We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War

6. My Own Private Munich

60 6 My Own Private Munich Dahlia Petrus I have been trying to forget about Munich forever. Or at least not remember it. As a little Arab Girl with Pigtails, I witnessed the events at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games as they were televised live. Forgetting this has not gone very well. Time passes, and it is thirty years later, 3 a.m., and time once again to think about Munich. But I don’t think of the grim details surrounding the games and their tragedy: hostage taking and killing, an Olympic Committee allowing the games to continue during the standoff, the unpreparedness of the West German authorities, the track suits and disguises of the guerillas and sharpshooters , brown men born in the squalor of refugee camps and naming themselves Black September, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir not attending the athletes’ funerals. I don’t even compose a grand sweeping statement about the Arab world and Western imperialism. I just get a familiar stomachache and remember the Arab Girl with Pigtails state of affairs of that time: a washing machine, a crying homesick mother, a curly haired sister, the beige American suburbs , the grainy black-and-white images of Munich on live television, counting the blue cornflowers on a pillowcase—the same pillowcase that is also good to bury a face in to squelch fears.  And so, years later and well into the night, I cannot fall asleep and hear a third train rumble by. This one rattles the glass pane of the My Own Private Munich  61 window. I count to mark the time between train rumbles, forgetting to watch television, and soon lapse into that weird twilight zone of meandering thoughts caused by lack of sleep. Some of this meandering leads to contemplating different hairstyles . I worry about impending older lady hairstyles and bottles of hair dye that I might have to choose if I decide to finally conform into my mother’s Americanized Arab community. “Light Ash Blonde” seems to be the hair color tour de force of many of the older, wellcoiffed women of this community, each steadfast in her unwavering devotion to a youthful public appearance. Trying to look like white women means holding ethnic nature at bay, which must be costly and exhausting for these women and their daughters. If I were to fall into a coma, smulla, in this culture of conformed appearances, one of my sisters would be required to tend to my looks—threading off any evidence of a mustache while I tragically lay in bed. “Light Ash Blonde” and mustaches. I worry about many things. Sometimes when I sit out in bright sunlight, my face turns browner but the two furrows between my eyes stay white because I refuse to avert my eyes from the sun. I press television remote buttons. Oh no. I groan out loud. Another show on the Munich Olympic Games. This one has reenactments. I know I will be compelled to watch and do not hear the fourth train whistle fade into the distance. My stomach starts to hurt. I love the reenactments in this latest crop of Hollywood dramatizations claiming historical fact. The director of the latest Munich program must have watched his share of Lars Von Trier in his EuroAmerican -centric undergraduate film program, programs that teach students to Otherize with pictures, sounds, and ideas. There’s plenty of headache-inducing picture quality in this Munich show, close-ups of sinister and distressed faces, earnest attempts at realistic dialogue, a smattering of blurred images of obligatory chase scenes—through the streets and alleyways of the labyrinths of European and Arab cities —handheld camera tagging along. As with most of these shows, it is unclear what is myth and what is reality. It makes one wonder: just what is being (re-)written here? 62  Dahlia Petrus I take a moment to recall previous reenactments on similar shows I’ve seen on sleepless nights: a Quaker maiden running from Puritan tormenters through a gray New England field—panting, hem of her skirt muddied, background sound of twigs snapping; a naked Lizzie Borden burning her black Victorian dress in a wood stove; the familiar dark red cover of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye in Mark David Chapman’s hand—the background shadow of a man in the booth at the entrance of the Dakota; Patty Hearst’s Tania—America’s daughter...