African Iraqis want to be heard; In a land that officially denies bias, they begin to lobby for equal rights

African Iraqis want to be heard; In a land that officially denies bias, they begin to lobby for equal rights
By Timothy Williams
International Herald Tribune
December 04, 2009



A boy played in Zubayr, a scaled-down version of Harlem, in the southern city of Basra. There are about 1.2 million African-Iraqis.




Washing cars is the only source of income for many African-Iraqi boys and men, they said, because no one will hire them.


“Black people here are living in fear,” said Jalal Dhiyab Thijeel, an advocate for the estimated 1.2 million African Iraqis in the country. “We want to end that.”


Officially, Iraq is a colorblind society that in the tradition of Muhammad treats black people with equality and respect.


But on the packed dirt streets of Zubayr, African Iraqis talk of discrimination so steeped in Iraqi culture that they are commonly referred to as “abd” — slave in Arabic — and they are prohibited from interracial marriage and denied even menial jobs.


Historians say that most African Iraqis arrived as slaves from East Africa as part of the Arab slave trade starting about 1,400 years ago. They worked in southern Iraq`s salt marshes and sugarcane fields.


Though slavery, which in Iraq included Arabs as well as Africans, was banned in the 1920s, it continued until the 1950s, African Iraqis say.


Recently, they have begun to campaign for recognition as a minority population, which would grant them the same benefits as Christians, including reserved seats in Parliament.


“Black people here are living in fear,” said Jalal Dhiyab Thijeel, an advocate for the estimated 1.2 million African Iraqis in the country. “We want to end that.”


On a recent weekday afternoon, a group of black children and adults wearing flip-flops stood in a dirt field waiting for cars to drive up so they could wash them. It is their only source of income, they said, because no one will hire them.


In Basra, a southern oil and port city with winds that constantly whip the desert sands, car washing is not a bad way to survive, and over time the field has become a crowded gathering point for boys and men waiting with hoses and buckets for the next dirty car.


The children, most no more than 14 years old, are school dropouts. Sometimes it was their choice; other times the decision rested with a father who had little formal education himself and an unsteady income.


“If I go back to school, then who will feed my family?” said one of the boys, Hussein Abdul Razak, 13.


Hussein said he left school when he was 8 years old because he had fallen so far behind in his classes. His father, who also works at the car wash, was sick, so the family`s dinner this day rested entirely with whatever Hussein could earn. Unfortunately, things were slow, with too little sand in the air. He shrugged his shoulders. He had earned nothing.


Muhammad Waleed, also 13, is a rare child at the lot who has a father with a steady job. His father drives a minibus.


Muhammad, who had come pedaling up on his bicycle, said he had left school so long ago that he could not remember how old he was then.


“Every year I failed and I failed, and so I left,” he said. He looked nervously at the boisterous children who had gathered around him, deciding whether to say what came next.


“I can`t read,” he said. The children grew silent.


Muhammad`s dream, he said, is to follow in his father`s footsteps and drive a Kia minibus. He said that he already knew how to drive, but that he needed to wait another five years to be hired.


“Until then, I`ll drive my bicycle,” he said. Everyone around him laughed.


Majid Hamid, a lanky 20-year-old who is among the lot`s oldest workers, said some days were better than others. It had been a bad day for him as well.


“From the morning until now, I haven`t washed a single car,” he said. It was past 6 p.m.


But even on the good days, he said, they still had to deal with customers who frequently used racially derogatory terms when addressing them. “They say, `Abu Samra,` come on, go fast!”` he said. “What can I do? I can beat them up, but there will be trouble afterward.”


Lighter-skinned Iraqis consider Abu Samra a term of endearment, but the car washers said that for them it is a vicious slur.


They say they are called a lot of other names and are often picked up by army patrols and taken to bases where they are threatened with beatings and imprisonment if they continue to wash cars. They said the soldiers leave them alone when lighter-skinned people are working in the lot.


Ahmed al-Sulati, deputy chairman of Basra`s provincial council, said that neither racism nor color consciousness exists among Iraqis, and that the lives of African Iraqis are no more difficult than anyone else`s. “There is no such thing in Iraq as black and white,” he said, echoing what most people here say publicly.


In a run-down neighborhood a short distance from the car wash, Majid Hamid and thousands of other African Iraqis live side by side with Arabs in mud-brick houses in various stages of collapse. His brother, Rafid, 19, also works at the car wash but has a second job in a small satellite television repair shop where he works with his stepfather.


Their sister, Amani, 16, has been pulled out of school because the family can no longer afford the daily bus fare. “I miss school,” she said. “Sometimes I cry.”


Rafid Hamid said, “Life here is very bad.”


Things could become worse. The family of nine has not been able to pay the landlord for the past two months.


“We either pay the rent or we eat,” said Raja Abdul al-Samad, their mother.


Mrs. Samad said life in Iraq was far more difficult if one had dark skin. She said that over the years she had come to realize that she could maintain friendships only with those people who shared her skin color.


“It all starts O.K., but then they slip and say something by mistake,” she said. “Or, when they are with their relatives, they avoid us. I don`t like being with people who look down on us.”


© 2009 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.


Obama’s rise inspires African Iraqis in Politics
By Aamer Madhani
USA TODAY
January 19, 2009



Iraqi members of the “Movement of Free Iraqis”, a political party formed by the black descendants of African slaves, listen to their secretary Jalal Dhiab, delivering a speech during a gathering in the southern Iraqi oil city of Basra to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first black US president on January 20, 2009. “The blacks in Iraq are so happy they are overflowing with joy and tears as they watch this great victory of President Obama for freedom and democracy,” Dhiab said. Landowners in southern Iraq had brought Iraq`s black population from eastern Africa, from where Obama`s family originates, to toil on their labour-intensive estates some.


ZUBAYR, Iraq — In this dusty town with a large population of Iraqis of African decent, the rise of President-elect Barack Obama spurred a simple question: If he can, why can`t we?


For many years, the black residents of Zubayr say, they have lived a second-class existence in Basra province, an area where Africans were first brought as slaves about 1,500 years ago. They hold no political office, often live in crippling poverty and are still sometimes referred to as “slaves” by other Iraqis.


Yet, taking inspiration from Obama`s campaign, a slate of black Iraqis who call themselves the Free Iraqi Movement is making a long-shot run in the elections for provincial legislatures Jan. 31.


“We heard Obama`s message of change,” said Jalal Chijeel, secretary of the political party. “Iraq needs change in how they see their own black-skinned people. We need our brothers to accept us.”


The eight black candidates are competing with 1,800 others for 35 legislative seats in the Shiite-dominated, oil-rich province.


“Even if we don`t win, this is a very important first step to allow us to take our place as leaders in Iraq,” said Sala al-Qais, 45, a black candidate who acknowledges his chances are slim.


Chijeel said he first learned of Obama after the Democratic presidential candidate`s upset victory in the Iowa caucuses a year ago. By July, Chijeel and his colleagues were inspired enough to announce their intention to run for office.


He said other Iraqis initially “laughed at us for thinking we should be leaders.”


There are no reliable data on how many Iraqis are of African descent. Chijeel said they may account for as few as 300,000 of Iraq`s 28 million people.


The history of discrimination is clearly visible: Many black Iraqis in Zubayr live in stone and mud huts that are little changed since they were built three centuries ago.


Chijeel and others here complain that black Iraqis are denied good jobs, which means many can`t afford to pay for uniforms or books so their children can go to school.


Even the relatively affluent face problems. Khalid Majid, 39, said he took his 6-year-old daughter out of school because she suffered constant harassment from classmates who called her abd, the Arabic word for slave, and other derogatory names.


“It is my wish that she will read and write, but I cannot let her have these … problems,” Majid said.


On Tuesday, the Free Iraqi Movement will host some of the 2,500 black Iraqis who live in the neighborhood to watch Obama`s inauguration speech.


They`ll have a feast where candidates will mingle with potential voters, and they plan to perform a traditional dance they inherited from their East African ancestors.


Shihab Musat, 57, will be among those celebrating Obama`s inauguration and voting for the black candidates.


Musat said he remains skeptical that Iraq is ready to accept blacks as equals.


“I don`t know this Obama well, but I hope he will push Iraq`s leaders to treat the black people with respect,” Musat said as he stood outside a one-room house he shares with 14 family members. “My life has not been very different than my father`s. I do not expect my sons` lives to be much better.”


Contributing: Khalid D. Ali


A Legacy Hidden in Plain Sight; Iraqis of African Descent Are a Largely Overlooked Link to Slavery
Theola Labbe
Washington Post
January 11, 2004



African-Iraqi men sing after their group “Free Iraqi Movement” was approved as a political party to run in the coming local elections in Basra, 420 km (260 miles) southeast of Baghdad December 6, 2008. Inspired by Barack Obama`s election in the United States, some black Iraqis plan to run in a forthcoming election, to end what they call centuries of discrimination because of their slave ancestry. Picture taken December 6, 2008.


Besides working on plantations, Abdullah said, some African slaves were soldiers, concubines or eunuchs. Arabs also enslaved Turks and other ethnic groups as high-ranking army officers and domestics.


The word was whispered and hurled at Thawra Youssef in school when she was 5 years old. Even back then, she sensed it was an insult.


Abd. Slave.


“The way they said it, smiling and shouting, I knew they used it to make fun of me,” said Youssef, recounting the childhood story from her living room couch.


“I used to get upset and ask, `Why do you call me abd? I don`t serve you,` “ Youssef said.


Unlike most Iraqis, whose faces come in shades from olive to a pale winter white, Youssef has skin the color of dark chocolate. She has African features and short, tightly curled hair that she straightens and wears in a soft bouffant. Growing up in Basra, the port city 260 miles southeast of Baghdad, she lived with her aunt while her mother worked as a cook and maid in the homes of one of the city`s wealthiest light-skinned families.


In the United States, Youssef`s dark skin would classify her as black or African American. In Iraq, where distinctions are based on family and tribe rather than race, she is simply an Iraqi.


The number of dark-skinned people like Youssef in Iraq today is unknown. Their origins, however, are better understood, if little-discussed: They are the legacy of slavery throughout the Middle East.


Historians say the slave trade began in the 9th century and lasted a millennium. Arab traders brought Africans across the Indian Ocean from present-day Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia and elsewhere in East Africa to Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Turkey and other parts of the Middle East.


“We were slaves. That`s how we came here,” Youssef said. “Our whole family used to talk about how our roots are from Africa.”


Though centuries have passed since the first Africans, called Zanj, arrived in Iraq, some African traditions still persist here. Youssef, 43, a doctoral candidate in theater and acting at Baghdad University`s College of Fine Arts, is writing her dissertation about healing ceremonies that are conducted exclusively by a community of dark-skinned Iraqis in Basra. Youssef said she considers the ceremonies -- which involve elaborate costumes, dancing, and words sung in Swahili and Arabic -- to be dramatic performances.


“I don`t complain about being called an abd, but I think that`s what provoked me to write this, perhaps some kind of complex,” said Youssef, who began researching and writing about the practices of Afro-Iraqis in 1997, when she was studying for a master`s degree. “Something inside me that wanted to tell others that the abd they mock is better than them.”


A Long History


In the 9th century, as today, Basra was a major trading city on the Shatt al Arab waterway, which empties into the Persian Gulf. With date plantations in need of laborers, Arab leaders turned to East Africa -- Mombasa on the Kenyan coast, Sudan, Tanzania and Malawi, and Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania that gave the Zanj their name.


“By the 9th century, when Baghdad was the capital of the Islamic world, we do have evidence of a large importation of African slaves -- how large is anyone`s guess,” said Thabit Abdullah, a history professor at York University in Toronto.


Besides working on plantations, Abdullah said, some African slaves were soldiers, concubines or eunuchs. Arabs also enslaved Turks and other ethnic groups as high-ranking army officers and domestics.


Unlike in the United States, slaves in the Middle East could own land, and their children could not be born into slavery. In addition, conversion to Islam could preclude further servitude because, according to Islamic law, Muslims could not enslave other Muslims.


Even though Islam teaches that all people are equal before God, Abdullah said that medieval Arab slave owners made distinctions based on skin color. White slaves, known as mamluks, which means “owned,” were more expensive than black slaves, or abds.


To protest their treatment, Zanj slaves working in the fields around Basra staged a revolt against Baghdad`s rulers that lasted 15 years and created a rival capital called Moktara, believed to have been located in the marshlands of southern Iraq. By 883 the Baghdad army had finally put down the revolt. “This slave rebellion is so important to the history of slavery in Iraq because after that, no one wanted to take a risk by trying plantation-style slavery again,” Abdullah said. Slavery continued until the 19th century, but dark-skinned Iraqis never again organized as a group to make political demands.


In a country that revolves around religion rather than race, the term “abd” may be used by light-skinned Iraqis in a matter-of-fact way to describe someone`s dark complexion. Dark-skinned Iraqis say the word may or may not be considered an insult, depending on how it is used and the intent of the speaker.


“We use the word abd in the black community,” said Salah Jaleel, 50, one of Youssef`s cousins. “Sometimes I call my friend `abd.` Of course he knows that I don`t insult him, because I`m black also, so it`s a joke. We accept it between us, but it is a real insult if it is said by a white man.”


In many ways, the low visibility of dark-skinned Iraqis has been a blessing. During his 35 years in power, Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party government killed and tortured thousands of people based on ethnic and religious affiliations. Ethnic Kurds in the northern reaches of the country, and Shiite Muslims -- particularly the so-called Marsh Arabs -- living in the south all suffered. The dark-skinned Iraqis were spared Hussein`s wrath.


`Proud of This Color`


Awatif Sabty, 47, is ambivalent on the subject of skin color. A secretary at Basra Agricultural College, she is more apt to talk about Hussein`s wrongdoing than about her own caramel-colored skin or her marriage to a lighter-skinned man, Salah Mousa, 47.


Her mother was disappointed in her choice. Her husband`s mother objected to the union. Sabty said Mousa`s family even tried to intimidate her with threatening phone calls. Now she shakes her head and dismisses it all as long-ago history.


“Objections and barriers exist, but in the end it`s all solved,” she said in her soft voice, smiling.


Her middle-class home in Basra`s Abbasiya district has painted concrete walls and two televisions and is immaculate. Sitting on a couch draped in white protective cloth, Sabty explained that intermarriages like hers are common in Iraq: “We don`t have a problem with color, and we don`t deal with someone based on color.”


For instance, she said, her older sister married a light-skinned Iraqi and has a daughter with blond hair. Her brother married a dark-skinned woman and their child is dark-skinned. Sabty`s two young children have olive complexions and straight, shiny hair, showing no trace of Sabty`s caramel coloring.


Suddenly she paused. “In the coming generations we will have fewer dark-skinned children, and this pains us,” she said. “We are proud of this color because people of this color are a minority in Iraq. Maybe DNA will bring us the color again.”


Hashim Faihan Jimaa, 78, is more concerned with survival than color. He has no income and lives with his ailing wife, Dawla Shamayan, 68, who recently had gall bladder surgery.


Jimaa says he believes in the African-inspired healing ceremonies. He used to participate many years ago when they were more frequent; the number of ceremonies has decreased since the start of the U.S. occupation because of fear of performing outside.


“These came from Africa and they are very important to us, the abds,” he said. Just as he used the Arabic word for slave to refer to himself, Jimaa sometimes referred to light-skinned Iraqis using the term for a free person.


His wife, sitting across from him with about a dozen of their children and grandchildren, gingerly suggested that perhaps his grandfather or another relative had been slaves from Africa.


Jimaa glanced down at the back of his dark-brown hand. “You can`t depend on someone`s color, because maybe a black man married a free woman and the children will come out lighter than me,” he said. To seal his argument, he pointed to his caramel-colored daughter and then his granddaughter, who was darker than her mother.


Jimaa`s wife and others continued to probe Jimaa`s answers. He grew exasperated. “I have nothing to do with Africa, I don`t know where it is or even what it is,” Jimaa said. “But I know that my roots are from Africa because I am dark-skinned.”


Few local government leaders in Basra, some of whom were selected by the U.S.-led occupation authority, are dark-skinned. In Hakaka -- a poor neighborhood of 600 families, about 100 of them dark-skinned -- town council members elected last August vowed to make changes. All of the eight council members are light-skinned.


“People applied to be members, and no one black applied,” said council President Abdullah Mohammed Hasan, 54, in the narrow sandwich and snack shop that serves as the council`s headquarters. Hasan has two wives, one of them dark-skinned.


“They have good manners and are very easy to deal with,” Hasan said of dark-skinned Iraqis. “It would be better if they were members.”


Youssef, the doctoral candidate, grew up in Hakaka. When she was a child her family did not have much money, but the modest neighborhood was clean. Now it lacks a septic system and reeks of waste because there is no garbage pickup.


Youssef goes back at least once a month to see her 74-year-old father, who sometimes needs her help because of his failing eyesight. She also visits with her brother, Sabeeh Youssef, and his family.


Sabeeh Youssef, 47, dropped out of school early to help support the family. He works fixing broken lighters since losing his job at an oil company in 1989. But he is a self-taught carpenter, capable of carving elaborate antique cars and miniature ships. He proudly showed the objects lining the walls of his modest home, which lacks running water.


He would love to have his own shop, “but I don`t have the materials and I don`t have the money to buy them,” he said, as his daughter Duaa Sabeeh, 5, grew restless in his lap.


“I`m very happy and proud of my sister,” he added. “She did the things that I couldn`t do, or that my father couldn`t do. She did it.”


A Link to Africa


Each time Thawra Youssef returns to Hakaka, well-dressed in pressed clothes and a loosely draped black head scarf, she looks like a queen visiting for a day among the poor families in house clothes, who hover at their doorways and call out to Youssef by name.


“I don`t feel like a stranger here,” she said one day, stepping carefully to avoid the sewage as eager children followed her. “I have something deep inside of me that is connected to the local Basra ceremonies. I can`t abandon them.”


The practices, she said, came from “the motherland where we came from: Africa.”


In her dissertation, Youssef mentioned seven open fields in and around Basra where ceremonies take place. The field in the Hakaka section is a dusty, hard-packed courtyard with houses clustered around it. Drums, tambourines and other instruments are stored in a closet. Youssef said that only a local leader named Najim had a key. Youssef had to seek his permission to write about the ceremonies.


Najim declined to talk about them.


In her dissertation Youssef describes a song called “Dawa Dawa.” The title and words are a mix of Arabic and Swahili. The song, which is about curing people, is used in what Youssef calls the shtanga ceremony, for physical health. Another ceremony, nouba, takes its name from the Nubian region in the Sudan. There are also ceremonies for the sick, to remember the dead and for happy occasions such as weddings.


“The ceremonies are our strongest evidence of our African identity,” she said.


Youssef said she was raised to be a proud Iraqi and Muslim, but that her mother also stressed the family`s roots in Kenya. Her grandfather and his relatives came from Africa through slavery, her mother said.


“I knew that the word abd was used to refer to black people, and I know that it was something embarrassing that my mother was working in a white person`s house,” Youssef said. “I remember that if their son hit me, I couldn`t even push him. So that hurt me, that stuck in my mind.”


When she was 9, her mother sent her to stay with an aunt, Badriya Ubaid. She lived in a more upscale neighborhood and was the lead singer in the nationally acclaimed band Om Ali.


“My aunt, she was the first one pushing me to study,” Youssef said. “She said, why do we let them say that black people can only do dance and music? Why don`t we show them that they can be an important part of the community, that they can study? She wanted me to answer this question.”


In college and graduate school, as she studied theater and dance, Youssef also sang with Om Ali. If someone said that the dark-skinned Iraqis were only good for entertainment, Youssef said, her aunt was quick to point out that her niece was in graduate school studying for an advanced degree. When Ubaid died, Youssef sang regularly in the band but quit in 1999 to pursue her doctorate full time.


Youssef also danced with a local arts troupe. She found the moves reminiscent of the dances in the ceremonies. She wrote her master`s research on body movement, and when it was time to pick a topic in 2000 for her dissertation, she decided to look at her community`s healing ceremonies.


“It`s not only going to give ideas about dark-skinned people, it will give an idea about our inherited ceremonies, which we have to protect,” said Youssef. She wants to teach and to publish her work in a book.


“The most important thing is that I started it,” said Youssef. “People will come after me, God willing.”


Special correspondent Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.


© Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved


Black Iraqis In Basra Face Racism
By Corey Flintoff
NPR
December 3, 2008



Jalal Diyaab is the leader of the Free Iraqi Movement, which is seeking to have Iraq`s roughly 2 million black people recognized as a minority whose rights should be protected.


The election of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency was celebrated with special fervor by Iraqis of African descent in the southern port city of Basra.


Although they have lived in Iraq for more than 1,000 years, the black Basrawis say they are still discriminated against because of the color of their skin, and they see Obama as a role model. Long relegated to menial jobs or work as musicians and dancers, some of them have recently formed a group to advance their civil rights.


Black people in Basra are most visible at joyous events. When there`s a big wedding, Basrawis call in drummers from the district of Zubair. The Basrawi bride and groom are welcomed in traditional fashion by a row of musicians in Arab dress, long dishdasha gowns and red-checkered head scarves. The drummers sway in unison to the rhythms they slap out on broad, tambourinelike drums — and drive up excitement as the newlyweds cross the threshold of a Basra hotel.


The drummers are black men, descendants of the people who came here from East Africa as sailors or slaves over the course of centuries. And while they are welcome fixtures at joyous events all over the city, they say they are not as welcome in Basra`s political, commercial or educational life.


Seen As Slaves


“People here see us as slaves,” says Jalal Diyaab, a 43-year-old civil rights activist. “They even call us abd, which means slave.”


Diyaab is the general secretary of the Free Iraqi movement. He sits with more than a dozen other men in a narrow, high-ceilinged room in a mud-brick building in Zubair, talking about a history of slavery and oppression that he says dates back to at least the ninth century.


“Black people worked on the plantations around Basra, doing the hard labor, until there was a slave uprising in the mid-800s,” says Diyaab. Black people ruled Basra for about 15 years, until the caliph sent troops. Many of the black rebels were massacred, and others were sold to the Arab tribes.


Slavery was abolished here in the 19th century, but Diyaab says black people in modern-day Iraq still face discrimination.


“[Arabs] here still look at us as being incapable of making decisions or even governing our lives. People here are 95 percent illiterate. They have terrible living conditions and very few jobs,” he says.


Diyaab takes visitors across the street to a warren of mud-brick courtyards where dozens of people are packed into tiny rooms without running water or sewage. The narrow passageways reek of excrement. Many people sleep in the open yards when the weather is good, because there isn`t enough space in the rooms.


“These houses are like caves. This house? This is it,” says Diyaab, pointing at a single narrow room and the courtyard outside. He says 15 people, the family of a man called Abu Haidar, live here.


Lightning streaks the night sky as a thunderstorm rolls in from the Persian Gulf. Rain begins to speckle the hard-packed ground. The men gathered around say a heavy rain will flood these rooms ankle-deep with muck and sewage.


Diyaab says there are more than 2 million black people in Iraq. He says they want recognition as a minority, like the Christians, whose rights should be protected. He says his group`s demands have been ignored by the Iraqi government, but they have found an ally in a Sunni political party — the National Dialogue Front.


Awath al-Abdan is the head of that party in Basra, and he says he thinks black Iraqis have a strong case for getting their minority status recognized.


“We expect this cause to become a political reality soon because it just started to get publicity. We are working hard to get these people`s message heard,” he says.


Preserving Their African Roots


For now, the message that most people in Basra hear from the black community is the joy its musicians help bring to weddings. But there`s an entirely different feeling when they play for themselves.


The community has preserved many traditions from its African roots, including healing ceremonies that they say call up spirits from their ancient homeland.


On a bright Saturday in Zubair, young men hang bright flags and prepare an altar for a ceremony they say will summon a spirit from Africa. They work under the impatient direction of Baba Sa`eed al-Basri, a prominent local musician. He is the hereditary leader of this religious sect, which combines elements of Islam with African spirit traditions.


The flags, Baba Sa`eed says, represent the African countries associated with various spirits. At the center of the altar is a model of an Arab sailing dhow, the kind of ship that brought black people to this city.


“These rituals,” he says, “are inherited self-expressions that were brought to us from Africa, through the ships that traded in this port.”


The Baba cleanses the courtyard, by sprinkling it with water. He scents the hands of visitors with a cologne stick and offers tiny cups of bitter coffee. Then he takes his place by the altar, among the candles and incense burners, and tells the drummers to begin.


The ceremony begins with an Islamic invocation, as the drummers chant “there is no God, but God,” but soon the rhythm changes. The song says another being is announcing his presence, “a stranger is calling, the sea is calling.”


Baba Sa`eed, who has been dancing with his arms and his upper body as he sits by the altar, goes rigid and begins speaking in what he later says was an African dialect, punctuated by phrases in broken Arabic. His voice goes into a weird upper register. The “dialect” has an improvised sound to it, and even the drummers don`t seem especially impressed by his spirit possession. He says this place has been blessed, before snapping out of it, with a dazed expression.


The ceremony ends with a song the Baba says will send the spirits back to their homes — retracing the journey that his ancestors made, back through the Gulf to Yemen and then on to the coast of East Africa. The candles and the incense are extinguished. The flags are taken down and the model ship is put away. The black musicians of Zubair pack up their drums and get ready to play another round of weddings.



Hundreds of people live behind the crumbling facades of mud-brick buildings in Zubair




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