Background:
The Babel international festival is an annual festival held at the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon. The Babel International festival started in 1985. There was no Babel festival in 2003 due the unstable security situation in Iraq. However, the festival resumed in the following years.
Side A:
The Babel festival was opened by a speech of an Iraqi civil servant. Nobody was listening, and nobody cared about him that much actually, they didn’t come to the festival to hear this man speaking. Strangely enough it was not clear if this was the 10th or the 11th Babel festival. According to a Dutch journalist, the Babel Festival is a cultural festival mostly for a small group of Iraqi elites who had behaved well during the year. He said that the festival is also political this year because it is going to be the first time that Egypt and Lebanon have participated in the festival. The Dutch journalist noted that the participation of these two nations may boost the prestige of Saddam’s regime. There were rumors going around that the great leader, Saddam Hussein himself, would come and visit the festival on the opening night. As it turned out, the great leader didn’t come.
Babel festival is an international festival with artists from all over the world. There are even artists from Europe. We met a group from Belgium. They said that they are singers from Antwerp and that they will perform on the 26th of September 1999. Their coordinator in Iraq was a Belgian woman who has been active in Iraq since 1994. The Belgian woman added that she has been organizing tourist and pilgrimage trips to Iraq. She said that there are four holy places for Shia Muslims in Iraq that pilgrims visit frequently. Those places are Najaf, Karbala, Samarra and Baghdad. She also said that Turks from Belgium come to Iraq to visit the Gilani mosque. The Belgian woman was asked for her opinion on the fact that she is organizing trips to Saddam Hussein’s country, and if she agrees that those trips might indirectly strengthen Saddam’s regime. She said that she doesn’t travel to Saddam’s country but to Iraq, if people travel to Belgium, they don’t travel to king Baudouins country, right? She said that she has no opinion about politics in Iraq and that it is not her business. She continued to state that it is up to the Iraqis themselves to form opinions about their own politics.
After that, the topic was changed and the culture of Iraq was discussed. The Belgian woman said that basically the whole of Iraq is an archaeological site. In the north is the city of Nimrud, the old capital of the Assyrian empire which is well preserved. Hatra, an incredible Persian city, dates back to the 3rd century BC. Then there is Samarra, a city from the Abbasid period. There is also a lot of art in Iraq. Everywhere in Baghdad you can find art galleries. People from all over the world travel to Baghdad to buy art.
The openings ceremony continued, and the Kuwaiti delegation was introduced. Kuwait, according to the Belgian woman, was still the enemy last year. Nevertheless, the Kuwaiti delegation was warmly received. In her opinion, music and culture brings people together. She said that Iran was last year one of the most important guests in attendance, and that even the UK and the USA would be received warmly . She claimed that the ordinary Iraqis don’t dislike the people of the USA, the UK, Kuwait and Iran but only their governments.
Side B:
The evening continued with an Iraqi musical group, and an Arabist by the name of Helga Daniels joined us. The theme of the music and play is, according to Daniels, the phoenix which rises from ashes back to life. This symbolizes that Iraq will always rise again, and that Iraq always will get its strength back. The show is impressive. There is fire and something which looks like city walls. Daniels said that the principle of the phoenix rising from ashes is present in other parts in the Iraqi society. She said that the official Belgian delegation was compelled to visit museums, and that they visited yesterday a museum with scale models of buildings in Baghdad. In the museum were scale models of how it looked like before the bombardments of the gulf war and how it looked now, again the focus was on the principle that Iraq always will rise again and that Iraq always will be great again.
Suddenly people with clothes from the stone age are running onto the stage. According to Daniels, this performance is a part of the Gilgamesh epoch. She explained that Gilgamesh is a mythological figure from the Babylonian period. According to the Babylonian mythology, Gilgamesh was a ruler who turned into a tyrant. Gilgamesh experienced a lot of adventures in his quest for immortality, but in the end, he found out that immortality doesn’t exist. Daniels said that Iraqis appreciate their own history and that they love referring to it, in much the same way as how Egyptians love to refer to the pharaonic history. Then someone dressed up like the Babylonian goddess Ishtar came to the stage.
The stage is full of incense, people are crawling and there is something which looks like a water tank on stage. Daniels was asked about the significance of the incense and the water. She said that incense is a type of protection. She said that people usually lit some incense in their shops in the mornings for protection. She said that the water symbolizes life, it is the source of life, and that Iraq became an important country because of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Again, the goddess Ishtar appears on stage but with a slightly different appearance.
Then, the music was discussed. The main instrument for rhythm is according to Daniels the ‘tabla’ she described the instrument as a jar made of stone with animal skin stretched over it. The flute they use is called ‘nay’. This type of flute can be found in all kinds of oriental music. Nowadays, Arab musicians usually combine the traditional Arabic music with western music. The goddess Ishtar appears again on stage but this time with a harp in her hands as a praise song for Babylon is sung.
A couple of Moroccan musicians passed by and Kees and Helga asked them if they could demonstrate their instruments. One of the musicians provided a demonstration of an instrument called ‘bendir’, a ‘bendir’ is like the ‘tabla’ except the ‘bendir’ has three stings attached underneath the animal skin and therefore the sound is, according to Daniels, “warm”.
The phoenix returned and an impressive scene of men with swords, drums, and bows and arrows appeared on stage. Two groups of men are walking from one side to the other side of the stage and they crossed their swords. This is a reference to the Assyrian period of Iraq. Every scene in this play is a part of Iraq’s history. The stage turned dark and the phoenix returned, and all the people disappeared from the stage. The phoenix took us then to another period of Iraq’s history. The phoenix took us first to Babylon, then to Ashur, and now we are going to the Greco-Roman period of Iraq. On the stage Greco-Roman soldiers and Persian soldiers are fighting a battle. The Persians win the battle and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar returned to stage, but this time in surreal clothing.
Side C
As before the phoenix returned and it is said that the wings will lead us to Baghdad. A man dressed in traditional Arabic clothes with a white turban appeared on stage. This man is, according to Daniels, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. She said that Harun al-Rashid is the most famous and most beloved caliph in Iraq’s history, and that he plays an important role in the stories of One Thousand and One Nights. However, Daniels described this scene of the Islamic period as ‘an oriental perspective on the history’. She explained that orientalism is to emphasize on the exotic. Then Baghdad is praised in a poem. Baghdad is described as: ‘Baghdad is as beautiful as the stars’, ‘Baghdad is the pearl of the two rivers’. After the poem, a praise song for Baghdad is sung. The main sentence of this song was ‘Bagdad, Bagdad oh Bagdad symbol of life’. However, this time, the last verse of the song was about Saddam Hussein. The sentence about Baghdad was changed into ‘Saddam, Saddam, oh Saddam symbol for the fight.
The Kuwaiti delegation were a prominent presence . This could indicate that the first of small steps towards reconciliation are being made between Iraq and Kuwait. The Babel festival is indeed a cultural festival. but with a strong political overtone. The main theme of the opening night was how great Iraq is, and how great Iraq has always been throughout its history. Of course, the takeaway message of the evening was one of Iraq’s invincibility, emphasizing that Iraq will always be reborn from its own ashes. The evening ends with Iraq’s national anthem, ʿArḍ al-Furatayn "Land of the Euphrates’.
