Ali Bader - The Tobacco Keeper

It’s clear that Haidar Salman felt considerable hostility towards the mob, the masses and the populace in general. His aversion was perhaps born out of the public’s inability to understand his music. He’d always felt something of a rift between him and the masses. But this hostility grew after the Farhoud, which proved to him that the masses were the prime enemy of everything beautiful. Those who opposed beauty, according to him, stood against all that was life. His attitude towards the masses suddenly changed from indifference to pure enmity, from acceptance to denunciation. How did this happen?

Since the revolution had its own artists, engineers and leaders, the officers also wanted to create a composer for the revolution. Haidar Salman was their first choice. He would be created and presented as a model made wholly in the revolution’s laboratory. They made the proposal to him openly. They suggested turning him into the revolution’s musician and composer. He thought that the proposal was ridiculous, although he didn’t say so, and his refusal of their offer was clear and categorical. Classical music, he believed, couldn’t move the masses and was therefore of little use to revolutions. Music that didn’t appeal to the base instincts of the populace couldn’t possibly work. Revelation and insight, which were part and parcel of the second persona, were far from revolutionary. Classical music was by its very nature indifferent to words, but revolutions depended on them and used them in patriotic songs. The revolutionaries asked him to compose an opera about the people breaking their chains and were willing to send him to the Soviet Union to compose the work. But he didn’t like the idea, for he didn’t care for the masses, or their history of outbursts, and feared them.

He remained silent for a long time following the departure of Jawad Selim in the company of the painter Nahida al-Said, whom he’d met at the house of his friend Hekmat Aziz. Then one of the people present raised his glass to toast the masses. So they all did, except for the revolution’s composer, who refrained from raising his own glass.

Haidar wanted his music to emerge from his inner self and not from external ideas.

Although his ideas at that time were neither coherent nor fully clear, he wanted to mould them into something new. He wanted to compose pieces that people would view in the same way as a woman looking at the living being coming from her womb. He wanted to construct his thoughts in the same way a painter constructed a scene on a blank canvas. Art was taste, first and foremost, and then harmony and proportion. Revolution, in contrast, was the destruction of all harmony. He didn’t wish to make a fortune with his music or see admiration in the eyes of ordinary people. He wanted his music to mould people and push them forward. But how?

The revolution naturally focused its entire attention on the masses.

The first year of the revolution represented a total break with the past. But the revolution later followed a different course, with an increased tendency to appeal to the masses. Haidar hated this populist tendency. He feared the masses and regarded them as a source of danger. He was overwhelmed with apprehension every time he saw their faces and bodies moving with a uniformity that obliterated individual distinctions. They moved with tremendous force to destroy everything. That was the cause of his fear of them. During that first year it was not an issue. Only in later years did he begin to sense it. The lines were still too faint to form a complete picture. But matters became clearer bit by bit. A whole new culture emerged, generating a new vocabulary that hadn’t existed before. This was what he wrote to Farida: ‘There are new slogans such as “Death to mercenaries” and “Death to imperialist collaborators”. Everybody here speaks of death and calls for it. Can you imagine that the masses are cheering their leader, Qasim, asking him to “Execute, execute, don’t say it’s too late”? Post-revolution Baghdad has become a totally different place. The revolution has strengthened populist and vulgar tendencies and the mob’s hold on the streets.’

On his return from Moscow, he looked out of the window as the plane banked over the airport. Baghdad seemed no more than an arid stretch of land through which the River Tigris meandered, its waters as muddy as milky tea. Thin green belts encircled the towns, which looked like barracks protected by barbed wire and reddish mud-brick walls. Once the aircraft had finally landed, he made his way across the worn and dusty airport carpet. The walls were plastered with violent slogans and tasteless, vapid pictures. He felt disgusted, offended by the march of ugliness and the hostility to beauty that always accompanies revolutions. It touched him to the quick that mob culture was growing rapidly, and that this would inevitably lead to an explosion of sorts. Pure force had the upper hand on Baghdad’s streets. They were full of armed soldiers with yellowish khaki uniforms, trim beards, berets, machineguns and revolvers. Militiamen walked the streets while the masses carried posters demanding that the revolution or the leader be protected, and asking for the execution of secret agents. There were long marches, unbearable heat and endless lines of students, soldiers and workers who clapped rhythmically, shouting out slogans, their faces enraged and excited. There were men and women travelling on buses to greet the leader. The radio stridently urged them all to take to the streets because the revolution was under threat and conspiracies were being hatched all the time.

The revolution, on the other hand, did nothing at all for the people. Houses collapsed amid clouds of reddish-brown dust, while shops, which looked like cubes with their front face missing, were in a miserable condition. The roads were full of potholes and grime was everywhere. Anarchy dominated life in general.

He wrote to Farida: ‘Baghdad has turned into a military tribunal handing out death sentences. The leader receives his well-wishers as well as the angry masses, for the revolution is always threatened by many powerful enemies. There have been twenty-three attempts on the leader’s life. Military justice is still putting people to death and the number is steadily rising. Things will become more complicated in future if we legitimize the use of arms, for the bullets will never stop.’

Just as Haidar had discovered Tobacco Shop through Karl Baruch, it was through Sergei Oistrakh that he came upon the idea of kitsch.

Haidar Salman saw a congruence between kitsch art, which is a vulgar form, and political kitsch, which portrayed Qasim, the leader, in gaudy colours. He was shown sitting with a stern expression, or with a smile on his face or wearing his military beret. Photographs showed him from different perspectives: in profile or portrait, full-length or three-quarters. The leader alone embodied post-revolutionary existence. Life was portrayed in terms of kitsch, with tasteless, fiery colours representing the revolution crushing its enemies.

After the revolution, the Folkloric Art Society was set up, ushering in a new artistic movement in Baghdad. It aimed at representing life in positive, upbeat terms, to represent the changes that hadn’t happened because the enemies of the revolution did not want change. The reality of the streets exposed this as a lie. They were narrow, crowded and suffocating. Buses tooted incessantly amid the throngs of the tired and angry masses. Emaciated horses pulled their poor carts while lines of donkeys carried the tatty furniture of immigrants from the countryside to the city. Black-clad, barefoot women carried huge bundles on their heads, and porters tied ropes around their waists to indicate their willingness to carry any loads. Dirty, barefoot children were assailed by flies.