Iraqi Exile Nostalgia Culture: Poetry of Abbas Jijan

A poem about Iraq

While I was staying in Baghdad recently, it was striking to observe the contrast between the sense of security and normality that pervades the streets now and the situation around two decades ago in what can effectively be seen as the first of Iraq’s two post-2003 civil wars, a key component of which was essentially a battle for Baghdad between the U.S.-backed Shia-led government and allied armed Shia groups on one side, and Sunni insurgents on the other.

That war, of course, was won by the former side with the main consequence being that the capital was effectively secured and a notable demographic shift took place with Shia coming to constitute a much larger proportion of the city’s population. When the Islamic State seized large parts of the north and west of Iraq in 2014, marking the beginning of the second civil war (which the Iraqi government and its allies also won), there was some speculation among analysts that the group could somehow have taken Baghdad if it had focused its efforts on doing so, though that never struck me as a remotely realistic possibility.

𐌹t was during the period of the first civil war that one also saw a surge in what I would call the nostalgia culture among Iraqi exiles, giving rise to videos, songs and poetry expressing love for Iraq and contrasting the situation at the time with a rather idealised vision of Iraq’s past, often embodied in some nice photos from Iraq many decades ago. Two popular figures in this exile culture were the singer Hussam al-Rassam and the poet Abbas Jijan. For example, I remember some tracks that would combine segments of Jijan reciting poetry and Rassam singing Iraqi folk songs. On Youtube, you can also find videos of Jijan poetry being read by the poet himself and set to various Iraqi tunes, such as the theme soundtrack for the pre-2003 Iraqi TV series ‘Men of the Shadow’ by Iraqi Christian composer Raed George. But whereas Rassam is now one of Iraq’s best known modern singers, Jijan has generally slipped into obscurity.