the more you ignore me, the closer i get. the smiths.

 Creeping on Gropius from the freeway

Creeping on Gropius from a checkpoint

Creeping on Gropius from across the Tigress

Creeping on Gropius from a textbook (same building as image 1 + 3)

         Like the unreachable crush, I have creeped on this building since I was back home in LA. Designed by Walter Gropius, and one of the notable pieces of architecture that defines the built environment of the  50s and 60s, these are the best images that I was able to shoot of Baghdad University.   Due to obvious reasons, aka safety, non-students and faculty are not allowed to enter the campus.  I met connections within the last days who could grant me access, but time was not on my side.

        Since you last heard from Love and Fashism 18 months ago, I completed a thesis on the relation between the built environment, politics, and national identity in Iraq: 1918 to present. I concluded that, throughout the eras, design style has been representative of the state of Baghdad's politics. 

        Architecture in Iraq must be considered in a large historical trajectory—from colonialism to modernism to the rise of Iraq as a nation state to today’s postcolonial search for local identity.  Architecture, often iconic of Iraq’s national identity, has been closely tied to Iraq’s political climate since the country’s birth in 1921, which was the topic of my research paper. In Iraq, the official design emphasis wavered from stressing Iraq’s pan-Arab ties to stressing an identity concentrated more on Iraq’s Mesopotamian heritage. However, between the wavering design languages, the rise of the political monument under Saddam, and the wars that destroyed much of the built environment, Iraq sits in an architectural design vacuum today.

      Like architecture, current Iraqi national identity also falls in a vacuum. One cannot characterize Iraq as a people, with the far right, the far left, and the majority uninterested in polarized politics. What ties those in the all three political ideologies together is the most human form of feeling and experience, and namely, loss—the point at which my thesis design began on.

       I intend to continue this research in the fall--but that's a whole other story. For now, here's an amazing article on the current built environment of Iraq: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15baghdad.html?_r=1

najaf, part deux

Najaf graveyard entrance

Transport 

Masonry graves

The man who buries my mother's family, aka the Mandilawi grave digger

Bebe's grave

My cousin Hassan

Najaf

My brother Mohammed, me, Hassan. Photo credit: moms

      

       Not much to say, aside from the influx of poorly designed hotels. For reading material, click here. Al Fatiha for the Mumineen and Muminat in Najaf.

"if we don't end war, war will end us." h.g. wells

“Son, how long did it take America to realize that civil war wasn’t the answer? Long. You Iraqis figured it out in less than a decade.”

  -American colonel to a friend of mine working in a heavily American zone

baghdad med

         

One of the most prestigious institutions in the country

Ride or die

       

        During my daily drive to work, I witness many heartbreaking scenes, frighteningly normal in Iraq, where the human body is violated. I see small boys and old men carrying more than ten times their weight of merchandise and transporting it for long distances barefoot, in the hot sun on unpaved roads. The trash filled streets are only interspersed with overflowing sewage. Once, I saw my patient, who just had extensive eye surgery a couple of days before, lugging merchandise on the street.  It is incredulous that such strenuous activity would be done after such an intense operation in spite of my instructions. 

        I have seen patients leave the hospital after eye exams and surgeries taking off their protective dark glasses immediately as they leave exposing their eyes to the burning bright sun and dusty winds.  I have seen nurses washing wounds with laundry detergent because there was no antiseptic or saline solution in the hospitals.   Students in Iraq study under less optimal lighting conditions when the electricity goes off an average of ten hours per day, forcing them to study by candlelight for long hours. 



-Excerpt from a personal statement that I revised for an Iraqi family friend, a physician who migrated from Iraq within the last 2 years.

i've got soul but i'm not a soldier

     This image demonstrates the flux in religiosity (my observations in 09) since the beginning of the war. In Baghdad's conservative district of Kadmiyya, this theatrical 3d reminder for women reminds girls to cover appropriately.

    One gentleman who saw me taking pics of this installation stopped me, "lady--hi. Are you Kurdish? what's your education and family name?" I nicely briefed him on my existence in a couple words.  "It's too bad you live abroad, I have a son. But if you need anything, ask for me. Are you sure you wouldn't want to stay? Everybody in Kadhiummiya knows my name; I am Abu Dhiya. Now cover your hair better, habibti." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/world/middleeast/09baghdad.html?_r=1

life is a beach, i'm just playin' in the sand[storm]. -lil wayne/layla shaikley

             I went outside to find the most beautiful sunset ever. Such a deep amber, that I became engrossed in the frame created by my eyes.  In photographing the site on the satah (parapet of vernacular Iraqi design), I didn't realize I was caught in the middle of a sandstorm. My cousin’s wife ran upstairs coughing away as she closed the balcony door behind me. I came into a house, foggy with sand, realizing that my ignorance would cost us our comfort until the storm was over.

These sandstorms, previously unseen, have become quite common with the recent war. Humvees and other heavy means of transportation and artillery pulled against Iraq’s desert terrain to offset the natural topography of the desert. As a result, blue skies have become quite uncommon in Baghdad.

Like a bad 80s movie, I entered a foggy looking bedroom as I prepared to finally sleep. I woke up before dawn to an to an unfamiliar grit in my skin. My throat felt as though I had been sipping choppy Alaskan winds through a straw all night.  My eyes were on fire. I spent the next hour in disbelief about how much pain I felt, mentally engineering anti-sandstorm sleep devices. Wet curtains that act as hanging filters and air suctions—I never fell back asleep that night.

"It’s hot here, baby, but it’s so cold inside my head." downtown baghdad blues

Mazgoof/BBQ fish as a feast in honor of us

Photo credit: my baby cousin Zainab

The second morning was spent visiting relative and neighbor after relative and neighbor. By noon, my father's brother had picked us up for lunch and the Shaikley tour. We were able to visit my father’s siblings, their children, and their children's children. Natives of Doara, we dined in the neighborhood that is described as Baghdad's biggest bloodbath at the worst of the war. Doara, where corpses outnumbered stoplights on the streets.

            "2006 was bad--I was getting my PhD and dropped out. Not only cause of the kids--they kidnapped my husband, you know. He was in jail for 5 months, but only after not knowing where he was for 3 days. We were positive he was dead" went on my cousin from the Sunni side of the family. She awkwardly realized that we were raised by my strongly Shia mother, "No, no--I mean it wasn’t just the Shias. Everyone was wild."

The story closely resembled and starkly juxtaposed another story retold earlier by a younger cousin Ali. Previously blogged about, Ali was kidnapped at 15 by presumably Sunni warlords who knew of his Shia family. Ali, Iike my elder female cousin, went on to defend the opposite sect by also insisting that either sect was at fault at the worst of the war.
The sun beats down equally in Baghdad, regardless of Sunni, Shia, Kurd, or Arab-ness. It was Francois Fenelon who once shrewedly noted, "all wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers." Touche, Mr. Fenelon. Touche. 


The Downtown Baghdad Blues. The line between hilarity and depression has never been so blurred. 

a minute of perfection was worth the effort. a moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection. choke.

I woke up at 3 am to a sweetly familiar dark home. Electricity was off, and for the first time I could remember, I wasn't choking from the heat.  We typically visit the country in the summer, when the ominous heat is inescapable. Within moments, the roosters began in song as I slowly faded back into darkness. This may seem trivial, yet it may have been one of the most beautiful moments of my trip.

Try falling asleep in a Bikram Yoga class, then you may understand the beauty of this post a little bit more.

ironic and iconic: saddam's mosque and the people's country club

        Kinda like an elephant in the room...but bigger. The Saddam Grand Mosque, to be precise. I stared at the cranes, eerily unmoved every time that I visit Baghdad. While people are born, the government shifts, new buildings appear, and others meet the grave in the haphazard and contrived sequence of events known as life, Saddam's Grand Mosque remains untouched. Despite the rapid changing context of the city and country that envelops the mosque, the monument stands.
       In 1997, the Iraq News published an article on Saddam's plan to approve the design for what he referred to as the world's largest mosque. The largest hall has the ability to welcome 30,000 guests before denying a worshipper.  The mosque sits adjacent to a large artificial lake, in the plans, shaped like the Arab world.  
      A manmade island, with shape and topographical contours to match the thumbprint of Saddam, is a design in the mosque is Saddam's attempt to remind God of the Ba'athist dictator whenever God looks down from above.
      Al-Thawra, the newspaper for the Ba'ath party reported that the mosque was part of a "campaign of faith," initiated by Saddam to teach the Islamic religion. Plans of this initiative included a mosque in Saddam's name in each of Iraq's 18 provinces.
      Despite issues of perspective in my photograph, the largest dome is rumored to span the size of a football field. Total estimated cost: US $1,000,000,000.
      Now, the unfinished construction project with a caved in dome stands as one of the city's most captivating living monuments.


        Since I last wrote, I completed a thesis on the link between architecture, politics, and national identity in Iraq from 1918 to the present. Architecture in Iraq must be considered in a large historical trajectory—from colonialism to modernism to the rise of Iraq as a nation state to today’s postcolonial search for local identity.  Architecture, often iconic of Iraq’s national identity, has been closely tied to Iraq’s political climate since the country’s birth in 1921, which was the topic of my research paper for 691 in the fall. In Iraq, the official design emphasis wavered from stressing Iraq’s pan-Arab ties to stressing an identity concentrated more on Iraq’s Mesopotamian heritage. However, between the wavering design languages, the rise of the political monument under Saddam, and the wars that destroyed much of the built environment, Iraq sits in an architectural design vacuum today.
        Like architecture, current Iraqi national identity also falls in a vacuum. One cannot characterize Iraq as a people, with the far right, the far left, and the majority uninterested in polarized politics. What ties those in the all three political ideologies together is the most human form of feeling and experience, and namely, loss—the point at which my thesis proposal began on.
       That research will continue this fall, but nonetheless--great article by NYT on state of design in Iraq now: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15baghdad.html

lipstick and landmines

The name of my indie band, should I ever have one. The antenna of a $500 British bomb-detecting device lifted as we passed our first checkpoint. One of a rumored 50,000, for the record.  "Are you wearing perfume or carrying makeup?" asked an Iraqi soldier. Apparently, a glitch in the device has it so the device detects day-to-day products and confuses them for bombs, arguably making the device useless.

         "Yes and yes."

         "Have a nice day."

         Well, that was effective.

first world problems

This flight to Baghdad was an experience unlike the last, and definitely unlike my journeys pre-war. First an foremost, I was stopped by TSA (not a big surprise for a Muslim girl in a scarf) to be sniffed and warmly complimented on my perfume with a big smile and "have a great flight!" (big surprise for a Muslim girl in a scarf--and not the smelling good part, obvi. We smell good every day).
I'd spent all of the previous night at a wedding, nearly straight from the 16 hour LAX-DXB flight. With barely enough time to iron my gown and wash my face, my family rushed to Abu Dhabi for friends well worth the effort. The hours after the wedding that we had rushed to were followed by delirious confessions with my family.  My brother Mo's new addiction to eastern medicine rivaled Viyan's secret video gaming obsession in hilarity. Viyan's accusations of Mohammed's robbing a Saks to fill his bathroom with shishi facial products. I ultimately pulled another all nighter to end up on this plane to Baghdad.

            Now here I am, on Jupiter Air, in quite possibly the world's first plane. While peeping in the cockpit, I noticed buttons comparable to those on a 60s Chevy. I walked down the aisle to hear Iraqis yelling "kalb ibn alkalb" and going off angrily about something or another. Behind a young girl sat my mother. The girl lay across a row of 3 seats, and wore a brace to indicate a disability. Her father forced a humble attempt at English to an Asian flight attendant. "She not sit she hurt she," "mukhada...no good bad now please sleep." 
            My mother interjected from behind, "he would like a pillow."

"O bataniya," he desperately plead.

"And a blanket," said moms.

"Shidee rjilha!"

"Please fasten her feet."

The frightened flight attendant gently responded to the demands in an effort not to hurt the disabled girl.

The plane took off, with a heavy native Iraqi presence, and a few American soldier implants. The curiosity to understand the psychologies of the soldiers surrounding me faded immensely since the last time I had visited. Call me jaded, or blame the crankiness that tends to follow a couple all nighters, but I couldn't muster a conversation if I was paid.

I released all thoughts and spiraled into a deep sleep when the 30 year old Iraqi boy next to me nudged me. "It's not good for you to have your head down before a plane is in the air. You really should get up now and sleep later."

Respect trumped skepticism as I managed to lightly smile and lift my head. "Thank you." never bruise a well intentioned man's ego.

As the plane ascended, I fell deeply into sleep for a second time on my mother's shoulder until I woke up to...a ring tone. "Aloo, yes we are flying. In the air, yes" loudly yelled the lady behind me in Arabic. Great, as if the world’s first plane flying into a war zone was not bad enough, now we had cell phones interfering signals while we were in the air. Holding in my laughter, my attention was captured by the father of the sick girl. "Ma'am, water?" he asked of me as he pointed to the half empty bottle of free hotel water in my purse. "Right, of course" I replied as I quickly handed him the bottle, fighting American thoughts along the lines of "what if I was diseased!? He doesn’t even know me!"

Then the realization hit. Like high fructose corn syrup and organic cotton, check yo' first world issues at the door, Laylool.  We are Baghdad bound and there's a war out there.

well, today took an unexpected turn...

Never in my life did I think I'd see eye to eye with Miley Cyrus, but here I am driving my cherry scented car to LAX and I can’t be tamed. In between jobs and with time to spare, 20 hours ago I purchased a ticket to Dubai. Next stop: Baghdad. Reckless? Minorly. Elated? Majorly. 
  I recalled a conversation that I had previously had with my dad, "Baba, I wanna go to Baghdad." My dad tongue-in-cheekily replied while referring to my current internship, "Isn't NASA going to Mars? That's not thrilling enough?" making light of my sense of adventure that likely terrifies him. 
  "They won't send me on that spaceship, they got me confined to Earth!"  
   Guess who’s back. Yes, it’s me—you may remember me from loveandfashism.blogspot.com memoirs of war and design 18 long months ago. Inform the newsfeeds and news stands.

i fought the war but the war won

Photo courtesy of me.

Xx from somewhere and feeling the Baghdad blues,
Layla Karim Shaikley

ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation

     I spent my final night in Baghdad under palm trees with my cousins, laughing hysterically and enjoying every moment over chai until the chatter faded and the time came close for me to leave. The remainder of the night, or morning, was exhausted listening to Summer of ‘69 while packing for my flight. Once again, the east and the west in me battled head to head. Shouldn’t I be listening to some old Iraqi folk if I am so in love with this place? Why am I listening to some house remix of Bryan Adams while mentally planning my next trip back?

     I thought about the trip, and whether or not it was actually scary. Did I ever feel like my life was threatened? Not often. The soldiers never scared me—they were all dolls. We didn’t witness any bombs. We heard what may have been a gunshot once. There was a fake bomb scare one night. Oh--and at one point, there was a sniper aimed at my head...but not on purpose! We just happened to drive through some guy's target. None of these things scared me. What did scare me, when I was scared, had been the lack of value in human life. Don't get me wrong, it is not that Iraqis disregard human life--it is that life is lost so often and so tragically here that it is impossible for Iraqis to mourn the way we do in America. There are so many kidnappings that it is impossible to report them all on the news. There are many deaths that a whole newspaper would need to be dedicated to obituaries, rather than a humble section of a the Times. In America, human life is valuable. Comatose individuals are attached to machines, left without a voice or blink for months or years before they are allowed to pass. If a 13 year old gets caught in a gang crossfire, we generally hear about it in the news. If a child is kidnapped, I receive an Amber Alert text. If a dog is saved from an abusive football player in Nowheresville, the civilized world goes crazy. In Baghdad, if a camera is turned towards a group of people, and whoever is behind the camera is accused of being a journalist, one stray bullet will lead to nothing more than another lifeless human being. Another death. Another family that will mourn with the rest of the country—possibly for a second, third, fourth, or fifth time. So there I was. 5 am. iPod was on The Clash by now. Getting ready to leave what was the grim reality of life to 22 million people.

     En route BGW, Baghdad’s International Airport. Like a binge eater after starvation, my eyes were glued to the road. I didn’t want to miss a thing. What if it took another 7 years before I could come back? What if, what if, what if? I put on my shades…young, lost, and fabulous—I guess some things will never change. Palm trees under the orange desert sky alongside old masonry buildings tangled in barbed wire never looked so beautiful. As Gibran so eloquently stated in The Prophet, the desert, with its endless monotony, put me to dreaming. Goodnight, Baghdad.


Xx,
L

so they left me in charge of the family video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk8ErGPZhn8

a day at the tailor

baghdazed

A lot of things changed in Baghdad--except for one thing has remained the exact time. Note the structure in both the first and final photographs of this set. Saddam's Mosque. Not a crane has moved since I left it in 2002. Saddam was building the world's largest mosque, and naming each of the 7 doors after his family, which is considered blasphemous in Islam as such honors tend to be named after the holy. The minarets were to be higher than those in Madina as a direct act of disrespect towards a city holy to all of the world's Muslims. After Saddam fell, construction ceased. And, like a 20-storey fly on the wall, the structure seems untouched as it looms over a poorer district of the city.

"what makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well"

ilee y'reed shee y’oof shee (he who wants something leaves something)

The irony of the gas station in one of the most oil rich countries

Where electrical poles do not discriminate against balconies

I am constantly asked whether I think like was better pre or post-invasion. Though I don't think it is fair to ask someone who isn't living in the country, there are some obvious differences between the now and then.

For one, electricity has worsened. With the Gulf War, electrical plants were bombed and destroyed. As a result, Iraq’s electricity has constantly been in and out, constantly rotating between various parts of the city. In 2002, before the war, Baghdad’s electricity patterns were 3 hours on for every 6 hours off. Generally, you know when to be home and when to charge your cell, when to operate kitchen appliances, and especially when not to shower. I can’t count the amount of great memories that involve someone yelling from a dark shower due to a nighttime power outage.

In 2009, despite the incredible amounts of money claimed to be pumped into Iraq’s infrastructure, the devastated power plants remain in use as electricity worsens. Days passed when, literally, we enjoyed 2 hours of electricity, neglecting the remaining 22 hours in a day. The electricity even cut out at the International Airport—twice! My cousin questioned the ability of x-rays machines and other security measures at that moment—and we were only able to laugh. But like Abraham Flexner once shrewdly noted, “no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.”

The quality of life has dramatically deteriorated. Nights aren’t the same when you can’t get home after 11 pm. In Baghdad, men refuse to risk their lives by driving late at night and women refuse to ride in taxis at night due to safety concerns. Also, in my gated district of Kadhimiyya, cars aren’t allowed in past midnight. I always try to figure out why I do things or abide by rules, but I was not able to figure this one out. Leave it to the social butterfly to be so bothered by the fact that I needed a cohort of men to leave the house in safety after dark, and to question it. But seriously, the only thing that I encountered was a soldier trying to flirt with me once while I was crossing a checkpoint. He thought I was alone, not realizing I was part of the large group ahead. I guess I understand why men shouldn’t be out too late—as all young Iraqi men are always careful not to look suspicious. But I cant help but wonder if it is actually dangerous for women to be out at night or if everybody is, very justifiably, overly cautious due to the imminent danger that lurked in preceding years.

Previously, we would go out without fear. There were certain parties that ladies would avoid, as it was rumored that Saddam’s sons would attend the parties and grant themselves all access passes to any ladies. And for a lady, it was follow directions or be killed with your family (very likely after much humiliation and torture). Of course, one also had to be avoid saying anything about Saddam or his family. That would be a one-way ticket to…something grim. Who knows what.

On a more positive note, salaries have increased, as has the cost of living (well, positive for those who can make through serious inflation). Saddam’s regime had become notorious for ridiculous salaries that people used to receive. Doctors would receive a meager salary of a couple dollars per month.

And of course, another change is that there is now MTV. For better…or worse, I was able to catch up on The Hills one late night. Really, though—what would a summer in Baghdad be without Justin Bobby? Baghdad, pre 2k3, was limited to a few channels controlled by the government. I remember being forced to flip through watching Saddam act as loved as ever, strolling through crowds as a hero’s hero, on channel 1…or a Lifetime movie, dubbed and ancient, on channel 2. I think it was one of those summers in Baghdad where I learned to appreciate a good book.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the incredible resilience of the Iraqi people. Without electricity, sanitary water, under all sorts of wars and sanctions, Iraqis have managed to endure making a living and difficult schooling. I recently read an article about an antique shop owner who shut down his shop and sold goods on the side of the road to feed his family when times became tough (I recommend the article—very interesting! http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=8117728). Likewise, I clearly remember watching my cousins study under a candle when electricity would cut out during earlier trips to Baghdad. In 2001…not 1901. My neighbor’s daughter is completing her final year of high school, at 24, after putting school off due to the war. She became embarrassed to confess that she had not been done with high school while I was younger than her and a Masters candidate. I was embarrassed that I take my access to education so lightly.

Call me an optimist, but I have a lot of faith in the power of the Iraqi people. War torn and tattered. Sanctions. Peace or war. Dictator or democratic fantasies. DIY generators or the real electrical deal. I have faith…

one step closer to the free world?

Kidding! It's impossible not to get a good laugh out of Mickey Donald.