Whenever I write something about Baghdad, the city where I was born in its center (Al-Tayaran Square), I feel as if I am writing about a city that no longer exists.

It is true that the city, which became the capital of modern Iraq, was subjected throughout its history to barbaric invasions that erased most of its architectural and cultural structure. However, until my childhood years it still held on to its lifeline, represented by the morals of its inhabitants, their social values, and their traditions of coexistence.

These enabled them to be the people of a city that had moved beyond tribal ways of thinking and began to affirm its belonging to the modern era through the roles its women occupied in the state as well as their visible presence in the streets.

Because of the feudal system of ignorant rural “nobles,” many people from the south, who were farmers, were forced to migrate to the capital. However, they lived on its outskirts. They built mud villages that gradually expanded, but they did not dare to cross the boundaries into the city itself. They could not easily become “Baghdadi.”

In contrast, when Armenians were forced to migrate to Iraq and some of them settled in Baghdad, they established an upscale neighborhood called the Armenian Camp. That neighborhood was an ideal example of adapting to the conditions of Baghdadi life.

As for the rural people of the south, they remained withdrawn into their worn tribal culture, living on the geographic margins of a city they found intimidating.

When Iraq moved from the monarchy to the republican era, populist rhetoric was activated under the force of the military. At that time, Baghdad lost its moral influence, which had been inspired by the refinement of its people’s behavior. There were political equations that viewed becoming “Baghdadi” as nothing more than an attitude of arrogance.

The 1958 coup led by Abdul Karim Qasim paved the way for a corporal named Hassan Sari to announce a coup attempt against the state in 1963. That was the chaos Iraq experienced amid waves of rural migration into its capital and the military’s takeover of central power, while none of those involved were truly Baghdadi.

Baghdad had its own language. It was a gentle and melodious language, with a refined musical rhythm that gave its structure a kind of charm and sweetness. Anyone familiar with listening to the songs of Nazem Al Ghazali, Reda Ali, Afifa Iskandar, Maeda Nazhat, and Yusuf Omar must realize that Baghdadis were not inclined toward lamentation.

At worst, Nazem Al Ghazali would say: “May you wake up to news, may your days shine, God willing, enjoy your dreams.” This is a wordplay on the usual farewell “may you wake up to goodness,” where “goodness” is replaced with “news.” Therefore, everything that is said about Iraqi lamentation is actually derived from rural mourning traditions, which became dominant in the 1970s after rural populations displaced the people of Baghdad from their place through the power of authority.

A city ruled by rural people is not a city

Before the modern political formation of Iraq in the third decade of the twentieth century under British will, there were three Ottoman provinces: Mosul, Basra, and Baghdad. These cities shared roles in managing modern Iraq, which at the time was still a young state built on a sound foundation.

The British placed it on a path meant to prevent deviation toward failure, as a state of institutions governed by law, and characterized in its regional and international relations by transparency and cooperation.

Iraq functioned through three major cities that supplied the state with their expertise. The military came from Mosul, politicians from Baghdad, while Basra served as the maritime gateway through which trade routes passed.

This framework had exceptions, which is natural in a society that proved capable of transformation and of moving into modernity with ease, confidence, and developmental vision.

But this did not last long. The transition of Iraq from monarchy to republic led to a radical change in the structure of power, when the three cities lost their functions. In my view, this happened because the military coming from secondary towns, who were rural in origin, took control of power. Abdul Karim Qasim, from Al Suwaira, ruled between 1958 and 1963. After him, the brothers Aref, Abdul Salam and Abdul Rahman, ruled between 1963 and 1968, and they were from Ana. The republican experiment then ended with Ahmed Hassan al Bakr and Saddam Hussein, who ruled Iraq between 1968 and 2003, both from Tikrit.

For more than fifty years, Baghdad underwent a process of ruralization, even though it witnessed during the 1970s and 1980s an architectural renaissance that seemed to turn it into one of the Arab capitals most aligned with modernity.

There was an internal decline, visible in the cultural mood, which was no longer urban, and in the dismissal of “Baghdadi refinement,” which was not valued by those in power.

Although Saddam Hussein was sincere in his love for Iraq, his relationship with Baghdad, where he spent most of his life, did not reflect any real sense of Baghdadi refinement or urban character.

Baghdad was destroyed by misunderstanding

The Baghdad that was defeated from within saw, after 2003, the disappearance of the military, replaced by a rural political class that had never even dreamed of penetrating the void separating Baghdad from its fragile surroundings. That surrounding space had itself been formed under the influence of mass migrations from southern cities, exhausted by the power of agrarian feudalism.

In my view, when Baghdad declined in its emotional spirit at the time when rural music became dominant (the songs of Hussein Nima, Ilyas Kheder, Saadoun Jaber, Riyadh Ahmed, and Saadi Al-Hilli), it had already paved the way for its political decline, which did not happen by coincidence. Iraqis acquired their reputation as “exporters of lamentation” long before the catastrophe of the occupation took place.

“Eternal Baghdad Between Seriousness and Humour” is the title of a play written and directed by Qasim Mohammed in 1974. That play was a prophecy of what Baghdad would later experience, based on what it had already lived through in earlier eras.

It is the fate of the city of Al-Rashid to live as if it were a joke between its seriousness and its playfulness. But what Qasim Mohammed did not expect was that the Baghdadis themselves would disappear, and that their language would no longer be heard amid a noise that would not be purely rural this time, but rather a mixture of foreign dialects.

The Baghdad I knew did not disappear suddenly. It was already defeated from within the day it was occupied by the Americans, in a scene reminiscent of its fall when the army of Hulagu invaded it in 1258.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar