shoes, a
potato peeler, pink nail polish and a dozen blank CDs. You were
sure to find everything you needed in under an hour.
After the war, SCIRI, Da'awa and other religious parties instantly
opened up bureaus in the area. Shops that once displayed colorful
clothes, and posters of women wearing makeup, began looking more
subdued. Soon, instead of pictures of the charming women advertising
Dior perfume, shops began putting up pictures of Sistani, looking
half-alive, shrouded in black. Or pictures of Sadr, grim and
dark, and almost certainly not smelling like Dior.
This friend owns a small cosmetics shop where he sells everything
from lipstick to head scarves. His apartment is located right
over the shop so that when he looks down from the living room
window, he can see whoever is standing at the shop door. G. inherited
the shop from his father, who sold sewing materials instead of
cosmetics. The shop has been in his family for nearly 20 years.
Prior to the war, his wife and sister ran the shop, making the
most persuasive sales duo in the history of cosmetics probably
(the proof of this being a garishly colored neck scarf I bought
4 years ago and never took out of the closet since). After the
war, and various threats in the form of letters and broken windows,
G. began running the shop personally and in addition to cosmetics,
he introduced an appropriately dark line of flowing abbayas and
headscarves.
The last time I visited G. in his shop was two weeks ago. Since
January, G.'s shop has been the center of some football (soccer)
activity. His obsession with football has gotten to the point
where the shop closes up two hours early so that E., the cousin
and various other friends can gather for PlayStation FIFA tournaments.
These tournaments are basically a group of grown men sitting
around, maneuvering little digital men running around after a
digital ball, screaming encouragement and insults at each other.
If you walk into the shop looking to buy something during those
hours, you risk being thrown out or simply told to "Just
take it, take it - whatever it is. Take it and GO!". Every
World Cup year, G. and his wife only half-jokingly quarrel about
changing his only sons name to that of the footballer of the
year. (As a sort of compromise, family and friends have all agreed
to call his 14-year-old son "Ronaldino" until the games
are over.)
G.'s cousin, who has lived in Canada for nearly 15 years, recently
sent G. a large, colorful Brazilian flag - perfect for hanging
on a shop window. He told us how he was planning to hang it right
in the center and paint under it in big bold letters "VIVA
BRASILIA!!". E. looked dubious as G. excitedly described
how he'd be changing the colors of the display - green and yellow
to match the flag.
It was up for nearly two whole days before the problems began.
The first hint of a problem came through G.'s neighbor. He stopped
by the shop and told G. that a black-turbaned young cleric had
been walking past the shop window, when the flag attracted his
attention. According to the neighbor Abu Rossul, the young cleric
stopped, gazed at the flag, took note of the shops name and location
and went on his way. G. shrugged it off with the words, "Well
maybe he's a fan of Brazil too..." Abu Rossul wasn't so
sure, "He looked more like the 'Viva Sadr!' type to me..."
A day later, G. had a visit at noon. A young black-clad cleric
walked into the shop, and had a brief look around. G. tried to
interest him in some lovely headscarves and abbayas, but he was
not to be deterred from his apparent mission. He claimed to be
a 'representative' from the Sadr press bureau which was a few
streets away and he had a message for G.: the people at the abovementioned
bureau were not happy with G.'s display. Where was his sense
of national pride? Where was his sense of religion? Instead of
the face of a heathen player, there were pictures of the first
Sadr, or better yet, Muqtada! Why did he have a foreign flag
plastered obscenely on his display window? Should he feel the
need for a flag, there was the Iraqi flag to put up. Should he
feel the necessity for a green flag, like the one in the display,
there was the green flag of "Al il Bayt"... Democracy,
after all, is all about having options.
G. wasn't happy at all. He told the young cleric he would find
a 'solution' and made a peace offering of some inexpensive men's
slippers and some cotton undershirts he sometimes sold. That
evening, he conferred with various relatives and friends and
although nearly everyone advised him to take down the flag, he
insisted it should remain on display as a matter of principle.
His wife even offered to turn it into a curtain or bed sheets
for him to enjoy until the games were over. He was adamant about
keeping it up.
Two days later, he found a rather dramatic warning letter slipped
under the large aluminum outer door. In a nutshell, it declared
G. and people like him 'heathens' and demanded he take down the
flag or he would be exposing himself to danger. It takes quite
a bit to shake up a guy like G., but the same day he had the
flag down and the display was back to normal.
As it turns out, Muqtada has a fatwa against football (soccer).
I downloaded it and this is a translation of what he says when
someone asks him for a fatwa on football and the World Cup:
"In reality, my father's position on this topic isn't deficient...
Not only my father but Sharia also prohibits such activities
which keep the followers too occupied for worshiping, keep people
from remembering [to worship]. Habeebi, the West created things
that keep us from completing ourselves (perfection). What did
they make us do? Run after a ball, habeebi... What does that
mean? A man, this large and this tall, Muslim - running after
a ball? Habeebi, this 'goal' as it is called... if you want to
run, run for a noble goal. Follow the noble goals which complete
you and not the ones that demean you. Run after a goal, put it
in your mind and everyone follows their own path to the goal
to satisfy God. That is one thing. The second thing, which is
more important, we find that the West and especially Israel,
habeebi the Jews, did you see them playing soccer? Did you see
them playing games like Arabs play? They let us keep busy with
soccer and other things and they've left it. Have you heard that
the Israeli team, curse them, got the World Cup? Or even America?
Only other games... They've kept us occupied with them-
singing, and soccer, and smoking, stuff like that, satellites
used for things which are blasphemous while they occupy
themselves with science etc. Why habeebi? Are they better than
us - no we're better than them."
Important note: Islamic Sharia does not prohibit soccer/football
or sports - it's only prohibited by the version of Sharia in
Muqtada's dark little head. I wonder what he thinks of tennis,
swimming and yoga...
I listened to the fatwa, with him getting emotional about playing
football, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Foreign
occupation and being a part of a puppet government - those things
are ok. Football, however, will be the end of civilization as
we know it, according to Muqtada. It's amusing - they look nothing
alike - yet he reminds me so much of Bush. He can barely string
two sentences together properly and yet, millions of people consider
his word law. So when Bush raves about the new 'fledgling Iraqi
government' 'freely elected' into power, you can take a look
at Muqtada and see one of the fledglings. He is currently one
of the most powerful men in the country for his followers.
So this is democracy. This is one of the great minds of Bush's
democratic Iraq.
Sadr's militia control parts of Iraq now. Just a couple of days
ago, his militia, with the help of Badr, were keeping women from
visiting the market in the southern city of Karbala. Women weren't
allowed in the marketplace and shop owners were complaining that
their businesses were suffering. Welcome to the new Iraq.
It's darkly funny to see what we've turned into, and it is also
anguishing. Muqtada Al-Sadr is a measure of how much we've regressed
these last three years. Even during the Iran-Iraq war and the
sanctions, people turned to sports to keep their mind off of
day-to-day living. After the occupation, we won a football match
against someone or another and we'd console ourselves with "Well
we lose wars - but we win football!" From a country that
once celebrated sports - football (soccer) especially - to a
country that worries if the male football players are wearing
long enough shorts or whether all sports fans will face eternal
damnation... That's what we've become.
- posted by river @ 12:05 AM
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