Sculptor at work in war-torn Iraq

Nida Kadhim is creating a series of statues of prominent, largely nationalist Iraqi intellectuals, artists, poets, and writers.

By Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the August 14, 2007 edition

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Baghdad - Nida Kadhim's eight statues of physicians from the Abbasid era – a golden age that spanned five centuries beginning in AD 750 – once adorned Baghdad hospitals. Along with many of his other distinctive bronze works, they disappeared in the wave of looting that engulfed the city after the US-led invasion in 2003.

But Mr. Kadhim, who witnessed firsthand the pillaging of Baghdad's heritage, is optimistic not only that there is a place for art in Iraq today but also that it can play a central role in restoring Iraqis' sense of nationhood and normalcy.

The 70-something sculptor is busy working on his next project: a series of statues of prominent 20th-century Iraqi intellectuals, artists, poets, and writers who were largely nationalist. The centerpiece will be seven images of the late Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, arguably one of the Arab world's finest poets who romanticized a unified Iraq and was a pivotal figure in Iraq's anticolonial movement from the 1920s until the 1950s.

The idea is that the bard and the others could serve as symbols of unity for a fractured nation struggling to heal the wounds of a bloody past and present.

"Jawahiri spoke of the nation; Tigris, Euphrates, the land – south, north, and center. He was loyal to his country to the last minute and that's an ideal that all Iraqis should strive for," says Kadhim, who spoke with the Monitor last week at his modest studio nestled in a leafy alleyway not far from Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts.

Kadhim, bespectacled with a shock of unruly white hair, pauses from his work, wipes his hands, and hauls out a three-foot-long clay model of the Jawahiri statue from his dark studio into the morning light. Like other Baghdadis, Kadhim receives an hour of electricity a day.

Jawahiri is depicted in his hallmark three-piece suit and embroidered skullcap. The statues will eventually be nearly 10 feet tall and show the poet in different poses and settings.

Tentative government support

He has already received tentative support for his project from the government, and the statutes will be displayed in a park on Abu Nawas Street along the east bank of the Tigris, an area named after the Abbasid "poet of wine" that was once the hub of Baghdad's nightlife with its cafes, fish restaurants, and bars.

The street was divided after 2003 with checkpoints and protective concrete slabs put up by Western security firms and media outlets occupying nearby property.

The US military in partnership with Baghdad's municipality has already spent millions of dollars to beautify the area, according to Tahseen al-Shaikhli, a civilian spokesman for the US-Iraqi security operation under way in the capital.

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