{"id":528,"date":"2013-01-30T05:06:49","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T05:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/?p=528"},"modified":"2013-03-03T00:54:05","modified_gmt":"2013-03-03T00:54:05","slug":"an-inventory-of-al-mutanabbi-street-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/?p=528","title":{"rendered":"An \u2018Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street\u2019 \u2013 Part 4!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div title=\"Page 1\">\n<p><strong>This is the text I used in the book &#8216;A sun that rises&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>These are the words by Abdul Satar (Abu Ali),\u00a0taken from the documentary: <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>A Candle for the Shabandar Cafe<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Emad Ali, Director, Baghdad Film School, 2007<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe explosion in Mutanabbi Street didn\u2019t just target people&#8230;but also language and thought itself \u2014 Iraqi culture, really. This street, which the suicide bomber blew up, this unknown man, but we all know what sort of a person he was, his identity, his culture, history, background, his origins&#8230;.this bomber knew exactly what this street means to the Iraqi people, and, how important it is to Iraqi culture. Neither development nor civilization is posssible in Iraq if we don\u2019t preserve this street and its shopkeepers, booksellers, its porters and poor people&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>If we don\u2019t care for all of them, I don\u2019t think there is a future for Iraq. Because without culture, there is no development and no civilization. This place is the stream which feeds Iraqi culture. And, we belong to it \u2014 body and soul&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>Here I learned the meaning of legends, of language, of God&#8230;a God of good and justice\u2014not the God of the extremists. They are against everything which is life. This is not just a place to buy books, it is redolent of history. The body of Hallaj, the Sufi, was buried only steps from here. Thousands of Iraqis were killed in this street. It reminds us of the Ottoman state and of its cruelty. Here, we remember the Tigris River flooding and the diseases which decimated Baghdad. But life goes on. <strong>It\u2019s an illusion to think that people can be completely defeated. The earth keeps turning, life continues&#8230;..there is still a sun that rises, and there is hope, despite all the destruction.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the text I used in the book &#8216;A sun that rises&#8217; These are the words by Abdul Satar (Abu Ali),\u00a0taken from the documentary: A Candle for the Shabandar Cafe Emad Ali, Director, Baghdad Film School, 2007 \u201cThe explosion in Mutanabbi Street didn\u2019t just target people&#8230;but also language and thought itself \u2014 Iraqi culture, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accordion-book","category-bookart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":709,"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions\/709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettina-pauly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}