Looking at the future of Iraq through fiction
On Friday evening a regrettably small audience gathered at the Ilkley Literature Festival to hear about the new book of short stories from Comma Press. Called Iraq+100, it's an exploration of what Iraq might be like a hundred years after the 2003 invasion, i.e. in 2103. Comma Press founder Ra Page and the book's editor Hassan Blasim (sometimes with the assistance of an interpreter) talked us through the idea behind the book, what it's like to be a writer in Iraq, and the lack of a science fiction tradition in the Arab world.
Hassan Blassim is a writer and film-maker who fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq and after 4 years on foot across Europe (writing all the way) settled in Finland, where he is still based. He has been published in English by Comma Press for nearly ten years. Hassan made the point that all across Europe 'international' literature festivals often mean work from North America or other parts of Europe, there is little African or Arabic literature available, so the Iraq+100 anthology was a good way of getting some Arabic stories translated into English.
The idea for the book arose in 2013, from the 10th anniversary of the invasion and most of the stories in it were written before Isis took Mosul in 2014 thus dramatically changing the narrative. Consequently the book was delayed until some stories dealing with the legacy of Isis had been written, but the result is a mixture of hopeful, dystopian, and satirical writing. Apparently all the writers were hesitant about setting work so far in the future, at first. Since the 1940s there has been a small sci-fi presence, mainly in Lebanon and Egypt, but there wasn't the nineteenth century industrial revolution in the Arab world that kickstarted the genre in Europe. Hassan's view also is that there have been so many conflicts in Iraq, everyone's writing is influenced by war and conflict and they don't have the luxury of sitting back and letting their imaginations run wild. "Peace is a great laboratory for imagination," he said.
In Iraq, Hassan said, the 'official' writers are affiliated to government bodies and aren't free to write as they choose, though the most danger for writers there now comes from the religious militia and not the government. He is hopeful for the future as the rise of Isis has made it easier for writers, or young people on Facebook, to criticise religion and religious figures, which would have been unthinkable in 2006. Young people in Iraq are protesting weekly about religious governance, although that appetite for change is rarely (if ever) shown in Western media.
This was an eye-opening evening, which I think shows the importance of literature in translation for getting a true view of situations in other countries.