Iraq | Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture

An archive of News, Events, Teacher's Corner blog posts, and In The News notes that are tagged with the subject of "Iraq"

Scenes from Iraqi Daily Life

September 8, 2009

Drama Students at the End-of Camp Performance

Campers performing a scene about selling dates at an Iraqi market

July 2009

Before my two weeks in residence as drama teacher at Al-Bustan Camp, I had limited experience with Middle Eastern culture. I have close friends from Egypt, and I had spent time observing a community-based arts program in Vienna, Austria’s Turkish section as part of my dissertation research. Like many others, I followed the barrage of media reports on the war in Iraq and the recent political events surrounding Iran. However, I had never spent significant time considering the personal stories of people from this large and significant part of the world.

I began with several exercises designed to engage the students’ senses of play and their imaginations. During this time I led them in a word association game. This allowed me to confront the students’ prior knowledge of Iraq and also to help them begin to think of these cultures as material for their theatrical creations. Knowing that many of these children have Arab parents, I expected that this exercise would yield vastly different associations than the same would yield in a class full of students with no Arab heritage. I was surprised when the words the students gave me so completely matched words that the news media tends to emphasize in conversations of Iraq. Words such as “war”, “death”, “Bush”, and “Cheney” were as common as phrases such as “suicide bombing” and “U.S. occupation”.

Given these associations, it was clear to me that my students needed to explore issues not typically linked to Iraq in the news media. Even conventional, mundane stories about growing up in Iraq, I thought, would help to break down the stereotypes that the kids held and start to frame Iraqi culture in more human terms. Enter one of our counselors, an Iraqi student who recently came to the US as a refugee and was studying at a nearby college.

I asked her if she would be willing to share some stories of what it was like growing up in Iraq. She paused before agreeing to this, fearing that I was asking her to reveal stories of her later years in the war-torn country before she and her family fled and were relocated. She was relieved when I told her that I did not want her to tell the children the “dramatic” stories that many new acquaintances ask her to tell. I told her that I wanted her to focus on the many positive experiences she had while growing up in her homeland.

Campers singing Iraqi folk song "Fogh al-Nakhl"

She told me that some of her best memories revolved around the Ramadan celebration, especially Eid, the day after the fasting when her entire extended family in Baghdad would go to her grandfather’s home and she spent hours playing in his garden and climbing the date tree. Smiles accompanied Dina’s delivery as she told the students that one particular day she spent at her grandfather’s home was “the best day” of her life. A genuine exploration of the culture required the presence of someone who could tell the children stories rooted in her own personal experiences, and the play evolved in a fluid, organic manner from her stories.

Through the improvisation and story-telling exercises that we had practiced in the first classes, campers were primed to construct dramatic presentations from phrases, themes, and story fragments. I asked the 10-12 year old students to break into two small performance groups and construct a play based on their Iraqi counselor’s memories.

I already had much experience guiding students towards the creation of stage-worthy pieces of theatre, but the most transformative teaching moments (for the students and myself) were experienced when the children embodied the seemingly mundane, yet profoundly important memories of a girl who lost a great deal to the current events that remain at the forefront of public discourse and the news media. Sometimes the most seemingly quotidian elements of a culture are the most revealing and the most useful for confronting cultural stereotypes.

- Justin Poole, Drama Teacher

Iraqi Narratives in Video

August 16, 2009

July 2009

On some level, it makes complete sense. The Palestinian American teenager in our video class this summer at Al-Bustan Camp volunteered to play the part. The group had decided as part of their video to reenact a young Iraqi girl’s experience of American troops invading her home at night. There was something in that story, and that lived experience, that our teenage actress could relate to intuitively, even though she was growing up in Philadelphia. She knew these kinds of stories.

Katherine (in center) with teen campers during discussion with Iraqi guest (at far left)

By the end of the three-week video class, we all knew these stories. Focusing on the multifaceted history of Iraq this summer, we discussed poetry by Iraqi poets like Dunya Mikhail and Saadi Youssef; interviews with Iraqi refugees; film clips; and Arab American hip hop. It became clear that the American occupation of Iraq was a theme the teens really wanted to explore – along with its rich history and heritage. Maybe this has to do with the teenage flare for the dramatic – but I think it has to do with their sensitivity and need to really engage with the difficult issues of their society.

We found that listening to two of Al-Bustan’s counselors’ stories about life in Iraq, before recently coming here as refugees, sank in much more than any historical essay or BBC report could have. A picture emerged in the process of making this video that came out of a place deeper than that semi-conscious rumbling of headlines and statistics we ingest about Iraq from the TV and radio. It came out of a place of personal engagement and empathy.

I know that for me, the personal engagement with these stories this summer at times could be hard to bear. Still, the spirit of the people we met and the poetry we read from Iraq, was anything but depressing- despite the political situation there now. But, in order for the future to be better, the difficulties of the past and the present have to be confronted. Confronted, and transformed.

Making and re-making these stories with their own hands, the teens depicted their thoughts on Iraq in a way much more meaningful than the depressing vision of Iraq blasted over the news daily. The stories became alive in their minds in a new way.

I hope that this ability to visualize and empathize will carry and guide these bright teens in their need to understand and act in a world that will be theirs.

- Katherine Toukhy, Video Facilitator

By Hazami Sayed | Posted in Camp, From Our Teachers | Also tagged al-bustan, Camp, video, youth | Comments (0)

Musical Nostalgia

August 2, 2009

July 2009

Layal singing Toba to music by violinist Hanna Khoury and accompaniment of campers

Arabic music reminds me of summer. Ever since I was little, I can remember my mother putting on her favorite cassettes in the car while she drove me to summer camp. I become nostalgic for summers in Lebanon when I would lie on the beach, toes in the soft sand, while music wafted to my ears from a sound system. People talk about having a comfort food that they eat to remind them of home and beautiful memories. For me, Arabic music is my comfort that I listen to cheer me up or if I find myself longing for the warm summers …which is basically all the time. The music is romantic with a soft side in it but also has a joy and vivacity that makes you get up and dance.

In my first year as a counselor at Al-Bustan Camp, I was introduced to singing classical Arabic music. My first shot at a legitimate classical Arabic piece was Um Koulthum’s Alf Layla Wa Layla…hefty shoes to fill. Her songs are complicated simply because her voice is so powerful that a singer with any less force would simply not be able make the song come to life. Um Koulthum made everything she sang drip with such life and emotion that it was intimidating to perform her song in a foreign language to native listeners.

This year I learned to sing Abdel Halim Hafez’s Toba for Al-Bustan’s music performance. This was more of a challenge because I had to learn the lyrics and be able to sing them to the song’s fast tempo. I only had a week to practice Toba and again I was imitating a singer who was famous for being the “Elvis of the Middle East”. When I first practiced the song, my voice was too operatic, too smooth, and too thin. I had to sing from my chest and give the song gusto. I learned to let go of the smooth legato soprano that I was so used to.

For a week I listened to Abdel Halim repeatedly, taking note of his intonation, the tenderness in his voice, and how he seemed to meld each lyric into the melody. With the campers and music teachers, I practiced the song over and over till it came time for the performance.

It’s funny how even if you don’t understand the language, Arabic music is so unique and expressive that it becomes easy to understand the song’s message. The melodies are so intricate, with effervescent beats that can completely alter the mood of a song and uplift you with each riff of the voice or change of tempo. Um Koulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez had such powerful, expressive voices that I wanted to bring out the beauty and emotions of the music just as much as they had. Although I’m not fluent in Arabic, I could not only hear the music but truly feel it. I could let myself become entangled within the music’s striking harmonies and addicting beats. And so I hoped to do the songs justice and sing them in a way in which the audience could feel the same love as I did for the music.

After the music performance last week a parent came up to me and told me about how hearing Toba brought him back to his childhood. The song reminded him of how he and his friends would get together to watch Abdel Halim’s films and listen to the songs. When he said this, I knew that I had achieved my goal and that the music had reached the audience.

Al-Bustan has exposed me to classical Arabic music and given me the opportunity to expand my repertoire beyond Western classical and contemporary. But not only that, the Camp taught me so much about the Arab world. Most importantly, it helped me establish a tighter bond with my culture through music.

- Layal Brown, Camp Counselor

By Hazami Sayed | Posted in Camp, From Our Teachers | Also tagged Camp, Music Instruction | Comments (0)

Ibtisam Barakat Profiled in the Chestnut Hill Local

July 25, 2009

Ibtisam Barakat in Chestnut Hill Local

On July 22 and 23, Al-Bustan was pleased to host noted author Ibtisam Barakat to conduct poetry workshops with our campers. See her interview with Len Lear of the Chestnut Hill Local. . .

Working Tirelessly to heal social injustice Palestinian Author brings tales of war to Hill

by Len Lear, Chestnut Hill Local
Published: July 30, 2009

[...]“Barakat, who spent two days with students at Springside last week, is on a peripatetic mission of peace and justice. Born in Beit Hanina, East Jerusalem, she spent most of her formative years in Ramallah, Palestine (generally referred to in news stories as the West Bank). After earning a degree in English literature from Birzeit University on the West Bank, she came to the U.S. in 1986 for an internship with The Nation magazine. She later earned two M.A. degrees — in journalism and in human development and family studies – at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Just before coming to Springside, Barakat had attended a world poetry conference in Caracas, Venezuela, as the Palestinian representative. Prior to that, she was in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Oman for one month as “author in residence” working with middle school and high school students. Her memoir, Tasting the Sky; a Palestinian Childhood, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was named by Booklist as one of the top 10 biographies for youth and in 2008 won the International Reading Association’s Best Non-Fiction Book Award for Children and Young Adults.”

Click here to read the full article.