Baghdad’s graffiti wars
From The Daily Star (Lebanon), a verbal tour of a city's hopes and fears:
Each dawn, Baghdadis discover the helpless victims of the city’s nightly battles: its walls, scarred by a ferocious war of words. In a city where graffiti was once punishable by death, there’s barely a surface that doesn’t shout a political position...
But for the most part, the Arabic script that crisscrosses every wall in this city is like American talk radio writ large: obscene, inaccurate and often hilarious political abuse. Like shock jocks, Baghdad’s hundreds of anonymous new pundits even interrupt each other: Every night, warring scribes scratch out each other’s manifestos and superimpose their own, turning Baghdad’s kilometers of gray concrete walls into a cacophony of public opinion.
“This is a very dangerous matter, this matter of the writing,” says Amir Nayef Toma, 52. “Because through it, you can understand the entire feelings of a people their suffering, their feelings and even their hopes.” Toma is the Virgil of Baghdad’s graffiti inferno. A retired army officer and full-time scholar of the word, he wanders through the city transcribing the city’s nocturnal tirades and translating them into English. For the price of a cup of tea, he’ll take you on a guided tour of the raucous new souk of ideas.
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