The Last 12 hours in Mosul: Conflicting Narratives

 

Mosul Yesterday, Captured by Ahmed Al Omary, close to the Military Airport 

In the last 24 hours, Iraq has witnessed a major development in its politics. Headlines in Arabic media was quick to frame this as suqoot سقوط Mosul city, which roughly translates to the Fall of Mosul city allegedly in the arms of ISIS or ISIL, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a globally-recognised insurgent active group with ties to Al Qaeda. This terminology is very reminiscent of the framing of the news on Baghdad on the 9th April 2003, when Baghdad was officially captured by American troops.

Images circulating on the web shows  burnt Iraqi Army vehicles and army clothes on the streets of the city in a sign of the defeat of the Army after almost 4 days of clashes with the armed groups. Two Iraqi army officers said security forces had received orders to leave the city after militants managed to capture the Ghizlani army base in southern Mosul and set more than 1000 prisoners from different high-security prisons around the city.

On Monday, the governor of Mosul Atheel Al Nujaifi made a public plea to the people of the city to fight militants, before he escaped the provincial headquarters in Mosul.

Almost all media narratives both global and local have called for international action against what could be a catastrophic regression in the current affairs of Iraq. After All, Mosul is not only the largest city in Iraq, but it is also in close proximity to Irbil and the Kurdish borders, which in result risks the spill of violence to the relatively-peaceful Kurdish region in Iraq.

With the escalating headlines and developments in Iraq, one is faced with conflicting stories and on-ground testimonials from Iraqis in the city that stayed behind and could not flee the city.  Reasons for that are many including the closure of the Kurdish borders for some time which forced families to go back to their homes. Upon their return, and according to several Iraqis I spoke to who prefer to remain un-named, they were welcomed by the militants who assured them that the city was accessible and safe, with a sense of ownership to the place: “ Of course you can come back, please feel free to go wherever you want, no one will stop you.”

Many facebook statuses and tweets then started documenting Mosul post-capture, in a surprising twist to usual media narratives on ISIS’s politics in sieged cities. Reports that only army vehicles and headquarters were burnt and destroyed, but barricades that once adorned every street were removed, and for the first time as one facebook user claims “ I managed to drive freely in my city”. Other residents also claimed that the armed groups were helping young men patrol and protect their neighbourhoods from any possible looting, and were active in protecting banks, abandoned homes and roads.

Interesting testimonials from several residents in Mosul which clash with the main narrative circulated in Media that the city is in fact in more danger than it used to be. Several political analysts on Iraqi non-governmental TV channels claimed that this ‘dignified treatment of civilians’ is something they are pleasantly surprised with and also prefer to what they described as a continuous dehumanisation and humiliation of the Iraqi Army in checkpoints around the city. This could be very much understood as sectarian bias against the army,  but it also serves as an indication that the armed-groups are indeed not targeting civilians in the city (yet).

Many other ‘rumours’ are also circulating on social media platforms, some argue that the armed groups are in fact a group of revolutionary iraqis led by members of the old Iraqi Army, and is in process to ‘free’ the country from the current regime and the control of the Iran-backed government. Several ISIS twitter accounts proclaiming the end of Sykes-Picot in an alarming signal that this could indeed mean - if not immediate - the redrawing of the region map.

Now Al Maliki urged the Parliament to consider this an emergency state, and the Iraqi Parliament in an act of “urgency” decided to meet on Thursday to discuss the much-needed solutions for this catastrophic development in Iraq. With the speed of events in the country, and the clear inability of the army and the police to protect civilians and the city; the next couple of days could see the seizure of other smaller but crucial cities in Iraq, such as Salahudeen, Samara and perhaps even reaching the borders of the capital Baghdad.

The expected reactions from the central government could very well mirror the assaults on Fallujah and other cities in Iraq that have been under siege and attack for more than 6 months. Especially now that Al Maliki has asked for international support from the UN and the EU and Arab League in an attempt to ‘cleanse’ the cities from the insurgents. The government will probably use all kinds of weapons and means without counting for civilian casualties, like the cases in Fallujah and other cities in Iraq.

In an undeniable timely-events, with the results of the Iraqi elections, this could very well mean the ‘need’ to assert Maliki’s position as Prime Minister for the next 4 years; to rid the country from terrorism. It could also possibly mean the eradication of the second-largest city in Iraq and the eruption of sectarian violence and war. The next couple of days and arguably hours are quite critical and detrimental in the current power-play in the region. Narratives are indeed changing.

Just one thought for now | The Venice Diaries

 

Its been more than 50 days in Venezia, my new home for this year. A city so beautiful that at some point you realise that your attempts at capturing its beauty on camera are futile; Photos will not immortalise these visual masterpieces. A city so different from everything else you have known, a feeling that pushes you to renegotiate everything you learnt about living in cities around the world.

Venezia is not Dubai, not London, and Venezia is certainly not Baghdad. I found solace in cities I have lived in before in their streets that smell like home, platters of food from cuisines similar to mother’s cooking, but here, I found no traces that I can cling on. A stranger in a city filled with strangers from around the world. Thousands of tourists flock this city during the day almost paralysing mobility on the narrow calles “alleys”; you cannot walk, and you cannot avoid being the random stranger in someone else’s photographed memories.

When I first arrived I was overwhelmed with the opening of the exhibition I have been working on for the past 6 months that I missed out on the tiny detail of me moving into another city, changing locations and addresses. At first, I caught myself rushing to capture photos of the different yet similar canals around the city and stealing glances at major landmarks in the hopes of making the best out of my time, but as soon as the exhibition opened, and the work slowed down, I realized that I was indeed not in a hurry to be a tourist in Venice because I was simply not one.  

At first, Dubai did not leave me. I found myself waking up almost every morning worrying that I have overslept, miscalculated the time it will take me to reach work, worried about traffic and other things metropolis. It is a strange process to divorce your senses from elements that you cannot control; traffic, car accidents, and half-empty petrol tanks , to be faced with the reality that your body is now under your control, completely. A funny and scary process at times; there is no valid excuse for not showing up anymore.

I am still trying to understand the city I call home today, coming up with different theories on what it represents, what It feels like, how it marks me.. Several conclusions rushed to my head in the first two weeks of my time here, one that was evident is that Venice is not a city for the lonely hearts. I never really perceived Venice to be romantic, in fact, I think it is the complete opposite of that, a city so busy with tourists blocking your way most of the time, that there is seldom any romance left for the others. Gondolas are public, expensive and for someone like me with serious motion sickness, they are not ideal.

Still, Venice at night is something else. The tourists leave, the locals sleep and then there are people like me, wandering but not lost, looking around, breathing in the moist, the breeze and the silence. It becomes so quite that you can hear your own breath as you sigh for relief walking in one of its narrow alleys. You see your moon shadow, you know the one we lost in our rush to kill the moon.  You feel human again, with a city built with human dimensions in mind; you are no longer small.

And yet, there is this underlying overwhelming sense that you are a burden walking in this city alone. The alleys were created narrow enough to fit one person at times, but mostly wide enough for two people to walk together. Alleys are intimate, and your shadow is not intimate enough.

And it is because of that that I feel Venice is the perfect place for me to be in right now. I am a girl with a lonely heart, and this heart needs to be challenged in a city that strives to counter all of my heart’s arguments on the beauty of beating on its own.

And in the words of Henry James who argued that:

The deposed, the defeated, the disenchanted, the wounded, or even only the bored, have seemed to find there something that no other place could give. But such people came for themselves, as we seem to see them - only with the egotism of their grievances and the vanity of their hopes.

There is so much to write about, nothing new, nothing you have not heard before about the city, and no new visual discoveries that have not been exploited in souvenir shops. No, but there is Mariam in Venice, and that is certainly new.

Say Hello and Wave Goodbye

The death of the heart is the saddest thing that can happen to you. -Chinese Proverb

I have a certain fascination with suspended spaces and time(s), such as airports, train stations and in some instances hotel rooms. There is a lure to the revisited places that often witness pleasures, pains and heightened potentials, well at least for me there is. 

I have always been attracted to such spaces, every time I travel, and God knows I've had my share in the last two years ( I've traveled through airports more than 40 times), and yet every time I do, I make sure I go at least 4 hours before my flight departs so that I'd spend some time in a terminal filled with people either welcoming new stories, or ending long ones. I'd always sit on a chair either with a book that often masks my curious looks, or a notebook where I jolt down stories i'd imagine happening in the wandering minds of fellow travelers. 

Yes, I often also spend some time imagining or at times pushing visual images away in hotel rooms the moment I start occupying them, trying to understand what stories the walls have to tell, and what shames or pleasures the white clean sheets had to witness. 

Train stations however remained foreign to me because of the nature of transportation in the city I lived in most of my life, that was until I moved to London, and they became central to my life. My last recollected memory of a train station was in Baghdad, I don't remember the name of the station, but I was probably 7 years old, excited about having our private cabin with bunk-beds to share with my siblings on our trip to Kirkuk where my Aunt ( may she rest in peace) once lived. Was there a big clock in the station? That's how I remember it, but also that's how they are portrayed in hollywood films, so perhaps my memory is tainted with western stereotypes, and romantic associations with the industrial revolution as it is portrayed in books and films I read and watched growing up. 

Until I started traveling outside what was once the locus of my universe, I began observing train stations and my fascination with them grew even more. 

I've spent some ample time in stations during my time in London, sometimes in passing as means of commuting, and others saying my hello's and goodbyes. I always looked for the odd couple that fought before one of them boarded a train away, or the ones that did not cry but laughed trying to ease the separation. I was in love with my selections, and often imagined that I would also reclaim the space when the time came to say my goodbyes, and create a counter-argument to the usual tears shed while departing. 

But that never happened, instead I saw myself narrating in my head instances when I had to say goodbye to loved ones while it was happening! It was too intense, I'd hear a voice-over in my head describing the teary eyes, the shaking hands, and the embrace that truly suspends time. My mind also directs the whole scene where people move in time-lapse, while I am standing still feeling with every passing second, a life-time slipping away. My narrative in fact, became the most dramatic of them all. 

A week ago, I revisited a station that I hate and love by chance, not intended, I found myself somehow forced to take it to reach a hotel-room I then called home. I walked in with so much caution, pretending I was a horse, that I only saw what was in front of me, and that my human eyes could not comprehend the sideways. I wanted to avoid that seat outside the station where I sat not so long ago crying because I had to live that un-coveted goodbye. I avoided the gateway which saw both the arrival of my solace, and the farewell to the arms. I tried to avoid looking at the station I was now walking through so much, that I actually missed both my gate and the train. 

And then I looked behind, and saw that clock I have always imagined in the train station in Baghdad, and saw my little self crying because her daddy then could not travel with her to Kirkuk. I also saw that with every goodbye I said in the train stations of my life, I always shed rivers of tears because in their essence, farewells are hated by me. I stopped blaming myself for my overt sense of sensitivity, and accepted that my vulnerability to separation is rooted deep in losses I've lived through in my childhood and adult-life. I accepted then only that my sadness and fascination with train stations, airports and hotel rooms, comes from my continuous struggle with the temporality of it all: of life, moments, happiness and love. 

I waited for the next train on a bench close to the one that I avoided, and I saw me sitting there crying genuinely as I said goodbye there once, and It did not bother me, in fact, I smiled at me and prayed that I will never stop crying for those who matter, but then leave. I also closed my eyes a little and prayed that the next time I am here, I am saying hello not waving goodbye.

*Title of this post is a the title of David Gray's Song found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzdrabPpRE 

* Photographs are part of my collection of captured memories. 

The Poet & The Scientist 1.1

They left their foreign cities, and forged digital alliances to meet in the epicenter of their colonised past. She packed the innocence of her scarred life, the poetry of her ancestral belonging, and he traveled light, burdened with his manufactured convictions.

He came with numbers and diamonds, and she welcomed him with extremes of veiled chocolates, cigarettes, and her words.

In the express train, there it was: collisions of shock and anticipated pleasures as they waited to reach the centre of what they once both called home. The conversation was just about to start, but the debates were silenced, the binaries were resting, and the potentials heightened.

The conversation continued, and foreign music played in the background to remind them once again, that it was indeed all foreign, all but their coveted explosion.

Laughter, tears and music all seemed wordless at a moment when her words were silenced and his numbers were subtracted to zero. Musky scents of occupied pasts in a room that witnessed the death of poetry and the abortion of science.

He tasted pleasure, she suppressed pain and both surrendered to a moment they knew will last for as long as… a moment does.

He watched her words fall asleep, and her defenses fall as his lips stretched with a small victory that he concurred her lands, and claimed them his. She slept to dream of her words again.

Outside the small window was the remains of an empire that insisted on stealing their belonging. They denied it with the smell of coffee, fresh bread and cigarettes stealing with pleasure moments of their lives. Outside that window, was the empire, but inside the room was Baghdad.

Baghdad: loved, hated and coveted stood uncontested in her eyes, Tigris flowing signaling him to taste home, and begging her to quench her thirst.. They both swallowed home to the point of rejection.

In Baghdad, the explosions went silent too, and the unfamiliar sound of peace alarmed them that it was too, coming to an end.

The music faded away, and the conversation rested to give space for a debate that mocked the rivers and the sweaty palms. His numbers increased, as her poetry resurrected: Words he tried to erase, and softness that suffocated his resistance. He screamed for proofs, as she scribbled words on sheets that witnessed her demise.

She wore her contradictions and he fixed his emptiness as they left for the train. Quite they were, but the silence has left them. He took a glance back at the building that welcomed their wreckage, while she held his hands preparing to let them go.

She was the poet, and he was the scientist.