Making Themselves Heard in a Changed Iraq
Andrea Bruce for The New York Times
“No women have ever played it here before," said Isra Saadi, 22, of the tuba. "All of the women and men criticized me. But I have loved it ever since I first saw it. I hope that I have shown there is no difference between men and women.” Ms. Saadi said she was inspired to take up an instrument by her musician father, a member of the Iraqi National Orchestra.
By JACK HEALY
Published: December 27, 2011
Related
Lens Blog: Portraits of Iraqi Pride (December 15, 2011)
As the sun burned away ghosts of mist from the Tigris, skinny men in secondhand Wranglers and women in black abayas walked to the highway to flag down minibuses. Soldiers and police officers waved drivers through checkpoints garlanded with fabric flowers. A normal day in a world transformed.
A few of their stories were captured by Andrea Bruce, a New York Times photographer who peered into the daily routines of Iraqis over the last months, collecting quietly powerful portraits that stand out against the iconic images of suffering and bloodshed that define so much wartime photography.
In the United States, the war may ultimately be defined by historians and headlines, by lives lost and dollars squandered, and by billboard events: Saddam Hussein’s capture and execution, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the Falluja battles, the surge and the path home. In Iraq, the legacy will be lived, day by day, with fatalism and frustration at the country’s intractable political crises. But it will also be lived with an undercurrent of optimism, particularly among the young, and a broad Iraqi resilience that predates the arrival of any American soldiers.
In the sprawling grid of Sadr City, where battles between militants and American soldiers charred entire blocks, a neighborhood of one million people is slowly re-emerging from under the hand of conservative clerics and black-clad members of Shiite militias. Teenage boys get daring new haircuts in reopened salons and men browse new-car lots and shoot pool into the evening.
The horizon for women is still largely drawn by husband, home and a handful of socially acceptable jobs. But not their dreams. Selma Fakherhas, a wedding photographer, quietly nurtures the idea of becoming a photojournalist.
“One day,” she told Ms. Bruce.
Across the country, families who returned to shattered houses and unrecognizable neighborhoods spend their weekends hauling coils of reinforcing metal and pouring concrete to lay new foundations.
For the men inside the wire-ringed villages near abandoned American military bases, the departure seals off an era of makeshift opportunity. No more American nicknames or greetings from soldiers testing out their phrase-book Arabic. No more taco lunches inside air-conditioned mess halls or laminated Certificates of Recognition from lieutenant colonels. No more work, and no protection from the neighbors who call them traitors.
But if the war gouged Iraq’s soul, it left lighter fingerprints, too.
It resonates in the break-dancing, hair-gelling, motorbike-riding young men who peacock through Baghdad’s streets in thrasher jeans and tight T-shirts. In the pirated Jay-Z CDs selling on street corners; in “50 Cent” graffiti on bomb-scarred blast walls.
Drive into a checkpoint, and the Iraqi soldiers ask for your “badjat.” You wave your ID badge. “Ameriki?” Yep.
Soldiers or journalists returning for the first time since the depths of civil war sometimes marvel at the transformation of public and private life, how once-dead streets now bustle with Thursday night shoppers and acres of razed buildings have been replanted with palatial new houses. The muffled report of car bombs is startling, not inevitable.
Perhaps two million people have fled Iraq, but Iraqis like the ones pictured here have lived through the painful and terrifying gap between then and now. One learned to play the tuba. Another raised two daughters. Yet another built a library of cookbooks and opened a pastry shop.
They are living and working and getting engaged and bringing up a new generation. They are more than a postscript to an unpopular war. For Iraq, they are what comes next.
COPIADO : http://www.lacapital.com.ar/
A few of their stories were captured by Andrea Bruce, a New York Times photographer who peered into the daily routines of Iraqis over the last months, collecting quietly powerful portraits that stand out against the iconic images of suffering and bloodshed that define so much wartime photography.
In the United States, the war may ultimately be defined by historians and headlines, by lives lost and dollars squandered, and by billboard events: Saddam Hussein’s capture and execution, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the Falluja battles, the surge and the path home. In Iraq, the legacy will be lived, day by day, with fatalism and frustration at the country’s intractable political crises. But it will also be lived with an undercurrent of optimism, particularly among the young, and a broad Iraqi resilience that predates the arrival of any American soldiers.
In the sprawling grid of Sadr City, where battles between militants and American soldiers charred entire blocks, a neighborhood of one million people is slowly re-emerging from under the hand of conservative clerics and black-clad members of Shiite militias. Teenage boys get daring new haircuts in reopened salons and men browse new-car lots and shoot pool into the evening.
The horizon for women is still largely drawn by husband, home and a handful of socially acceptable jobs. But not their dreams. Selma Fakherhas, a wedding photographer, quietly nurtures the idea of becoming a photojournalist.
“One day,” she told Ms. Bruce.
Across the country, families who returned to shattered houses and unrecognizable neighborhoods spend their weekends hauling coils of reinforcing metal and pouring concrete to lay new foundations.
For the men inside the wire-ringed villages near abandoned American military bases, the departure seals off an era of makeshift opportunity. No more American nicknames or greetings from soldiers testing out their phrase-book Arabic. No more taco lunches inside air-conditioned mess halls or laminated Certificates of Recognition from lieutenant colonels. No more work, and no protection from the neighbors who call them traitors.
But if the war gouged Iraq’s soul, it left lighter fingerprints, too.
It resonates in the break-dancing, hair-gelling, motorbike-riding young men who peacock through Baghdad’s streets in thrasher jeans and tight T-shirts. In the pirated Jay-Z CDs selling on street corners; in “50 Cent” graffiti on bomb-scarred blast walls.
Drive into a checkpoint, and the Iraqi soldiers ask for your “badjat.” You wave your ID badge. “Ameriki?” Yep.
Soldiers or journalists returning for the first time since the depths of civil war sometimes marvel at the transformation of public and private life, how once-dead streets now bustle with Thursday night shoppers and acres of razed buildings have been replanted with palatial new houses. The muffled report of car bombs is startling, not inevitable.
Perhaps two million people have fled Iraq, but Iraqis like the ones pictured here have lived through the painful and terrifying gap between then and now. One learned to play the tuba. Another raised two daughters. Yet another built a library of cookbooks and opened a pastry shop.
They are living and working and getting engaged and bringing up a new generation. They are more than a postscript to an unpopular war. For Iraq, they are what comes next.
COPIADO : http://www.lacapital.com.ar/
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