https://themilitant.com/2018/12/15/mosul-reading-festival-celebrates-return-of-art-literature/
Mosul ‘reading festival’ celebrates return of art, literature
By Catharina Tirsén
and Paul Davies
Vol. 82/No. 48
December 24, 2018
Mime performance by Mosul University students Nov. 30 acts out recent
history. Dancers in white defeat Islamic State fighters in black, return
a painting to view and a musician plays his flute to cheers of the crowd.
Kairosphotos/Paul Jeffrey
Mime performance by Mosul University students Nov. 30 acts out recent
history. Dancers in white defeat Islamic State fighters in black, return
a painting to view and a musician plays his flute to cheers of the crowd.
MOSUL, Iraq — More than 1,000 people, including hundreds of youth,
participated in the second “reading festival” here since the end of the
three-year reign of terror by Islamic State. The Nov. 30 event was a
celebration of the defeat of the reactionary group’s occupation and a
further step forward for working people as part of an explosion of
literary, artistic and other cultural activity that had been forbidden
during IS’s rule.
At the festival, 30 bookshelves were lined up behind the makeshift
stage, all bearing the name of a high school. In front of each were two
big boxes of books.
“These are going to 30 school libraries,” Safwan Al-Madany, one of the
organizers of the festival, explained. “The books for the schools are
some of the 10,000 books that were donated. The rest will be sold to the
public after the program.”
Nonreligious books had been banned and destroyed under IS’s rule. As
part of its campaign to instil terror among working people, Islamic
State suppressed any form of expression that didn’t conform to the
group’s sectarian views.
It tore down statues of poets and writers and destroyed works of art and
musical instruments. Its members smashed religious shrines that were
important to Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. They set fire to the
Mosul University library, incinerating most of its hundreds of thousands
of books, to block working people gaining access to ideas. Thousands of
books were rescued by students and other volunteers last year.
Islamic State’s rule was crushed in a nine-month door-to-door battle by
Iraqi government and Kurdish forces backed by U.S. airstrikes that
levelled swaths of Mosul.
Second ‘reading festival’
The first reading festival was held outside the burnt library in
September 2017, attracting some 4,000 people.
Because of pouring rain this year’s festival was moved from the planned
site outside the Mosul Museum in the western part of the city, to a
sports arena just across the Tigris River where participants could still
see the devastation on the other side. The museum was the last IS
stronghold. It sustained the most damage during the battle for Mosul.
The festival included speeches by sponsors, poetry readings and
traditional music from the area. The students and professors had come
together to clear the rubble at the Faculty of Fine Arts building after
the battle. A broken piano keyboard is on display there as a symbol of
IS’s war against culture.
Dance depicts defeat of Islamic State
A dance performance put on by art students from the university depicted
the recent history of Iraq. In the dance, a ruler becomes more and more
despotic and people are driven into the ground. One gets killed and is
carried away to a funeral. After the tyrant flees, figures depicting
Islamic State appear, with bloodied red arms and half-black faces. They
take away a painting displayed on an easel while a man playing the flute
hides away his instrument.
Eventually three dancers in white clothes come onto the stage and defeat
Islamic State, killing some IS combatants and driving one into the
audience where he disappears.
The 1,000-strong audience stood up and cheered as the painting was put
back on its easel and the musician played his flute again. Their ovation
reflected the deeply held appreciation of the revival of cultural life
in Mosul today.
Pathfinder Press, a publisher with offices in New York and London, made
a donation of books to festival organizers. The books contain the
historic lessons of 150 years of working-class struggle. Some were
placed in boxes to be given to school libraries. Others were made
available for purchase by festivalgoers for 1,000 Iraqi dinars each (85
cents).
Tariq Al-Qassar, director of the political science department at the
University of Mosul, also received a donation of books for his
department. He had been one of those who selected the books the festival
donated to the schools.
In attendance at the festival and invited to join the platform was
Haneen Jamal, who in March had opened Qantara, one of the cultural cafes
that have been springing up in east Mosul. She told the Militant that
she is the first woman to ever manage a cafe here.
The cafe recently presented the first piano recital by a woman musician
in Mosul. Jamal had helped host the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra
two months ago when they performed in the city for the first time in years.
“At the beginning it was difficult, and we didn’t know if the cafe would
succeed,” Jamal said, “but now women and men from across the city come
to our events. There are people who hate what we do, but we must
continue, because music is the food of the soul.”
The Qantara cultural cafe and the reading festival are just two among
many initiatives to revive culture in the war-torn city. More book cafes
have opened. Art exhibitions and concerts are being held. In September
the “I am Iraqi — I read” festival, held in cities across Iraq, was
organized for the first time in Mosul. The title refers to a traditional
Arab saying, “Egypt writes, Lebanon publishes, and Iraq reads.” The
festival was held in a park where Islamic State once trained children it
had forced to become IS soldiers.
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In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Working people win gains, dignity in French protests
•‘Militant’: Take story of yellow vest movement to US workers
•US rulers push Beijing for trade and tariff concessions
•New readers of Militant, books: Join SWP in campaigning!
•Workers face capitalist disdain in wake of wildfire social catastrophe
•Kaiser health care workers strike over heavy workload
Feature Articles •Working people in Mosul rebuild lives, culture after
defeat of Islamic State
Also In This Issue •Keep up pressure against Florida prison censorship!
•Puerto Rico unions protest gov’t health care cuts
•Dallas cop charged with murder for killing Botham Jean
•Mosul ‘reading festival’ celebrates return of art, literature
•Sulaymaniyah students protest campus conditions
•Socialist Workers Party Fund Drive (Final)
•Fall Campaign to sell Militant subscriptions and books (Final)
On the Picket Line •Chicago charter teachers win strike for higher pay,
smaller classes
•Shipyard workers in Liverpool organize ‘rolling’ strike actions
Books of the Month •Lenin: ‘I declare war to death on Great Russian
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