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

11. Migratory Sacred Spaces: (Re)creating ‘Ashura

127 11 Migratory Sacred Spaces (Re)creating ‘Ashura Dena Al-Adeeb The present neoimperial and neocolonial occupation/war of Iraq and the violence that has engulfed Iraq and Iraqi society has resulted in producing the fastest growing refugee and displaced population (within and outside Iraq) in the world. The displacement of Iraqis did not begin with the US invasion in 2003, though the war/occupation severely augmented the crisis. Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime, the Iraq-Iran war from 1980 to 1988, the First Gulf war in 1991, and the thirteen-year sanctions from 1990–2003 are all factors that drastically contributed to the mass departure of millions of Iraqis into the diaspora. My experiences and work have been shaped by Iraq and Iraqis’ transnational and diasporic contemporary history. The first wave of my father’s family left during the deportation period that took place between 1979 and 1980 to Iran and Syria. My two cousins, as a response to their brothers’ arrest and later executions, escaped to the United States.1 My immediate family avoided the potential deportation by escaping to Kuwait in 1980. The second wave of migration by family members left during the 1990s (after the invasion, Gulf War and during the sanctions era) to the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Europe. 1. I would like to acknowledge that a different chapter from my M.A. thesis appeared as “From Sacred Ritual to Installation Art: A Personal Testimony” in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 28 (2008): 7–40. 128  Dena Al-Adeeb As a consequence of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War, we involuntarily relocated to San Francisco, California. The third wave fled Iraq during the past four years as a response to the invasion and its aftermath. Most of them fled to Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and other neighboring countries in the hope that they would make it to Western European countries or the United States Eventually, a few of them were able to get to Canada, Europe, and the United States. Very few family members remain in Iraq today. My mother returned to Iraq and Kuwait during the 1990 invasion . She was able to bring our family photographs with her, since they are the most precious possessions, linking us to our past. These photographs continue to captivate and inspire me to reconstruct the memories of our multilayered experiences. The multiple traumas that I, my family, and members of my community experienced materialized into artistic productions (such as the art installation that is the focus of this chapter) that creatively weave together multiple narratives (familial, community, historical, and transnational), as well as fueling my political and community grassroots activism. I also chose conceptual creative practices—such as visual art, rituals, oral narratives, and scholarly work—as a way of expressing the meanings of our shared experiences and collective accounts, visions and resistance. The need to reconstruct and reinterpret these histories and experiences through conceptual and visual languages has become vital for me during a time of horrific violence and annihilation. The fear of collective erasure and loss propels me toward an insistence on (re)creating cultural memories, language, and history. The act of producing art and writing become a political intervention and preoccupation with historicizing and crafting culture/memory, as well as preserving community. The women I encountered on my trip back to Iraq in 2004 also engage in reconstructing these histories through various ritual and creative practices. For example, my aunt declares that by holding ‘Ashura2 2. The rituals commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Husayn by Shi‘ites take place every year on the tenth of Muharram of the Muslim Hijri lunar month and Migratory Sacred Spaces  129 commemorative ceremonies and inviting a female narrator to recite eulogies, she plays a part in passing the history and narratives to the next generation. Every Day Is ‘Ashura, Every Land Is Karbala My approach was invoked by my encounter with women in my family first in Baghdad and later in Karbala3 when ‘Ashura is commemorated during the month of Muharram. In 2004 I documented the ritual through film and photography; it was the first ‘Ashura celebrated with this magnitude in decades, as it was banned under Saddam Hussein’s regime for more than thirty years. It was there that I understood that people chose creative and spiritual practices to express their struggles in the face of random violence...