Zena Kamash, Heritage and Healing in Syria and Iraq (Manchester University Press, 2024).
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Zena Kamash (ZK): A big question! One of the main motivations was as a process of healing for myself. I am British Iraqi and have lived alongside PTSD for many years. Conflict in Iraq has been a long-term source of sadness and trauma for me, as is true for many Iraqis. In recent years, I experienced a subtle layering of that trauma from the treatment of heritage in the region, both during and after conflict. In particular, I have found the competing claims to the region’s heritage to be challenging, especially as they so frequently seem to, at best, sideline and, at worst, ignore those who most matter: the everyday people of Syria and Iraq.
J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?
ZK: In the book, I explore what to do with heritage that has been damaged in conflict. I chart a path through the colonial histories and traumatic wars of Syria and Iraq (Chapters 1 and 2) to examine the projects and responses currently on offer and assess their flaws and limitations, including issues of digital colonialism, technological solutionism, geopolitical manoeuvring, media bias, and community exclusion (Chapters 3 to 5). In the second half of the book, I switch to think about how we might do better. Drawing on current research into the psychology and neuroscience of trauma and trauma recovery (Chapter 6) and taking inspiration from artists and creative thinkers who challenge the status quo (Chapter 7), the book envisages gentler, creative, and ethically driven ways to respond to heritage damaged in conflict—ways that recenter the people and the hopes, dreams, and needs at the heart of these debates (Chapter 8).
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
ZK: In Heritage and Healing in Syria and Iraq, I pick up numerous strands of my work from the past decade, particularly around ethics, promoting decolonial and anti-colonial practices, thinking about why we engage in archaeology and heritage, and trying to tease out how Western archaeology and archaeologists from the nineteenth century onwards have had impacts on what we see happening today. I have also worked a lot with artists and creative practitioners as a way to deepen engagements with heritage and archaeology, especially with communities who may feel significantly disenfranchised from their heritage. I think those influences come through very strongly in the second half of the book. As the themes in the book run deep into my soul, it felt difficult to wrestle with at first; for example, there was quite a long gap in 2020-21 where I could not write it at all. I decided that the only way to handle that was to let my personal reflections, feelings, and emotions be front and center. I think this makes it slightly unusual for an academic book as there are parts that definitely lean more towards creative non-fiction.
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
ZK: I have written the book with a wide readership in mind. I want it to be an opening of a dialogue, rather than a final say in how things should be done. I certainly do not expect everyone who reads this book to agree with all of my thinking! Each chapter ends with a set of questions that invite readers to reflect on what they have read and how it might relate to their own circumstances, whether they are from the region or somewhere entirely different. I hope readers will find these reflective sections enriching in thinking through some of the thorny issues the book tackles, both on their own and, potentially, in groups.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
ZK: I am actually about to embark on a bit of a side-step in my career, so over the next few months I will be writing a psychological crime fiction novel. My ideas are still taking shape, but the protagonist will be of mixed Middle Eastern and British heritage, like me, and an expert in heritage crime.
J: What has prompted this shift and how do you think it will link to your work so far?
ZK: I really enjoyed the freedom of writing the creative non-fiction parts of Heritage and Healing, so I would like to explore how far I can take that in a different genre. I am also so passionate about wanting to speak to and with the widest possible audience and think that fiction might allow me to reach people who would not normally pick up an academic book. Academic books are also often very expensive (like this one…), which does not fit easily with my values of accessibility and inclusivity, so writing commercial fiction would, at least partly, address this. Of course, commercial fiction has to be fun and entertaining, so the novel will be very different in style and tone from how I have written until now, but I think it will still be possible to weave in the big themes of identity, belonging, inclusion, social justice, and equality that have preoccupied me as an academic. In this, I am inspired by crime writers of color like Kellye Garrett and Vaseem Khan, who have really played with the tropes of the genre to bring in their particular lenses on the world. As a child, reading Agatha Christie books like Murder in Mesopotamia was one of my first ways of exploring who I was and where I came from, albeit through what I now know to be a rather colonialist perspective. This is why I would love to write a British Middle Eastern character, who might resonate with and inspire other people of mixed heritage. I have no idea how this experiment might turn out, but I am excited to see where it might lead!
Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 7: Embracing Ghosts: artistic reflections on conflict and cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq, pp. 214-7)
I do not include my textile art here because I believe it has much to add to our aesthetic world, but rather because it is this book in textile form. The making of the piece I reflect on here was part of the therapeutic process [of writing this book]. In creating this piece, I was able to process some of the emotion I feel around heritage reconstruction, at times viscerally, as we will see, and to bring into being some of my hopes for the future of Iraq, its people and heritage […]. The focus in my textile art more broadly is on craftivism and using creativity to reclaim my heritage, stitching links between my family, my feelings and Iraqi cultural heritage.
Hatra and Mosul: a triptych (2021) by Zena Kamash. Stumpwork (raised) embroidery triptych with elements of goldwork and blackwork. Photo: Kamash.
Hatra and Mosul: a triptych (2021) represents three phases of heritage in Iraq: before Da’esh (archway 1); under Da’esh (archway 2); and after Da’esh (archway 3). Each archway element bleeds into the next as a reminder that each phase is inextricably linked to what came before and what will come after. The piece is inspired by heritage objects and architecture from a range of phases and places in the country, which it deliberately brings together in unconventional ways. The three heads are based on a bust portrait of the god Shamash from the city of Hatra. Hatra is well known for its religious buildings and sculpture and flourished during the Parthian period in the first and second centuries ce (broadly equivalent to the Roman period). As this is my period of archaeological specialism, I wanted to include it here. I also liked the rhyme with my own surname, which felt like a fun echo to play with. The architectural frame is inspired by arches found in the iwan (a rectangular hall walled on three sides and usually vaulted) in Ottoman-period houses in Mosul, specifically Beit al-Tutunji. This house was used as an ammunition factory by Da’esh during its occupation of the city and suffered a high level of damage. I also discovered recently that the house has a link to my family, so its inclusion felt especially poignant and significant as it crosses and joins my professional and personal relationships with the city and its heritage. Another aspect for which the city of Mosul is famous is the intricate carving of the local alabaster, also known as Mosul marble. This carving takes the form of Islamic geometric and biomorphic patterns, which are reflected here in the six-pointed star geometry rendered in blackwork embroidery on the arch piers. A nod to the biomorphic designs is also made in the gold- thread repairs on the right-hand arch.
Finally, I have also included some natural heritage in the form of bayboon flowers decorating the ‘after Da’esh’ phase. When I was running my ‘Rematerialising Mosul Museum’ project in 2018, I asked Moslawi musician Ameen Mokdad, also known as ‘the violinist of Mosul’, what heritage he would choose; he answered bayboon flowers […, so here] I have introduced them in embroidered form. This also brings in one of Mosul’s monikers: the green city. The result of combining all these elements is, of course, an archaeological mishmash: a fantasy that would never exist in the real world. We have oversized geometry on an archway that itself is not in proportion with the sculpture with chronologically incongruent references to Hatrene, Ottoman and natural heritage. But where is the rule that my creative reappearance […] has to be realistic?
[…]
The first archway represents time before Da’esh. Iraq had been a country in conflict and under the yoke of repression for several decades before Da’esh entered the picture. Heritage in the country may not have been under the direct threat of deliberate destruction, but it had still been neglected, looted and abused in other ways by those in power. The muted colours and tones in archway 1 reflect this period of neglect: receding into the background, a mere whisper of what might be possible. When I completed the blackwork embroidery on the arch piers for this section, it felt too perfect, too pristine. There was no sense of age and time to the piece, which is a common problem for many heritage reconstructions. Using a stitch unpicker, I pulled at some of the threads, dislocating them and roughening the surface. I used the same tool to fray the aida fabric of the archway and the backing fabric inside the archway. Distressing the surface in this way is, of course, not the same as something weathering and decaying over time, but it lent some of this effect.
Rip. Stab. Slice. Tear apart. These are all actions I took on the second archway. I knew from the outset of designing this piece that it would, and had to, involve destroying the central panel. I delayed doing it, but I knew I had to do it. It was a painful and sickening act. My actions were jerky. The noise of tearing and ripping and popping was wrong for embroidery. It happened so fast. Several hours of stitching shredded in less than five minutes. Like exploding a monument. Everything about it felt wrong and out of place. My chest hurt; my heart ached. The piece became increasingly unstable, flopping around, hard to handle and control. […] I did not enjoy the process even though I knew it was important that I feel that pain, both searing and deadening, of destruction: disgusted that my own hands could engage in these acts, but knowing they also held the possibility of creative beauty. These are choices we make.
The response on Instagram was telling. ‘4 November 2021: This evening I destroyed my own work. It was a painful and sickening thing to do’ (@zenakamash). Normally when I post some of my textile art, even if rather dull, I will instantly get ‘likes’. This time silence for several hours, except a worried text from my sister: ‘you ok hun?’ Eventually, I edited my post to add: ‘this is an integral part of the final piece’. With this reassurance, people felt they could then ‘like’ what appeared at first to be a senseless act of brutality against my own work. Why such discomfort? People were ready to show outpourings of grief when they saw reports of Da’esh destruction. Was it because I am not a nameless other, but instead someone they know, who writes in English? Is it because I should treasure my own art? Should I only be making beautiful things? Filling them with joy, not pain?
The black and grey colours in the second archway represent burning and destruction as well as the predominant colour of Da’esh imagery and propaganda. The blackwork geometry on the piers on either side of the archway bleeds and blends into the colours of the periods before and after to show that these phases exist in a continuum. The conditions of the pre-Da’esh phase laid the foundations for what happened under their brutal occupation, which in itself will continue to be felt for a long time into the future. I knew from the outset that I would not be able to bring myself to damage the face of Shamash, so instead the head is veiled behind a needlelace net, again in a grey- and-black colourway. I wanted the net to draw out a sense of being trapped and imprisoned under Da’esh, hiding in fear, hoping to go unnoticed. But the net can also be moved, manipulated and lifted up; the head has a route to escape.
The final part of the triptych skips ahead in time to an unspecified point in the future where healing has started. The colours here are bright – golds, greens and blues – colours of life and vigour. The gold is used predominantly for repairs in an echoing of the Japanese concept of kintsugi: that beauty can exist in broken objects. The scars of the past are not hidden, but accepted into the life that now exists in this archway. They are part of the archway’s biography and cannot be ignored. When stitching these elements, I felt strongly that these repairs had to be done by me. There was a sense that I would feel cheated if they were done by someone else. I had to be involved. I had to feel that I had the capacity to find hope in the pain for myself. The god Shamash also shines again, in a way that has been lost for many years, gleaming with the light of hope. Around the arch, bayboon flowers grow, lending their curative and restorative properties. They represent my hope for the flourishing of Iraq’s natural and intangible heritages alongside its cultural heritage: a world in better balance. I want this archway to be a shining, life-filled beacon of hope and change.