The first year of the revolution represented a total break with the past. But the revolution later followed a different course, with an increased tendency to appeal to the masses. Haidar hated this populist tendency. He feared the masses and regarded them as a source of danger. He was overwhelmed with apprehension every time he saw their faces and bodies moving with a uniformity that obliterated individual distinctions. They moved with tremendous force to destroy everything. That was the cause of his fear of them. During that first year it was not an issue. Only in later years did he begin to sense it. The lines were still too faint to form a complete picture. But matters became clearer bit by bit. A whole new culture emerged, generating a new vocabulary that hadn’t existed before. This was what he wrote to Farida: ‘There are new slogans such as “Death to mercenaries” and “Death to imperialist collaborators”. Everybody here speaks of death and calls for it. Can you imagine that the masses are cheering their leader, Qasim, asking him to “Execute, execute, don’t say it’s too late”? Post-revolution Baghdad has become a totally different place. The revolution has strengthened populist and vulgar tendencies and the mob’s hold on the streets.’
On his return from Moscow, he looked out of the window as the plane banked over the airport. Baghdad seemed no more than an arid stretch of land through which the River Tigris meandered, its waters as muddy as milky tea. Thin green belts encircled the towns, which looked like barracks protected by barbed wire and reddish mud-brick walls. Once the aircraft had finally landed, he made his way across the worn and dusty airport carpet. The walls were plastered with violent slogans and tasteless, vapid pictures. He felt disgusted, offended by the march of ugliness and the hostility to beauty that always accompanies revolutions. It touched him to the quick that mob culture was growing rapidly, and that this would inevitably lead to an explosion of sorts. Pure force had the upper hand on Baghdad’s streets. They were full of armed soldiers with yellowish khaki uniforms, trim beards, berets, machineguns and revolvers. Militiamen walked the streets while the masses carried posters demanding that the revolution or the leader be protected, and asking for the execution of secret agents. There were long marches, unbearable heat and endless lines of students, soldiers and workers who clapped rhythmically, shouting out slogans, their faces enraged and excited. There were men and women travelling on buses to greet the leader. The radio stridently urged them all to take to the streets because the revolution was under threat and conspiracies were being hatched all the time.
The revolution, on the other hand, did nothing at all for the people. Houses collapsed amid clouds of reddish-brown dust, while shops, which looked like cubes with their front face missing, were in a miserable condition. The roads were full of potholes and grime was everywhere. Anarchy dominated life in general.
He wrote to Farida: ‘Baghdad has turned into a military tribunal handing out death sentences. The leader receives his well-wishers as well as the angry masses, for the revolution is always threatened by many powerful enemies. There have been twenty-three attempts on the leader’s life. Military justice is still putting people to death and the number is steadily rising. Things will become more complicated in future if we legitimize the use of arms, for the bullets will never stop.’
Just as Haidar had discovered Tobacco Shop through Karl Baruch, it was through Sergei Oistrakh that he came upon the idea of kitsch.
Haidar Salman saw a congruence between kitsch art, which is a vulgar form, and political kitsch, which portrayed Qasim, the leader, in gaudy colours. He was shown sitting with a stern expression, or with a smile on his face or wearing his military beret. Photographs showed him from different perspectives: in profile or portrait, full-length or three-quarters. The leader alone embodied post-revolutionary existence. Life was portrayed in terms of kitsch, with tasteless, fiery colours representing the revolution crushing its enemies.
After the revolution, the Folkloric Art Society was set up, ushering in a new artistic movement in Baghdad. It aimed at representing life in positive, upbeat terms, to represent the changes that hadn’t happened because the enemies of the revolution did not want change. The reality of the streets exposed this as a lie. They were narrow, crowded and suffocating. Buses tooted incessantly amid the throngs of the tired and angry masses. Emaciated horses pulled their poor carts while lines of donkeys carried the tatty furniture of immigrants from the countryside to the city. Black-clad, barefoot women carried huge bundles on their heads, and porters tied ropes around their waists to indicate their willingness to carry any loads. Dirty, barefoot children were assailed by flies.
The letter that Haidar sent to Farida, dated 1 November 1962, was brief and clear. He couldn’t specify exactly what he wanted, but he felt that he was in mortal danger. His wife Tahira was in Moscow for medical treatment. He wrote to Farida that Tahira was always pale, thin and in very poor health. His son Hussein went to Saint Joseph’s School in Al-Alweya. He spoke incessantly about his wife’s illness but never about their relationship. His real interests at the time, as his letters indicate, were music and politics. He believed that the decline in artistic and aesthetic taste had left a huge mark on politics and vice versa.
Haidar Salman’s family life wasn’t in the best of shape, for his relationship with Tahira was vague and undefined. Many rumours linked him with the painter Nahida al-Said, who was introduced to him by Jawad Selim who was visiting Hekmat Aziz. Selim came to know Aziz in Tehran and would always visit him at his house in Al-Adhamiya.
Selim was the one who built the Freedom Memorial as an outcome of the revolution. The brilliant sculptor had created this memorial in the shape a Sumerian cylinder seal. But the man who wished to be the revolution’s architect created its base and the frieze in the form of a populist poster. That was why Haidar Salman loathed the memorial so much. He often argued about it with Nahida. Nevertheless, he frequently mentioned Nahida al-Said and her ideas in his letters to Farida. What was it that attracted him to the painter’s ideas so much?
He wrote to Farida that he’d recently made the acquaintance of a young woman painter. The young, pretty woman caused a drastic change in Haidar’s outlook. At least he found in her vision and ideas some consolation for his music. Her paintings didn’t tackle the populist, folkloric and patriotic themes that were so popular in those days. Rather, they were informed by universal concerns and represented absolute subjectivity and idealism. Such traits were abhorred then, because it was generally accepted that art shouldn’t be separated from life. Art, according to this view, came close to political propaganda. It had the function of re-examining existing tradition in order to create new modes of expression. This was what Jawad Selim and his school did.
The US-educated young woman, Nahida al-Said, was only looking for intellectual, emotional and intuitive forms and not for any ideological meaning or content. This was what attracted Haidar to her and what he needed at that time, although he couldn’t articulate it. He refused to express stereotypical images of people or realistic events through his music, although he believed that the grounded and spiritual aspect of music could elevate people and enhance their intuitive capacity. Music was able to unite and refine people, to urge them to work hard and respond to the instinctive beauty within their souls. He believed that it was for art to eradicate ugliness and introduce beauty to the world. It replaced the anarchy of clashing colours and discordant rhythms with harmonious melodies that embodied absolute beauty.
But who among the artists or any others was listening to him at the time? In fact, very few of his friends paid much attention to such ideas. There was heated debate in the newspapers and magazines as to whether art should exist for its own sake or for society’s benefit. Despite the vulgarity and crudity of the arguments, everybody accused Haidar of falling prey to the influence of bourgeois aesthetics. This was a serious charge at that time. He felt truly lonely and alienated. Almost every day he would leave his house and walk Baghdad’s streets with his hands in his pockets, wondering if there was anything uglier than the environment surrounding him or more repellent than the prevalent vogue of political and folkloric kitsch. Was there anything more sordid or distasteful? As soon as any discussions started, he would burst out in their faces. He believed that kitsch would produce greater violence in society. Lines, dots, surfaces and three-dimensional forms would disappear and be replaced by corpses left hanging in public. The people, who had been encouraged to be resentful, with strident colours, vulgar music and loud anthems, would become a hugely destructive force that might be impossible to reverse.