Hadani Ditmars returns to Mosul to find out how new creative projects are aiding the City’s cultural recovery
Words and images by Hadani Ditmars
From the top floor of the UNESCO – and EU-sponsored ‘Station’ – a hub for young creative entrepreneurs and a cultural centre – the future of Mosul looks bright. Across the street, a new tourist hotel is almost complete and new cafés, restaurants and high-tech gadget shops are popping up everywhere in the Aldhubat quarter of East Mosul.
It has been some five years since ‘liberation’ from Daesh (Islamic State) and much of the old city on the west bank of the Tigris lies in ruins; basic infrastructure, or indeed a comprehensive master plan for rebuilding, is still elusive. Yet the cultural scene in Mosul is enjoying a revival. The University of Mosul’s library, burned and razed by Daesh, recently reopened this past spring, as did its theatre, the only one in town, with a triumphant evening of music played by an interfaith orchestra.
After centuries of harmonious co-existence of Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Shabaks, Yazidis, Armenians, Sabeans and Mandaeans, as well as a history of foreign invasions and interventions, Moslawis certainly don’t need instruction in how to get along. Increasingly, they’re taking their cultural reconstruction into their own hands.
The revival of the city’s central bazaar began when a single merchant rebuilt his stall. His endeavour evolved into a kind of local competition that led to the restoration of Mosul’s commercial and social heart, with assistance from local notables such as the Jalili family, who’ve also helped to restore prominent city mosques, just as their ancestors – rulers of the city from 1726 to 1934 – did in centuries prior.
And, happily, a wooded area by the river overlooking the old city known as the Jungle has sprung back to life, with cafes and restaurants and new ‘wedding halls’ abuzz with celebrations on weekends. A 1980s Saddam-era behemoth called the Tourist Village has reopened, charging upwards of US$80 a night for accommodation. Foreign tourists have started to trickle back in, spurred on by both improved security and a new visa available on arrival to dozens of nationalities.
At the Station, a new creative space was opened last year that includes a recording studio, an instrument-rental facility and an art gallery, where several concerts, workshops and exhibitions have taken place. Its ground floor features a popular café where young people gather to sell their art and artisanal crafts to locals and tourists alike, engaging in lively discussions over lattes.
Not far from here, at the Institute of Fine Arts of Mosul, an EU/UNESCO partnership with the City Theatre of Ghent, has established a film lab. To date, 20 young students have received training and hands-on experience in various aspects of cinema production, including directing, screenwriting, editing, acting, set and costume design, audio and lighting techniques.
The nine short films they’ve produced include scenarios ranging from sexual violence against women and youths to the exploitation of young refugee and displaced children, and surviving the Daesh siege. In spite of such dark themes, the fact that these films reflect a renewed sense of freedom of expression can only be a positive sign.
In the old city, UNESCO’s restoration of the Al-Tahera and Al-Sa’a churches and the iconic al-Nuri and Aghawat mosques, as well as the rebuilding of hundreds of Ottoman-era houses destroyed during the battle with Daesh, have helped to spur complementary projects. Across the street from the al-Nuri mosque, the Bytna (‘our house’ in Arabic) Institute of Arts, Culture and Heritage was established in 2019 by a young Moslawi named Sakar Al-Zakaria, who works closely with manager Ahmed Najdat, a young medical student who studied in the USA.
With seed money from USAID and private investors, their team restored a 200-year-old Ottoman-era house that has now become an important cultural and social centre for young people, as well as a bridge between internationals and locals. Running it as a private enterprise, the young entrepreneurs have since restored adjacent homes, converting them into restaurants and shops selling traditional arts and crafts, creating a kind of heritage plaza. A few hundred metres away, piles of rubble serve as a stark reminder of what Mosul has endured – and how far it has come.
Bytna currently partners with UNESCO and recently hosted a symposium for community input on restoration work at the al-Nuri. Other recent events included a lecture by the German archaeological team from the University of Heidelberg working at Nabi Yunis, who’ve discovered the ruins of an Assyrian palace underneath the tomb of Jonah, revealed when Daesh blew up the sacred site. This was followed by a concert of Andalucian songs sung in Spanish (by this very writer!) accompanied by Moslawi oud player Rawi Khalid, who also performed the next morning for a group of young music students.
Bytna comprises a library, rooms for workshops and training sessions, a special area for children with games, books and a puppet theatre, as well as a top floor café and event hall with a 150-person capacity. It also houses a museum of historical objects from the area in a room that was hit by a missile during the liberation. Amid portraits of King Faisal, old vases and gramophones, a visible hole in the ceiling remains as a testament to the city’s struggles.
‘The presence of such a project in such a place – with a view of the al-Hadba minaret – carries great symbolism for the people of Mosul,’ says Najdat. ‘Now, after two-and-a-half years of work, we are proud to say that we’ve held more than 120 different activities, ranging from arts and culture to health issues, history and education, in coordination with many local and international NGOs and institutions, including UNESCO, USAID, the University of Mosul, the municipality and many others.’
Najdat sees Bytna as a ‘safe zone for the artists, youths and intellectuals to hold their activities. We want to support them in order to make them believe in themselves and their potential.’
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a group of musicians begins to gather for a rehearsal at the Book Forum – another cultural hub/literary café that also partners with UNESCO. The ensemble – a multicultural group that plays Yezidi, gypsy, Muslim, Sufi, Christian and other traditional music – are one of several fruits of a project funded by UNESCO’s Heritage Emergency Fund and prepared by the NGO Action for Hope called ‘Wassla (‘connection’) to revive cultural life in the city of Mosul’. It also included the launch of a documentary film entitled Long Live the Music. Additionally, the partners launched a programme called ‘Listening to Iraq’ that trained 24 musicians from Mosul, leading to the creation of four ensembles. This afternoon, one of them is rehearsing here for the inaugural Mosul Traditional Music Festival, the first of its kind since the liberation of Mosul in 2017.
Ahmed Al Nuaimi, a Muslim engineer from Mosul who plays traditional Arab drum, tells me it was a Facebook post that drew him to the group. Before I can ask any more questions, the group of four men and two women begin to play a traditional Sufi song by the Sufi icon Mullah Othman al-Mawsili – a renowned poet and maqam composer whose statue was destroyed by Daesh but replaced with a new one last year. The lyrics are about spiritual ecstasy and transcendence, but when I begin to dance to the soaring melodies some eyebrows are raised. I quickly realise that the two women in the group – a mother and daughter – wearing hijab, have a bemused expression on their faces but that the men look a little nervous. ‘We’re worried about what our wives might say,’ one laughs nervously. It may be safe to sing Sufi songs behind closed doors but some things are still taboo in this often-conservative city.
The man who sang so beautifully, 35-year-old Fener Adnan Muhammad Sultan Al-Tai, is in fact a professor of religious studies at the local Islamic college. But he sees no conflict between his faith and his music, in contrast to Daesh’s reign of terror, when music was strictly forbidden. ‘So many musicians fled this city,’
he tells me. ‘The rest of us had to go underground until liberation. ISIS wanted to erase our culture completely. So, after 2017, there was a huge interest in music and art again.’ He and his musician friends would practise clandestinely in private homes, in basements and far from windows.
What happened to musicians who were caught in the act, I ask? ‘They [ISIS] would destroy their instruments and put them in prison. They would torture them to try to get them to stop playing music,’ he says.
The Sufi tradition of Othman al Moslawi is anathema to the Daesh ideology, he says, and ‘now our true spirit – and the true spirit of Islam – is being revived.’ He cites more than 1,000 years of Islamic tradition, in which music, science and culture were celebrated.
A few weeks later, the group opens the Mosul Traditional Music Festival at the old Mosul museum, which sits next to the modernist 1974 incarnation of the space (designed by Mohammed Makiya), which is still being restored after Daesh’s pillaging of its treasures.
In a moment of musical rapture, 32-year-old Walid Said, a fellow professor at the Islamic college, sings another song by Othman al moslawi. ‘Tela’at ya mahla noorha (‘[The sun] has risen with its beautiful light’)’, he intones, as the audience sways and sings along in unison.
Although most of the concerts over the next three days in Mosul will be confined to the museum for security reasons, the moment is still an important milestone for the long-suffering city.
In the spirit of the Silk Road, which brought many cultures together in this crossroads city, whose name means ‘link’, an impressive array of international musicians join locals in celebrating Mosul’s musical awakening. Among them are French-Syrian composer Fawaz Baker, whose meditative melodies evoke old Aleppo; Samaia, a trio of lovely French women singing world music; and a Spanish/Arab fusion band called Andalusian Roots.
Appearing with the group is violinist and vocalist Layth Sidiq, a Mosul native who left as a baby and is now returning for the first time. Before performing a violin solo by Adam Haddad, an important Iraqi composer from the mid-century Fine Arts Quartet, Sidiq exalts in the power of music to save the city of his birth.
‘I’m so grateful to be back in Iraq for the first time and to receive such a warm welcome from the audience – especially after what has happened to the city and to the country as a whole – and to know that, as artists, we have the chance to rebuild through music,’ he says. ‘We are social activists who can create positive change.’
Back in the old city, en route to a festival jam session in one of the restored Ottoman-era houses, a group of musicians linger in front of Bytna. For a moment, with colourful lights illuminating the burgeoning plaza and children buying cotton candy from a street vendor, Mosul begins to resemble its old self.
As old melodies mix with new, wafting across piles of rubble and newly restored houses alike, one can only hope that this is the city’s song of rebirth.
