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Leila Kubba: We're going to start with a slide presentation of Iraqi art, some historical images of Iraq and everyday images of Iraq.

There is a deepening chasm that's occurring in the world today, that's dividing us into camps – the so-called clash of civilizations. Some experts lead us to believe that this clash between Islam and the West is inevitable and that it's always existed. As an Iraqi, as an American, as a woman, as a Muslim, and I'm sitting on the fault lines of these ethnic, religious, cultural divides, has driven me to examine more deeply these labels that divide us. I'm here to talk about the things that bind us together, and hopefully to send the message that this clash is not inevitable. Whether we're Americans, Arabs, Muslims, Christians or Jews, our histories have a remarkable degree of shared ideas, philosophies, technologies, arts and literature.

In Iraq, when the clay tablets were first excavated around 1800 and translated in the middle of the 1900s, they opened up a whole new way of looking at history. Many of the stories that we know from the Old Testament can be traced as far back as 2,500 BC. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which has in it the great flood story, which was the precursor of Noah's Ark; the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, the story of Creation; the precursor of the story of Moses, which was the story of Sargon, who was a very similar story to Moses; and the oldest recorded love story in the world, of Inanna and Dumuzi.

In the wake of extremists who are feeding off our differences and offering us pure and exclusivist visions of our history, it's enlightening for all of us to appreciate the depth of the commonalities that we all have. We're going to see now a short film about Iraq, just views of Iraq.

Film Narration

Mesopotamia. To the ancient Greeks, this word meant "land between two rivers." Today, Mesopotamia is the region we know as Iraq. From this corner of the world, this valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, springs the dawn of civilization. The richness of this ancient land and its people is evident in the countless contributions made to modern society. From this region, known as the Fertile Crescent, developed the earliest codes of law, the Code of Hammurabi. Here too was the birthplace of higher education, with the founding in 1227 AD of the Mustansariya, the first and oldest university. According to Biblical interpretation, Mesopotamia begat Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.

The inventiveness and influence of the ancient civilizations that populated this land can be seen in almost every cultural, intellectual and scientific pursuit, in such diverse areas as geometry and medicine, astronomy and calligraphy, linguistics and theology.

Over 10,000 archaeological sites can be found in Iraq today. These ruins tell the story of such great and golden empires as ancient Babylon, home of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The city of Ur, which produced the three legendary Sumerian dynasties that moved man from his purely agricultural roots to a highly developed complex form of civilization. Ancient Samarra, briefly the site of the second Abbasid capital. And of course, ancient Baghdad, the site of the epic folklore tale of Scheherazade and the Arabian Nights.

South of Baghdad today still stands the Arch of Ctesiphon, or Taq Kisra, built in the second century BC. This structure is the largest single-span, brick-built arch in the world, and stands as a testimonial to the architectural sophistication of the people of Mesopotamia.

Further south, one finds the historically rich cities of Najaf and Kerbala, site of two of the holiest shrines in Islam. The gate of the Imam Hussein Mosque in Kerbala is part of a golden mosque with a magnificent dome and two dazzling minarets. The shrine of the Imam Ali in Najaf is equally resplendent in its design and ornamentation.

The spirit of Iraq and its years of civilization continues to thrive. Today, it is alive in the work of such Iraqi artists as Khalid Al-Jader, Naziha Salim, Faeq Hassan and Ismial Al Sheikhly.

In ancient times, the land of Mesopotamia passed through the hands of many diverse cultures, from the Sumerians, Akkadians and Babylonians to the Kassites, Assyrians, Chaldeans and finally the Arabs. Today, it continues to flourish from the diversity of such rich cultures as the Kurds and Turkomans in the north, to the peoples of the marshlands in the south.

The land between two rivers today stretches across decades of history, and its influence can be felt around the world. Its glorious past is alive in the present and will be cherished and shared with future generations for decades to come.

Leila Kubba: Desert Storm, 1991. The first Gulf War drove me to my canvas, as I tried to make sense of all the suffering and horror of that war. Iraq had become the enemy of the world. Everyone around me suddenly became an expert on Iraq. Before that, nobody knew where to even place Iraq on a map. This was the new Iraq that I had to get used to. All I could see then were the extremely negative headlines in the newspapers. The Iraq that I loved was no longer mine. It belonged to Saddam Hussein.

At that time, there was an exhibition at the Sackler Gallery on ancient Mesopotamia. It triggered hidden memories, and I had to buy all the accompanying books that they had accompanying this exhibition. They were books about Sumerian history and mythology. While reading these books, I went back to my childhood years, the love I had for the people and my land. I went back much further, to our ancient history, to Mesopotamia, to Sumeria. This, then, was the source that I drew from to paint images and impressions of that mythology, the stone tablets that unfolded for us the stories of Gilgamesh and his quest for eternal life; of Inanna, queen of heaven and earth; the symbolic creation of life through her planting of the Huluppu Tree – that's in their language, the Sumeria – and then her descent to the underworld and confrontation with her beloved Dumuzi.

As I mentioned earlier, excavations in Iraq started in the mid-1800s. Toward the end of the century, when they excavated the south of Iraq, that was the last part they had excavated, and they began to discover the existence of the Sumerians. The Sumerians developed highly sophisticated religious and spiritual concepts that have influenced the modern world.

Now you're going to be seeing images, a slide show of Iraq ancient and Iraq present, interspersed with some of my paintings of Iraq. At the end there will be also more views of Iraqi painters and artists. You'll see that a lot of them, they probably had to spend a lot of their time painting portraits of Saddam Hussein, but they also had time to paint their own work. Iraqi artists are known throughout the Arab world to be one of the foremost and most adventurous painters. While this goes, I'll be reading about some of the Sumerian mythology.

The Garden of Eden. The Biblical paradise story, which actually originated with the Sumerians, is about Dilmun. Dilmun, they think, is present-day Bahrain, the paradise land. Somewhere east of Sumer is a land that is pure, clean and light, but lacks fresh water. So the great Sumerian god Enki orders the sun god to fill Dilmun with fresh water, brought up from the earth. Dilmun is turned into a divine garden. This is similar to the Biblical version of paradise, but this was 2,000 years earlier.

In this paradise of the gods, eight plants are made to sprout by Ninhursag, the great mother goddess of the Sumerians. The great water god probably was tempted to taste them, these plants, and he became sick after eating the forbidden eight plants. Eight of his organs became sick. This angered the goddess Ninhursag and she pronounced the curse of death on him. Eventually, Enki is brought back to life and health. Enki's eating of the plants and the curse uttered against him recall the eating of the tree of knowledge by Adam and Eve.

The interesting thing in Adam and Eve is, why was the rib so important? The rib in Sumerian mythology is considered an organ, and that was one of his sick organs. In Sumerian, the word for rib is "ti" and the goddess who undertook the healing of Enki's rib was called Nin-ti. She was known as the "lady of the rib." But later they called her "the lady who makes life," because she healed him and brought him to life. Therefore we can see how in the Sumerian proto-myth, the "lady of the rib" did not originate from the rib of Adam, but was actually the healer of the rib. So I thought that was very interesting.

Then, of course, there's the famous Epic of Gilgamesh and his quest for eternal life. They had also discovered these twelve tablets on the story of Gilgamesh, that was found at the end of the 18th century, beginning of 19th century, in the north of Iraq, near Nineveh. Gilgamesh was a king who ruled the city of Uruk, in southern Iraq today. The Epic of Gilgamesh has become popular ever since the discovery of the tablets about a hundred years ago, because of the account of the great floods as given in the epic. It had been assumed until then that the story of the flood as given in the Old Testament is the first account of this immense happening. In fact, the famous flood story occupies minor parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is described in one of the twelve tablets. The main narrative is mostly dedicated to the journeys of Gilgamesh and his quest for eternal life.

Gilgamesh is portrayed as a powerful and conceited king who oppressed his people and indulged himself in worldly delights. The legend, which Gilgamesh had engraved as poems on clay tablets, is a reconstruction of his experiences, and relate the process of getting to know his inner self, by listing in all honesty his own imperfections and moral failings. What is remarkable in his narrative is that he acknowledges the distress of his people, who cry out that their king is oppressing them. We're able to gain this insight into Gilgamesh's person because he gives a vivid and sincere account of his own oppressive measures in the early parts of his life.

One example of the repressive measures he states in his epic is his participation in the sacred marriage, which is an ancient Sumerian practice where the king symbolically sleeps with Inanna, the goddess of beauty and recreation, to ensure fertility of the land. This practice of the first-night privileges is a divine right reserved for the king, to ensure that all children are theoretically and practically the offspring of the king. A wrestling contest is arranged in which the winner has to be Gilgamesh, being two-thirds god. He dominates and he's always the hero, he always gets the first rights to the bride.

So Gilgamesh, for some reason he repents and dedicates the rest of his life to constructing a temple and a wall to protect his beloved city Uruk from flooding and from its enemies. The people of Uruk invoke the mother of the gods and urge her to create a rival to Gilgamesh. So she creates Enkidu. Enkidu is a primitive man. In order to be tamed, they arrange for the harlot Shamhat to seduce him. She sleeps with him for six days and seven nights. Enkidu is changed forever, and although he becomes wiser and loses his innocence, his strength is diminished. After a wrestling match with Gilgamesh – this is also a long story, but I'm making it much shorter – they realize that they were not meant to fight and they become close friends. Together they fight a common enemy, the Bull of Heaven, who is called Humbaba, and they kill him. But soon after that, Enkidu dreams of his own death and he descends to the underworld. This all is to show how Gilgamesh started being frightened of death, because of the death of his great friend.

So Gilgamesh is distraught and he roams through the country terrified of death. He then embarks on a long and tiring journey across the waters to see Utnapishtim and his wife, who are supposed to have survived the flood and to know the secret of eternal life. Gilgamesh finds Utnapishtim and then – this is in Tablet 6 of these twelve tablets, this is all translated – this is the so-called flood tablet begins, with Gilgamesh wondering how it is that he and Utnapishtim look just the same, yet one is mortal and one is immortal. So Utnapishtim proceeds to tell him of the flood story, with remarkable similarity to Noah's Ark. Here is an excerpt from the tablet, where Utnapishtim says to him:

For six days and seven nights, the wind blew. Flood and tempest overwhelmed the land. When the seventh day arrived, the tempest, flood and onslaught which had struggled like a woman in labor, blew themselves out. The sea became calm. The imhullu wind grew quiet. The flood held back. I looked at the weather – silence reigned, for all mankind returned to clay. I opened a porthole and light fell on my cheeks. I bent down, then I sat and I wept.

So Utnapishtim, he puts out first a dove. Then he sends a swallow. Both come back. Finally he sends a raven, which does not return, showing that the waters have receded.

After telling his story, he then tells Gilgamesh how to achieve immortality. He tells him to go to the bottom of the sea far away and look for this special plant that will give him immortality. Gilgamesh finally finds this plant, he takes it, he's going on a boat, he's happy he's found immortality. But then a serpent comes and snatches the plant from him and immortality is lost to Gilgamesh forever. He becomes a mortal, but in a way he gains some kind of immortality, because we still talk about him through the tablets.

At that time, the most famous goddess was Inanna. Inanna, queen of heaven and earth. Inanna, lady of the largest heart. I became absolutely fascinated with Inanna, because there were so many translations of her life and she was so important in Sumerian times, and then went on to become – in Babylonian times, she became Ishtar, and eventually Venus. But at that time, in Sumerian times, she was not only the goddess of love, she was the queen of heaven. She was called both the first daughter of the moon and the morning and evening star, which is the planet Venus. So I guess her role was diminished as time went on.

She is the Sumerian version of a personification of the whole of reality. Inanna is a complex and paradoxical goddess that mirrors a wide range of characteristics, whose nature is both dark and light. A passage from the poem "Inanna and Ebih" – Ebih is Jebel Hamrin, which is towards the north of Iraq. It is the story of a conflict between the goddess and a defiant mountain. Ultimately, Inanna triumphs over Ebih. By challenging Ebih, she challenges nature and tries to dominate nature. Here she represents the human race, who are then becoming farmers or conquerors of the natural earth.

Here is when she talks to the mountain. She was very sure of herself and very arrogant. You can imagine this Inanna standing in front of this huge mountain.

I, the lady, came near, and the mountain did not fear, did not tremble of its own accord, nor wipe its nose on the ground. Even the Holy Anuna [the council of the gods] stand in awe of me. Listen! I, the lady, came near and the mountain did not fear.

There are so many stories of Inanna, I have just chosen a few of them. The story of the Huluppu Tree – this is more or less their version of the creation of the world. Again, this is a direct translation. They repeated things many times in their poetry, which gave it a strength, a sort of beauty.

In the first days when everything needed was brought into being, in the first days when everything needed was properly nourished, when heaven had moved away from earth, at that time a tree, a single tree, a huluppu tree, was planted by the banks of the Euphrates. The south wind pulled at its roots and ripped its branches until the waters of the Euphrates carried it away.

After a great storm – they seem to have a lot of storms and flooding all the time in that area – they still do. If it wasn't for the dams, I suppose they would still have a lot of floods. After a great storm, when everything was destroyed, Inanna, as a young girl, sees a tree floating in the Euphrates River. She spoke: "I shall bring this tree to Uruk. I shall plant this tree in my holy garden." Eventually, after nurturing this tree, and it grew big, it was attacked by a serpent and an anzu bird and by the lawless Lilith, who built her home in the trunk. As Inanna wept, her earthly brother, the hero of Uruk, Gilgamesh, appeared to help her. He struck the invaders of the tree and loosened the roots of the tree. Here is another direct translation:

From the trunk of the tree, he carved a throne for his holy sister. From the trunk of the tree, Gilgamesh carved a bed for Inanna. From the roots of the tree, she fashioned a puku for her brother. From the crown of the tree, Inanna fashioned a miku for Gilgamesh, the hero of Uruk.

"Puku" and "miku" are not translated yet, but they think that they're emblems of kingship. But they haven't yet worked out what they are exactly.

The tree grows from the darkness of the underworld into light and consciousness. It is anchored in the underworld and grows towards the heavens. Gilgamesh brings courage and strength to Inanna in her moment of weakness, and he rids Inanna of her creatures of wilderness. Both Inanna and Gilgamesh are enriched by the death and transformation of the tree. Although Inanna has lost her childhood, symbolic with the uprooting of the tree, she is now prepared to be a woman, and Gilgamesh has proven his manliness. Although they do not become united, Gilgamesh, by entering Inanna's garden, is drawn closer to his feminine side.

Inanna, provided with a bed, awaits her consort, and prepared with a throne, she is ready to act on her own. So she is all set for when Dumuzi comes. After this, she's ready for the courtship with the shepherd Dumuzi. She chooses him to be her lover, to be her husband. This is the world's oldest love story, 2,000 years older than the Bible. Here another quote:

Inanna, at her mother's command, bathed and anointed herself with scented oil. She covered her body with a royal white robe. She readied her dowry. She arranged her precious lapis beads around her neck. She took her seal in her hand. Dumuzi waited expectantly. Inanna opened the door for him. Inside the house, she shone before him like the light of the moon. Dumuzi looked at her joyously. He pressed his neck close against hers. He kissed her.

For some reason, here was Inanna at her strongest – for some unknown reason, they still don't know why, she decided to descend to the underworld, as sort of a death. After she descends to the underworld, she is stripped in seven stages, she is stripped of all her clothes, jewelry and power. She leaves Dumuzi to take care of her throne while she is gone. Eventually, after a long period of suffering, she goes back to her world. She finds that Dumuzi, instead of bewailing the fact that his wife had descended to the netherworld, where she had suffered torture and death, she found that he had put on a noble robe, sat high on a throne – that is, he was actually celebrating her misfortune. Enraged, Inanna looks down upon him with the eye of death. So in anger, she sends him to the underworld in her place, only to come up once a year. That is the origin of our month of July. It's called Tammuz in Arabic, and Tammuz in Hebrew.

Ever since 2001, I have been painting my paintings basically on Sumerian mythology, until the 2003 invasion. Here we had again Saddam Hussein and the news all over again.

Now we're going to have another slide show of Islamic art and architecture in Al Andalus, in southern Spain.

The second war in Iraq was a major event that influenced my work. Again, what's happening to our land? Islam and terrorism is all we heard. So I decided I should take a trip to Andalusia in Spain, to look for the glory of Islam before the word fundamentalism, terrorism, became an everyday word synonymous with Islam. Once again, Iraq and Saddam were in the news. Once again, it was a source of terrorism. Everyone again became an expert on Iraq. We were just beginning to forget about it. Again, I needed to find reassurance that there was still something to believe in. So the answer this time would be in Andalusia, Spain, to get some inspiration.

I'm sure you all know, but just very briefly, in 711 AD a few hundred Arabs, accompanied by a couple of thousand Berbers from North Africa who had been recently converted to Islam, decided to cross the sea. Thus began the history of one of the most illustrious civilizations in Europe.

What I saw in Andalusia was the beautiful architecture and the rich history. The ruins of the Medina Azahara filled me with wonder and admiration of all that was achieved. Al Hamra was even more than what I had ever imagined. Also, of course, Cordoba and Seville. They stayed there until the late 1400s, at their last outpost, Granada.

In reading about Caliph Abdurrahman I, who made Cordoba his capital, he wrote the following extraordinary poem to a single palm tree on the Andalusian plain. I could relate to what he wrote.

In the midst of Rusafa [a place in the suburbs of Cordoba] has appeared to us a palm tree, in a Western land far from the home of palm trees. So I said, this resembles me, for I also live in a distant exile and separated by a great distance from my children and my family. Thou has grown up in a foreign land, and we are both exiled far from home.

I came back from Andalusia with a sense of pride, a pride in the level of their sophistication. I couldn't help but compare and contrast it with our present-day situation, ruled by tyrants and any others who come along. The Arabs also quarreling among ourselves. I did not see in Andalusia Shi'a, Sunni, Arab, Kurd, Berber, or anything else. In Andalusia, I just saw the legacy of a people who added beauty to the world regardless of the politics of their time. This was the strength of the Arabs in Al Andalus. They were a light to the world emanating from the Middle East. The intensity of the beams reached Spain and Europe. So did my journey to Arabic and Islamic art in Spain. My inspiration became elated with high hopes for the new Iraq.

So these are just impressions of some of my paintings after that trip to Spain. I painted about thirty-five works on paper of what I saw there.

I returned to Baghdad in March of this year, after an absence of – the last time I left living there was 1971, but I had been back since. But the last trip was about twenty years ago. I wanted to go back and retrieve the country that has been in my heart ever since I left it. When I crossed the Jordanian-Iraqi border – I was in a taxi – I felt I wanted to jump out of that taxi and just touch the ground, kiss the ground, because it was the first time I felt that I had regained the Iraq that was not ours, it was Saddam's Iraq. I had an overwhelming feeling of going back. Driving past Fallujah, which is a terror spot now, and seeing all the soldiers, everything, I couldn't help but remember our school picnics of that time, when I was in school. It was beautiful then. The time when I went in March, it was still beautiful. The greenery was just coming out in the desert and it looked lovely with all the palm trees around.

We got into the outskirts of Baghdad and I told the taxi driver, okay, I know exactly where my family home is, it's in Jadriya, it's near the university. So if you drive there, I'll tell you exactly where the house is. So we drove. I didn't recognize anything. It was crowded, cars were going, traffic was going the wrong way around. It was chaotic. After about an hour of this, I couldn't find the house. He said to me, Mrs. Leila, tell me, what is the family house you're looking for? I said, so and so. He said, I know them, I know where the house is. Let me take you there. I said, are you sure? Within five minutes we were there, in front of the house. I felt like I was back home. It was nice to know that people knew each other, there still was this contact rather than always being ruthless and always having to introduce yourself from the beginning. There, people know who you are. So it was a good feeling.

It didn't last long. I probably was very optimistic and I was hoping that everything would get much better. One morning, I was having coffee with my cousin in the garden, we're sitting there talking about old times, and we see this tank coming by, right over the wall of her garden. They were going around with the machine guns, turning around. That was extremely threatening. So I can just only imagine how threatening it is to see these tanks coming down these little narrow roads, because that was a narrow road in front of her house. So unfortunately, it's going to take a long time, I think.

I came back here and I thought about all of this. I thought, well, what is our identity as Iraqis, as Iraqi Americans? I don't know what our new identity is going to be. It's a changeable concept, depending on the politics and the era we're living in. It colors how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. Today, we seem to identify ourselves by our religions or by our ethnic affiliation. Not long ago, we all saw ourselves as Iraqis, only as Iraqis. Or later, when we moved here to the US, as Iraqi Americans. Maybe back in the 1950s, when Arab nationalism was stronger, we might have even called ourselves Arab. That's no longer the case now. Nobody calls themselves Arab anymore. I'm not a politician, but I feel like we need to work on this.

Then, could I say, I'm an artist and nothing else? Would that be my identity? I'm also a mother, a woman, member of society, Iraqi, American, a Muslim. Yet I can talk to other people, other artists, a banker or a doctor, lawyer, and be equally at ease. We don't have to be all the same to have a meaningful dialogue. It doesn't matter whether we're Christian, Muslim, Subha, Hindu, black or white. After all, we're all one people and we can learn from each other. We all share this land of our ancestors. This was why I was trying to say that we all come from the same beginning, and try and live together.

Then I think of the richness of the colors that I have seen in Al Andalus, the geometric abstractions, the sense of spirituality within the arches, the domed rooms. The magnificence of what they built there was better than what they ever built in the Arab world. Maybe this intercultural exchange enriched both cultures.

Back in my studio, these are the thoughts that go through my mind. This is the kind of identity I want to belong to. Let us learn and enrich each other with our differences. Until we have peace and security, nothing will be accomplished. Let's talk through our art, music and songs to achieve understanding. Look how much we gain from a pluralistic, multicultural interaction. That should be the strength of our new world. As an artist, as a person who's been directly affected by politics, I think this would be the best way, if we can talk to each other through our culture and music, dancing – and politics too, but maybe the other things are just as important. Thank you.

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About This Transcript: Leila Kubba delivered this lecture at MEI's 58th Annual Conference, October 5, 2004.

Attributions: TBA.

Speaker: Leila Kubba was born in Baghdad of Iraqi and American heritage. She graduated with a National Diploma of Art and Design from the Manchester School of Art and Architecture and also studied at the Corcoran College of Art and Design over a period of five years. She has had several exhibitions across the world and authored numerous publications.

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