Diary of an Iraqi Cosmopolitan Citizen

"As Syria descends deeper into chaos, knives are being sharpened and battle lines being drawn in Iraq." says an article last December in Foreign Policy.

That was an enough dose of "foreign" policy to me so I switched the internet navigation to more "internal" affairs of this big world and the best story that appealed to me was Depardieu's. The french actor Gerard Depardieu, says an article, was granted the Russian nationality and passport. Depardieu wanted to get rid of the high taxes for the high salaries in France. As an Iraqi, living in Baghdad, I understand him!


They say that chronic stress can cause, among other things, numbness of emotions. I am avoiding news about Iraq and Syria and the areas around.

In found an article about the return of Genevieve, a french 16 years old adolescent, to her mother after one month of escaping.  BB wrote a letter to the president of France to help saving two elephants in danger. Every time they mention the president of France I remember that they said he rides bicycle to his place of working.


I felt that the news were so silly.

I turned the T.V. one and a movie started in TV5 Maghrib-Orient and it was named: "Papy fait de la resistance." Its start was interesting since it talks about the Nazi's invasion of France in the 40s but it started to turn into a very silly comedy. The brother of Hitler came to live in the house of the French opera singer "La Bourdelle" who had sang for us the silliest harmonies.

 Hitler's brother suddenly started singing "Je n'ai pas change" of Julio Iglisias and I said THAT THAT'S ENOUGH for today.

It was such an important day for me, the poor Iraqi.

Eclipse of the Memory

What is the benefit of reading poetry for example? And to make the question more answerless we can add "since you will forget most of what you have read?"

Lately I found a movie which was issued back in the 90s, "Total Eclipse: Rimbaud and Verlaine". I was estranged to the emotional unrest of Rimbaud and Verlaine. Back in the 90s a friend lent me a book about Rimbaud, a book that I liked to a degree that I photocopied it. And since not more than 2 months I have bought a new book about the life and poetry of Rimbaud. But when I saw the movie it seemed that I am getting to know Rimbaud for the first time in my life.

When I reached the scene where Verlaine shot Rimbaud's hand with a gun I stopped watching the movie and thought that it is more fictional than real and went to the book that I bought since 2 months and found, to my surprise, that I have underlined the phrase which talks about that same incident: "Verlaine had shot Rimbaud's hand with a gun". I have even put an exclamation mark in front of the phrase.

While seeing the movie I get interested in one of Rimbaud's peoms named: "Sensations". I have googled it and read it gain and again. When I was consulting the book I read before 2 months I found that the same poem is present in the book and that I have added notes to it and put circles and lines around some of the lines.

It is evident that while reading the same poem, just 2 months after, I have no any recollection of any of its parts.

So again, why we read things like poetry? Not only that, why we do read since we will forget?

Is it about the pleasure of the moment? Does it leave a non-specific trace, for example, an emotional tone, an unconsious emotional tone toward somethings? Does it affect our Amygdala, for example?

More seriously, reading an autobiography, is meant to add to our experience of life, but since I am forgetting the autobiographies I read, what should I continue?

I think I am forgetting the details and getting some generalizations. Some concepts that I find difficult to underline here in this post. Rimbaud is ventilating my tendecy of rebellion in my inhibited society. Does Rimbaud's autobiography is an answer to the experience of rebelion?

No question about it, reading an important book once sometimes is not sufficient. No question about it reading a book as a must do thing trying to finnish it as fast as possible is a bad practice. Reading a book, for me, should be slower, since I seem to read so fast, and superficiously.

Jibra Ibrahim Jibra

"Al-Amirat(=Princesses) Street" in Al-Mansoor district in Baghdad was a calm quarter with beautiful houses with huge trees and flowering gardens. Jibra Ibrahim Jibra lived and described his life in it in an autobiographical book named "Princesses' Street".

Jibra wrote about his love of walking in the street and thinking about what he would write. He was married to Lamea'a and lived with her in a house in this street. He wrote:

Portrait of Lamea'a by Jibra

"Lamea'a was very Baghdadi and very cosmopolitan, belonging to a mesopotamian era and belonging, at the same time, to the absolute time to whom we are attracted by love. After our stormy marriage, and our long voyage in the sea to the USA in a scholarship in Harvard, it was not strange that I didn't want to go back to Baghdad, since it was the Arabic city in which I saw, in its society and people, in its historical conditions at that time, the possibilities of freedom and modernism."

After 2003 the Princesses' Street had been closed by blocks and became an area were some of the governement members took residence with their armed guards. An explosion occured near the closed and abandoned Jibra's house. The street seems frightening these days.

A photo taken recently near the Princesses' Street

What is left for us is Jibra's books. He wrote about his unexpected meeting with Agatha Christie in Iraq in the late 50s and early 60s were her husband was an archeologist working at the Nemrood site. Jibra visited Agatha Christie many times in those years and saw her while she was writing "Murder in Mesopotamia".

It's 2012, the Princesses' Street is frightening, packed with guns, Jibra is not anymore there, but we still can find, in a corner, a bunch of his writings resting in the sunlight of a cold december. 



Masha'a 6th Finger

Masha: " A green oak by the curving shore, and on that oak a chain of gold."

When faced with questions like: "What is the benefit of the books you are reading?" I found myself not sure what to say. Sometimes the answer came as: "Experiences, to witness individual's experiences". Regarding, for example, the history of Algeria, acountry that I care much about, novels were great additin to what I knew from history books. The individual's experiences matter a lot.

But what about reading a novel, or a play, from Russia? From an era that I ignore? 

Is it still a human experience that I am motivated to know about? Motivated? What motivates me? Reading Chekhov in English after reading it in Arabic seems an exercise in English.  

"Three Sisters" is a play about "the decay of the privileged class in Russia and the search for meaning in the modern world" as the wikipedia states. "Dissatisfied with their presence and existence" the three sisters long to Moscow.

 Vershinin: "I read a great deal, but I don't know how to select books and perhaps I don't read what I ought." p.118

I found another translation of the "Three Sisters" and now in French. I thought about reading it again in French as an exercise but Masha answered me:

Masha: "Knowing three languages in this town is a useless luxury. Not even a luxury. It's a useless appendage, like a sixth finger. We know a lot of unnecessary things." p104

Granny's Colored Scarf, & Masha's 6th Finger

Granny's Colored Scarf, & Masha's 6th Finger

Instead of trying to fix the electricity problem in the weekend, going searching for French films in Al-Mutanabbea street was chosen, …….out-of-the-blue. It was a surprise to find an Algerian film. "Free Men" or "Les Hommes Libres" is such a wonderful film. It talks about the second world war, when the Nazi's were in France, and the Mosque of Paris started to issue faked identity cards to the Algerian Jews especially, to all the Jews in need generally, to declare that they are Muslims, so that they escape the Nazi's danger.

The friends of this Moroccan Jewish singer had engraved a faked grave for his father in the Muslim's cemetery as an evidence that he is Muslim, this has saved his life, …….to melancholia.

His friend, who engraved the faked grave, wanted a favor from the Jewish singer: "Come, I told my friends that you will sing for us!"


That seemed so silly but finally the singer accept and sang a song dated to the 40s when the US troops had take from Morocco a station before and/or after entering to France. The US troop had introduced the Dollars to the Moroccan market, and the grannies (as the song says) started to wear colored scarf. New words entered into the Morrocan dictionary including "Okay" and "Bye bye" as the song says:






The weekend was very happy instead of the failure to solve the electricity problem nor the internet problem which is related to the electricity problem. Working days started again soon and Chekov's "Three Sisters" were taken in the bus for a re-read. One of the sisters, named Masha, said that she talks many languages including French, German, and Italian, but she feels that such abilities seems useless in the small "retarded" village she lives in, ……."useless as a 6th finger" as she literally said.


Thinking about the trivial things that left memory in those last days herald a bias …….a bias of the memory to forget electricity and focus on novels and films, to neglect electricity for the sake of the Moroccan grannies' scarves and Masha's 6th finger.

When Memory Brewed, When Nietzsche Wept

"Isolation in present only in isolation, once you shared it it dissapears, my dear friend" Joseph Breuer to Friedrich Nietzsche in (When Nietzsche Wept) movie based on Yalom\s novel of the same name.

Irvin Yalom is a name not very strange to me. All I can remember is that I read the name while preparing for the Psychiatry Board exam before years. His name was related to group therapy. There were eleven notes numerated in a table in a text and I tried again and again to remember it by heart. Now, that I have passed the exam since 2-3 years, I forgot all about it.

The picture above is from a scene from the movie (When Nietzsche Wept) which is based on a novel by Irvin Yalom. 

Reading "Three Sisters" for the second, or maybe the third, time shocks my memory about how much I am forgetful about it. Next to Masha's lines I wrote some notes like: "style of speech", "theatrical display of emotions", "trying to be the centre of attention", "easily influenced", and so on... trying to find "hidden" criteria of histerionic personality disorder in Masha's line. 

It is either that I used to have some abilities that I lost, or that I developed new experiences and stopped beying naive, and "easily provokes" ;)

I need to review hardly the lecture notes and the texts. I may need to stop shattering my attention to irrilivant things and focus more on more basic things. 

Buddha in the Sanitarium of Running Rats

Reading "Declaration of Insanity" by Khudair Miri in 2008 was an experience that aided me to put myself in a place. In a place for those psychiatrists who didn't concentrate well in what they are studying. In a place of those psychiatrists who prefer to sleep in the noon rather than reading Michel Foucault, for example.

My trials to read Foucault failed. There were no braises in my eyes when I was reading Foucault, but there was a yawning cow who had ate enough grass.

I got some friends who read philosophy with enthusiasm. I declared to them frankly, over and over again, that I don't understand philosophy, and I suspect that philosophy is dead.

It was before days when I was in central Baghdad. 

 The scene in front of the Ministry of Health is the same since 2008. They started digging in an Iraqi trial to make a complex bridge. They are stealing money. They are lying. They don't belong. Buildings from the 60s or 70s are watching the bitter scene.

 In my bag their were two books. One by Henri Avon entitled: Buddhism, and the other was by Khudai Miri entitled: "The Desert of Buddha".

 Khdair Miri, who wrote the "Declaration of Insanity" about his experience as an inpatint in Al-Rashad (Al- Shammayia" hospital, writes an imagined biography about Buddha while he was walking in the desert. In page 95 of the book which was published by "Al Hadara Publications" Buddha is taken to a place called "The Sanitarium of Running Rats".

 The two books added to me much. I knew about Buddhism and get more close to Khudair Miri's writings.  And from the windows of the second store of the red bus I took many pictures including this below that shows the mosque of Al-Khulafa to the left, and the church of the Latin to the right.

It was just another day of reading and walking in Baghdad.