Word: abdulrazzak
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Dates: during 2007-2007
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...Since 2003 London has played host to such political dramas as David Hare's Stuff Happens and Richard Norton Taylor's Called to Account, in which Tony Blair is put on trial for "aggression against Iraq." But the latest offering, Baghdad Wedding, written by Iraq expatriate Hassan Abdulrazzak, doesn't focus on political impact of the war. It looks at what has happened to Iraq's middle classes, in particular those who have fled to the safety of western cities like London, Paris and New York...
...What I wanted to do was flag what I know about Iraq," Abdulrazzak told TIME. "[It's] now being seen as a religiously crazed country...I wanted to show the middle-class segment that people could relate...
...theme of exile mirrors the author's own life. Abdulrazzak left Iraq when he was eight years old. His father, an academic and a non-Baath party member, was persecuted by the regime and fled to Egypt and Algeria before finally arriving in London. A molecular scientist at London's prestigious Imperial University, Abdulrazzak was inspired to write about his home country after voting in absentia during Iraq's 2005 elections. The expatriates were "all invested" in the election, says Abdulrazzak. "That was the last moment of hope and I try to capture that tension of feeling...
...Abdulrazzak's experience of loss and return is shared by other prominent Iraqi artists abroad. "You're an exile when forced by the government to be ousted from your country," said Abdul Karim Kasid, a prominent Iraqi poet and dramatist also based in London. "Now we're not forced out by the government but by the situation...
...plays by these Iraqi exiles have a fatalism that reflects the daily reality of life back on the streets of Baghdad and Basra. Toward the end of Baghdad Wedding, Marwan, the play's narrator, leaves Baghdad for London, declaring, "This country is finished." Is that how the exiled Abdulrazzak and his fellow artists feel...
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