MOSUL: A raven perched on the shoulder of a woman with flaming hair is Iraqi artist Marwan Fathi’s symbol for the terrible events he and his home city Mosul have had to endure.
Three years under the oppressive and violent rule of Daesh and the military campaign which drove it out in 2017 left much of the northern city in ruins. Thousands were killed, rendered homeless or maimed. Those who survived are deeply traumatized.
“I still jump awake at night thinking an air strike is about to hit or that they are coming to take one of us,” Fathi, 36, said. “Everyday is a struggle.”
Fathi’s work is on display in “Return to Mosul” — the city’s first art exhibition since before it was seized by Daesh, whose ultra hard-line version of Sunni Islam prohibits most art forms.
Artists from across Iraq are taking part in the six-day show, including many who lived in Mosul when it was in the militants’ grip.
Hawkar Riskin’s haunting work ‘destruction’ depicts a giant skeleton standing on one leg, while Mohammad Al Kinani’s series of paintings — ‘Caliphate I’, ‘Caliphate II’ and ‘Caliphate III’ represents the beginning and end of Daesh, and Mosul’s rebirth.
Fathi said the artists who stayed in the city lived in constant fear and despair.
“There was a time when we considered killing ourselves. We reached that low. But then we thought, what would happen to the children?” Fathi, a professor of fine arts, said.
JONAH AND THE CITY
The show is in the newly re-opened Royal Hall of the Mosul Museum, which was looted and destroyed by Daesh and in the ensuing war to wrest control of the city.
Ahmed Mozahem, another Mosul-born artist, continued to work in secret while the city was under the militants’. Using a writing pad he kept hidden to avoid discovery, Mozahem produced 40 pencil drawings which are now among his most cherished possessions, an expression of what he and his family suffered.
For “City of the Whale,” his painting in the exhibition, Mozahem drew on the story of the prophet Jonah and the whale, which features Nineveh, the ancient Assyrian city which stood roughly where Mosul is today.
Following their capture of the city in 2014, Daesh went on a rampage, destroying many of Mosul’s ancient sites and artefacts, including a shrine believed by many to be Jonah’s tomb.
The militants not only destroyed the city, Mozahem said. “They also killed something inside, our spirit.”
But Matthew Vincent, an American archaeologist, says technology can help preserve some of what was lost. Vincent is a co-founder of a crowdsourced, digital preservation project called Rekrei, which collects photographs of damaged or lost monuments and artefacts to re-create these in 3D representations.
At the Mosul Museum, visitors are now able to catch virtual glimpse of ancient Assyrian treasures destroyed by Daesh. One of them, the Lion of Mosul, was a colossal Assyrian guardian lion from about 860 BCE, one of two which stood at the entrance of the Temple of Ishtar at Nimrud, Iraq.
“It is never going to replace the original but new technology is giving us a path we simply didn’t have before,” Vincent said.
In Mosul exhibition, Iraqi artists process brutal rule of Daesh
In Mosul exhibition, Iraqi artists process brutal rule of Daesh
- Three years under the oppressive and violent rule of Daesh and the military campaign which drove it out in 2017 left much of the northern city in ruins
Israel bars Al-Aqsa imam from entering mosque in Ramadan
- ‘This ban is a grave matter for us as our soul is tied to Al-Aqsa, Al-Aqsa is our life’
JERUSALEM: A senior imam of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem said on Tuesday that Israeli authorities had barred him from entering the compound, just days before the start of the holy month of Ramadan.
“I have been barred from the mosque for a week, and the order can be renewed,” Sheikh Muhammad Al-Abbasi said.
He said he was not informed of the reason for the ban, which came into effect from Monday.
FASTFACT
A Waqf source said 33 of its employees had been barred from entering the compound in the week leading up to Ramadan.
“I had only returned to Al-Aqsa a month ago after spending a year in the hospital following a serious car accident,” Abbasi said. “This ban is a grave matter for us, as our soul is tied to Al-Aqsa. Al-Aqsa is our life.”
On Monday, Israeli police said they had recommended issuing 10,000 permits for Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, who require special permission to enter Jerusalem.
Arad Braverman, a senior Israeli police officer in occupied Jerusalem, said forces would be deployed “day and night” across the compound.
He said thousands of police would also be on duty for Friday prayers, which draw the largest crowds of Muslim worshippers.
The Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate said it had been informed that permits would again be restricted to men over 55 and women over 50, mirroring last year’s criteria.
It added that Israeli authorities had prevented the Islamic Waqf — the Jordanian-run body that administers the site — from carrying out routine preparations, including installing shade structures and setting up temporary medical clinics.
A Waqf source said 33 of its employees had been barred from entering the compound in the week leading up to Ramadan.
Under long-standing arrangements, Jews may visit the Al-Aqsa compound — but they are not permitted to pray there.
Palestinians fear the status quo it is being eroded.
In a separate development, Israeli NGOs have raised the alarm over a settlement plan signed by the government which they say would mark the first expansion of Jerusalem’s borders into the occupied West Bank since 1967. Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The proposal, published in early February but reported by Israeli media only on Monday, comes as international outrage mounts over creeping measures aimed at strengthening Israeli control over the West Bank.
Critics say these actions by the Israeli authorities are aimed at the de facto annexation of the Palestinian territory.
The planned development, announced by Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing, is formally a westward expansion of the Geva Binyamin, or Adam, settlement situated northeast of Jerusalem in the West Bank.
In a statement, the ministry said the development agreement included the construction of around 2,780 housing units for the settlement, with an investment of roughly $38.7 million.
But the area to be developed lies on the Jerusalem side of the separation barrier built by Israel in the early 2000s, while Geva Binyamin sits on the West Bank side of the barrier, and the two are separated by a road.
Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said there would be no “territorial or functional connection” between the area to be developed and the settlement.
“The new neighborhood will be integral to the city of Jerusalem,” Lior Amihai, Peace Now’s executive director, said.
“What is unique about that one is that it will be connected directly to Jerusalem, but it will be beyond the annexed municipal border. So it will be in complete West Bank territory, but just adjacent to Jerusalem,” he said.
