THE war in Iraq has generated a surge of interest in Iraqi culture, from traditional storytelling to contemporary art and poetry.

The British Museum, which holds the greatest collection of Mesopotamian art outside Iraq, is one of a number of institutions that have seen attendances soar.

Dr Irving Finkel, a curator for the Ancient Near East Department, said that there was now a phalanx of people passing through the Mesopotamian and Assyrian galleries. Public inquiries relating to Iraq have trebled.

Even an exhibition of everyday objects from Iraq has drawn large numbers whose interest has been raised by coverage of the war. Our Life in Pieces, a show containing objects such as bullet casings and bathtubs, has attracted 2,000 visitors to the Diorama Gallery in Camden, North London.

“It is the most popular exhibition we have had in years,” Giovanni Giorgis, the gallery owner, said. “We normally attract just a few hundred visitors because our entrance is not visible from the street, but people have sought us out.” The exhibition, which closed on Saturday, had been so popular that the organisers want to extend it and will be publishing a booklet.

The art of traditional Iraqi storytelling has also attracted heightened interest. There have been a growing number of spectators for sessions run by Zipang, a voluntary group that performs ancient stories such as the 5,000-year-old epic Lugalbanda and the Anzu Bird. A spokesman for the group, whose next performance is on April 26, said that the war made celebration of ancient Iraqi culture especially important.

Sales of books by Iraqi authors have also risen dramatically over the past six months. A spokeswoman for Saqi Books, a specialist in Arab literature, said that it had been inundated with inquiries in the past two weeks.

Baghdad Diaries, a non- fiction title by Nuha al-Radi, sold 3,000 copies between 1998 and 2002, but has sold 2,000 copies this month alone. Targeting Iraq: Sanctions and Bombing in US Policy, by Geoff Simons, and Strokes of Genius, Contemporary Iraqi Art, edited by Maysaloun Faraj, have also seen a run on copies since February.

Interest in Iraqi and Arab poets has also increased, according to the editor of a specialist London magazine that translates their works. Margaret Obank, editor of Banipal, founded in 1998 to publish Arabic literature in translation, said: “We hadn’t really had any big interest until September 11. Then we had all these people wanting to contact writers and also for festivals.”

The revival in Iraqi poetry that has been translated into English is being led by Dunya Mikhail, a poet who fled President Saddam Hussein’s regime after she compared him in writing with the all-powerful Greek god Zeus. Ms Mikhail hid behind symbols from ancient mythology to publish her early anti-war book Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea in Baghdad. Saddam became Zeus. The poet ridiculed Saddam’s eight-year war against Iran and powerfully depicted America’s bombing of al-Amiriya shelter in Baghdad in Operation Desert Storm, when 400 people — mostly women, children and the elderly — were burnt to death.

She was interrogated and harassed by Saddam’s Ministry of Information and escaped by accepting an invitation to a poetry event in Jordan and never returning. Now she works at the University of Michigan in the United States. She is included in a new collection of contemporary Iraqi poetry in a special issue of the London journal Modern Poetry in Translation.

Iraqi artists in Britain have also noticed a new fascination with their culture. Faisal Laibi Sahi, whose exhibition About the Life and the Love will be at the Polish Centre in London in August, said that he had received a number of inquiries since the war began.

He described his work as mixing Babylonian and Sumerian influences with modern techniques. In his painting Coffee Shop in Baghdad, he shows a variety of influential figures within Iraqi society. One is a religious man, who shares the shop with a rich businessman, a military man and a shadowy spy figure, hidden behind a newspaper. The newspapers on the floor report the Iraqi “victory” in the Gulf and Saddam’s visit to the front line. The artist said: “The newspapers are propaganda, which is why people are treading on them.

“I am very much in favour of the war in Iraq. It is the only way to bring down Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime.”

The War Works Hard
By Dunya Mikhail

The war
How serious
and active
and skilful
It is!
From early morning
It wakes up the sirens
sends ambulances everywhere
swings corpses in the air
slides stretchers to the wounded
summons rain from the eyes of mothers
digs in the earth
shovels many things from under the ruins
some lifeless glittering things
others pale and still throbbing
It brings more inquiries
to the minds of children
entertains the gods
by shooting missiles and fireballs
through the sky
It plants mines in the fields
harvests holes and air-pockets
urges families to emigrate
stands with the clergymen
as they curse the Devil
(The wretched one, his hand is still in the fire. It hurts)
The war is relentless, day and night.
It inspires tyrants to deliver long speeches
gives medals to generals
and themes to poets
It contributes to the industry of artificial limbs
provides food for flies
adds pages to the book of history
achieves equality between victim and murderer
teaches lovers to write letters
trains girls to wait
fills newspapers with stories and photos
beats drums to celebrate every year
builds new houses for the orphans
keeps coffin-makers very busy
pats the shoulders of gravediggers
draws a smile on the leader’s face.
The war works very hard
without precedent
yet nobody praises it.

Translated by the author

Dunya Mikhail’s poems feature in Rearranging the World (free from The British Centre for Literary Translation, bclt@uea.ac.uk, £1.50 postage); A Crack in the Wall: New Arab Poetry (Saqi, £12.95); Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (Ishtar Publishing House)

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