Intensities, Part 1: In Search of Baghdad
This is the first in a series of two posts. Follow this link to read part two.
اتبع الرابط لقراءة هذا المنشور باللغة العربية
It was an unfamiliar bumpy road with densely built houses and miniature front gardens. “You are home” exclaimed my brother and to my surprise, there, to the right, was my parents’ house within this alien context, the only house that had not changed: it looked like an oasis. It had kept its warm familiarity, that large lush green garden and beautiful sand-colored bricks so typical of the 1960s and 1970s’ Baghdadi houses. There, too, was the extension I designed while still an architecture student, but how did I not recognize the neighborhood nor the route to my own home?
It had been nearly nineteen years since I said goodbye to this place. Wars and internal trouble had kept me away, but it was the recent loss of my mother that brought me back, and this journey was never going to be easy. “You miss a place that exists no more” was often the reply I got from friends in Iraq when I expressed feelings of homesickness. They were sadly referring to more than the loss of the built environment. Much has been damaged and war fatigue has taken its toll on people and spaces alike. Iraqis mark personal events with reference to the concurrent war: the Iraq-Iran War, the First Gulf War, the UN Economic Sanctions, the 2003 Invasion, the Fall of Mosul, the list is long and spans my lifetime. But I was not going to give in to this feeling of loss, I wanted to see Baghdad … really see it. Through spatial exploration, I set about trying to reconnect with the past, make sense of the present, and seek glimpses of hope for Iraq’s future. The country marks one hundred years since the establishment of the Hashemite Kingdom, on August 23rd 2021, which set into motion Iraq’s eventual declared independence from British protection in 1932. With the commemoration, or the nation's centenary as Iraqis refer to it, an equal sense of poignancy and cautious optimism engulf me while I write these words and reflect on my journey.
““You miss a place that exists no more” was often the reply I got from friends in Iraq when I expressed feelings of homesickness.”
The hardest part was trying to make sense of the present and to understand why I was so disorientated. One answer was lying there in front of me in the form of chunks of the crumbling concrete “Bremer Wall” barriers blocking our street. This modular blast wall is named after Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq, whose policies of disbanding the Iraqi Army and firing most senior civil servants after the 2003 US invasion led to increased unrest. The wall was his devised “solution” to control Baghdad through dissecting it (Figure 1). Nearly all the side streets since then, even after the US army’s withdrawal from Baghdad, remain cut off from the main road, forcing cars to go through seemingly temporary, yet permanent armed checkpoints. Drivers must negotiate a convoluted maze to reach an otherwise straightforward destination. I soon learned the new Baghdadi navigation language where checkpoints across the city work as reference points for drivers seeking directions and subtle reminders of a fragile situation. The whole disrupted spatial configuration betrayed a sense of immense tension.
Figure 1. Crumbling “Bremer Wall” concrete barriers block most side street, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
Bremer Walls are everywhere. I was amused at first to see how Baghdadis had appropriated them as promotional surfaces, but I got increasingly concerned noticing how prevalent the advertisement of privately-run primary and secondary schools on them was (Figure 2). This was a shock to me: Iraq previously boasted of free education for all, including postgraduate degrees. These new private pop-up schools are entrepreneurial ventures located in converted houses. There is one even at the end of our street on the property of a former neighbor. I was told that the teaching in these schools is better than that in state-run schools, a clear sign of loss of faith in governmental institutions and a worrying harbinger of education inequality. In contrast, a state-of-the-art digital billboard, crowning the entrance to the new and trendy Baghdad Mall, advertises the American University of Iraq-Baghdad (AUIB) (Figure 3). Baghdad Mall is built on land that once was a public park and AUIB is housed in a palace built by the previous regime. There is no clarity on how such publicly owned sites and buildings were privatized after the US army relinquished its control of them.
Figure 2. Appropriated “Bremer Wall” blocks advertising privately-run primary and secondary schools, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
Figure 3. A state-of-the-art digital billboard above the entrance of the Baghdad Mall advertises the American University of Iraq- Baghdad (AUIB.) A private security guard stops a young man to check his ID, something young men are often subjected to, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
As ubiquitous as Bremer Walls are, what clutters most pavements are privately-owned electricity generators. These too are small-time businesses modeled on selling electricity to residents via a crisscrossing web of exposed power cables. The noise and toxic fumes they generate are unavoidable and ensure that gardens are no longer a desirable haven for families (Figure 4). Yet, these generators play a central role in bridging the gap left by the destruction in 2003 of Iraq’s already fragile electricity infrastructure and the subsequent failure to restore this basic service.
Figure 4. A privately-owned electricity generator selling electricity via a crisscrossing web of exposed power cables. The devastating environmental impact is visible; notice the black soot on the neighboring high school’s elevation and the smoke pumping into the sky, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
People in Iraq are resolute; they are trying to create normality against all odds. Since basic facilities including electricity and education are inadequate, residents have no choice but to create privately funded solutions. The loss of faith in the state is justified and yet, ill-planned improvisations will inevitably give rise to new tensions. One striking example of this is how residents are addressing the acute housing crisis by over-developing their own plots. Planning law is completely unheeded and restrictions governing residential areas, including heights, plot sizes, area coverage, and protection of green spaces are a thing of the past. Traditions going back millennia, where neighbors maintained similar building heights to respect each other’s privacy, are ignored. Thus, long-standing practices like the use of roof spaces for outdoor sleeping during hot summer nights are abandoned. Self-built tower blocks are springing around two-story neighborhoods to provide housing for extended families (Figure 5). Corruption is so normalized that no enforcement of existing planning laws is foreseeable. Hence, all these individual changes are cumulatively changing Baghdad dramatically.
Figure 5. Disregarding existing planning law, a four-story self-built tower block under construction occupies the space allocated as a front garden, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
“Planning law is completely unheeded, and restrictions governing residential areas, including heights, plot sizes, area coverage, and protection of green spaces are a thing of the past.”
The problem is more noticeable on commercial main streets where out-of-scale buildings pop up, ungoverned by any urban plan or policy (Figure 6). This is happening across various sectors and neighborhoods regardless of their socio-economic status. The public’s perception of this construction boom as a sign of Iraq’s long-awaited economic recovery is understandable. Decades of destruction make such additions welcome, even though none of these projects are the kind of state-funded public buildings the country desperately needs as constant tragedies show. Other essential public projects, like re-surfacing war-damaged roads, seem to be completely neglected by the government. With every new non-compliant building welcomed as a sign of growth, seeds of tension are being sown and the credibility of the government’s ability to enforce law and order is diminished.
Figure 6. A contemporary seven-story commercial building under construction in an area designated for two-story buildings, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
The image below (Figure 7) represents such an imminent dispute; a 1950s family home is overwhelmed by two large commercial buildings with their fenestrated boundary walls, which rob the house of its privacy and present a dilemma for any future development if it were to be demolished. Similarly, the new high-rise building on the right in Figure 8 overpowers its modest neighbor and claims the space above it with sizeable windows along the boundary wall. Further, the pastiche buildings to the left invoke an older debate about the association of Western symbols with cultural capital. The white one is a fine-dining restaurant named “Versailles” and the restaurant furthest to the left is called “Shakespeare”. The absurdity of the mélange of architectural styles in relation to the cultural references they seek to invoke is completely lost on most viewers, but the buildings are effective in communicating a message of exclusivity. Equating Western architectural styles with sophistication and “upper class” has its roots firmly entrenched in the days of British Mandate Iraq, but the absence of any local debate around the issue reveals a disturbing persistence of lingering colonial residues and a worrying acceptance of ever-increasing consumerism.
Figure 7. A 1950s family home engulfed by two large commercial buildings with windows dotting their boundary walls, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
Figure 8. Total absence of planning law enforcement where neighboring properties infringe on each other’s rights, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
Seeing all these troubling spatial anomalies, I wondered how the historic parts of the city were faring. I had been following the news of destruction, neglect, and the eventual demolition of various historic buildings caused by wars, terrorist attacks, real estate development pressures, and politically motivated erasures. I was particularly keen to access Baghdad’s old center which consists of various historical buildings including al-Sarai, the Ottoman governmental building and al-Qishla or the Ottoman Army barracks. Al-Sarai was central to my doctoral research and was, a century ago, at the heart of the profound transformations post-WWI Iraq was undergoing (Figure 9).
Despite the pandemic, we ventured into the bustling center armored with masks and sanitizers. The main purpose of our trip was finding a reference book for my nephew, as universities no longer provide free resources. Only one bookshop in the whole city had specialist textbooks and it was located on Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad’s historic book market that neighbors the al-Qishla and al-Sarai.
Figure 9. Image of Baghdad’s historic center. Key: (1) Al-Rasheed Street (historic names: Jadat Khalil Pasha and New Street); (2) Al-Haydar Khana Mosque; (3) Al-Madrasa al-Mustansiriyya; (4) Souq al-Sarai and Souq al-Sarrajeen; (5) Al-Mutanabbi Street; (6) Al-Qishla (the old Ottoman army barracks with its clock tower); (7) Al-Sarai; (8) Al-Sarai Mosque (also known as King Ghazi Mosque and Jadid Hassan Pasha Mosque); (9) Bait al-Wali (the House of the Governor); (10) The Abbasid Palace; (11) The River Tigris. Google, ©2021, Maxar Technologies. Annotations by Sana Al-Naimi.
The extreme congestion and lack of parking spaces in the city center, largely caused by the constant influx of damaged cars from abroad after 2003, meant that a taxi was an easier means of travel. The young taxi driver smoothly navigated all the armed checkpoints that are now manned by Iraqi soldiers following the withdrawal of the US Army from Baghdad in 2011. But upon driving through al-Rasheed Street, Baghdad’s most important thoroughfare that still retains its name, also called “The Witness” for being the site of major historic events of the twentieth century, he referred to it by an incorrect name, a more worrying disorientation than mine, I thought (Figure 10). This unfamiliarity with Iraq’s history and the spaces that were central to its unfolding, has been a troubling development I had been noticing recently in Iraqi digital platforms, including architectural discussion groups. The rare initiatives to counter this corrosion of memory rely solely on the passion of a small number of volunteers.
I could not hide my excitement when we passed the al-Haydar Khana Mosque; yet again, the driver was oblivious to the name and significance of this building (Figure 11). It was here that the 1920 Iraqi uprising, calling for full independence from post-WWI British control, found its intellectual voice and drew inspiration from the passionate speeches and poems recited after Friday prayers. Afterwards, angry crowds from various sects and religions would spill into al-Rasheed Street and march towards the al-Sarai to voice their discontent. The 1920 uprising produced a sense of collective political will that, more than any other event over the past century, represented an Iraqi cohesion. This unity was spontaneously echoed a century later in the 2019 Baghdad youth uprising seeking an Iraq free from corruption and sectarian divide. It appeared that young Iraqis were not aware of the historical significance of sites such as al-Rasheed Street or the al-Haydar Khana Mosque and were thus denied a collective and inspirational historical narrative. The al-Sarai visit I was about to begin suddenly felt pressing.
Figure 10. Al-Rasheed Street’s century-old buildings, once the pride of Baghdad, suffer neglect that often results in their demolition, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
Figure 11. The Al-Haydar Khana Mosque played an important role in post-WWI events that led to the formation of the kingdom of Iraq, Baghdad, 2021. Photograph by Sana Al-Naimi.
