Word: mahdy
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Just days before the American invasion of Iraq, Nahdi Mahdi, one of Iraq's most famous comedians, was starring in a play called The Wanderers at the National Theatre in Baghdad to a packed house of almost 2,000 people. Like many then living in the misinformation bubble created by Saddam's regime, war was the farthest thing from his mind. "It was such a surprise," he said of the war soon after. "We never thought it would happen." Now war is constantly on Mahdi's mind, and he himself is sort of wandering, one of the million Iraqi refugees...
...question. "It's impossible to present these troubles on stage," he said. Iraqis in Syria "are under such psychological pressure, all we can do is try to make people laugh." Still, there is at least one reflection of the new abnormal of Iraq in Homesick: Mahdi's character is a bodyguard...
...evening last week a few moments before curtain call, Mahdi and the other actors lounged backstage while an actress with platinum blonde hair and a heavy application of kohl-eyeliner berated a stagehand in the timeless manner of prima donnas the world over. But any sense of show business as usual ended when one of the theater managers came by to collect passports and identity documents. The Syrian government is in the process of tightening its generous residency laws for Iraqi refugees, and the fear of deportation looms larger over the cast than a newspaper critic with a grudge...
...cast has other burdens and traumas in common with its audience. "The killers in Iraq make no exception for artists, writers and actors," said one man. "All of us have lost a relative." Indeed, radical fundamentalists in Iraq long ago started targeting actors as members of an immoral profession. Mahdi, who is 43, left his family in Iraq in March of 2006, and he dares not return. A satellite news channel once erroneously reported his demise, a warning, he said, that he is marked for assassination...
...unusual for Sadr to drop out of sight for long spells, and he has previously traveled to Iran without much warning. If he is there now, it would seem to confirm reports that the Mahdi Army is seeking to avoid confrontation with American and Iraqi troops. In recent days, militia commanders have said they had received orders from Sadr's office in Najaf to stand down...