Shadow and Light

barleybooks

Apr 16

This is one of two photographs I contributed to the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project's call, four years ago, for images to honour the hundreds of academics (lecturers, professors, teachers) that were assassinated in Iraq during the US-led invasion and occupation, during the years 2003-2012. This initiative was called Shadow and Light.

My photo is one of 13 pieces chosen by curators to be shown at Columbia University as part of a pop-up exhibit of work from the project archive. The exhibit accompanies a program of Iraqi scholars speaking to the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

This is the statement I wrote in 2019:

#188 Noel Petros Shammas Matti: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Mosul University. Married and father of two daughters, he was kidnapped and found dead August 4, 2006.

This elm tree is a five-minute walk from my home. Widowed for twenty years, it has not grown to fill the space left by its companion.
I thought of this tree when I read about Noel Petros Shammas Matti, and now I shall remember him every time I see it.

A man taken by force from his wife and children cannot be replaced. They will feel the pain of his absence for the rest of their lives.

Below is the other photo I sent in.

#35. Nawfal Ahmad: PhD, lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Fine Arts. She was assassinated at the front door of her house on 25 December 2005.

I chose a woman to honour, because I am a woman; it could have been my life cut short, my work in this world unfinished, my family in shock and mourning.

I identified with an art college lecturer because I am a book-artist. I imagine that her front door may have opened, as mine does, onto a quiet lane. I can barely imagine the horror of being confronted on this threshold by a murderer.

I chose to photograph a tree close to my home; a beech in a wood of beeches, all similar and each one unique. It was the delicate shadow of a winter twig that caught my eye, and the enduring scars in the smooth bark, and the pale star-like patches of lichen.

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