Iraqis find a Better Life in the Theater
For refugees in Syria, it's a welcome reminder of home
DAMASCUS, SYRIA—The theater was sold out on opening night: men wearing suits and ties, jeans and T-shirts; women in conservative black abayas, in designer head scarves and high heels. They were all there, a mixing of the sects and social classes. It was like Baghdad, circa 2002. "When I got on stage, I felt that I was in Iraq," said Rasim al-Joumayli, 69, one of Iraq's most famous comedic actors and the author and star of a new play, Don't Play With Fire. "It's the same audience as in Baghdad."
Only this is Damascus in 2007, the new, de facto capital of Iraqi arts. Actors, artists, musicians, singers, and writers, facing death threats in Baghdad because their professions have been deemed anti-Islamic by extremists, have fled to Syria. Most arrived within the past year.
Damascus is one of the few Arab capitals that can match prewar Baghdad's rich Arabic culture. Here, there are art galleries, theaters, a state-of-the-art concert hall—and an eager audience: Some 1.2 million Iraqi war refugees have poured into Syria. Most of them have settled in the Damascus suburbs, and their yearning for the culture they left behind has helped resurrect Iraqi theater.
Reality based. At the time of the American invasion, there were more than two dozen theaters operating in Baghdad. Today, only the National Theater is still open, with a schedule restricted to matinees because of curfews and the constant threat of violence. In Damascus, as many as three Iraqi plays are running at a given time. Most weave familiar stories of war and loss, and of Iraqis struggling to survive in exile. They are black comedies, tinged with self-criticism and laments of a lost homeland, all fresh expressions of the 21st-century Iraqi experience. "The aim is to call all Iraqis to be united, to be helpful, to give up this dispute between Sunni and Shia, give up these differences between Iraqis," says Nahad Hassan, coproducer of Problems That Make You Laugh, Problems That Make You Cry, which has been running since the beginning of the year. Hassan is Shiite, and the other producer is Sunni. The cast is a mix of the two sects.
As in real-life Iraqi Damascus, the characters in the play come from all backgrounds: a female medical student who flees to Damascus after her father is killed; a peasant who sells all his possessions in Iraq, only to have his money stolen after he arrives in Damascus and then suffer a heart attack because of it; a female dancer; an unscrupulous Iraqi businessman who owns a hotel and a cellphone shop and employs two young Iraqi men, paying them less than he would pay Syrians to do the same job. Eventually realizing his greed, the businessman in the play joins the other characters to pay for an operation to save the peasant's life. "When we entered Syria, we brought our problems to Syria," says Ahmad Shukri, the play's director. But, he says, the play's message is that Iraqis must help one another in order to survive in their diaspora.
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