Laylat an Nar (Night of Fire)

By Mohammed al Hamadany

Detail of Laylat an Nar, or Night of Fire

The installation at the Pomegranate Gallery

Mohmammed al Hamadany, Baghdad, 2007

photograph posted at the request of the artist

The Night of Fire

This unprecedented series of 25 paintings depicts an Iraqi perspective of 'Shock and Awe', the 2003 campaign to oust Saddam Hussein. Mohmammed al Hamadany truly welcomed Americans as liberators who freed Iraq from his brother's murderer, but the rampant chaos of the campaign cast an eery glare of ambivalence over his canvas. In its truest form, the Night of Fire reveals the messy interconnectedness of violence, the profane reality of collateral damage. The central piece of the Night of Fire depicts the fall of Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square. Ironically, Mohammed depicts the cheering onlookers as monkey-like because, "the same people also clapped when the statue went up."

The toppling of Saddam's Statue in Firdos Square

Detail for the centerpiece of the Night of Fire.

The orange Arabic letters are alif, ra, ayn, and qaf-- spelling 'Iraq'

The murder of Mohammed's Brother

Mohammed al Hamadany is the brother of Iraq's former Minister of Planning, a man lauded internationally as the brains behind Iraq, and then murdered by Saddam Hussein in 1979. The murder was purely political-- a successful effort by Saddam Hussein to consolidate power upon seizing the presidency and thereby preventing the merger of Iraq and Syria. The following excerpt from The Atlantic Monthly (May, 2002) by Mark Bowden describes the event.

"On July 18, 1979, [Saddam] invited all the members of the Revolutionary Command Council and hundreds of other party leaders to a conference hall in Baghdad. He had a video camera running in the back of the hall to record the event for posterity. Wearing his military uniform, he walked slowly to the lectern and stood behind two microphones, gesturing with a big cigar. His body and broad face seemed weighted down with sadness. There had been a betrayal, he said. A Syrian plot. There were traitors among them. Then Saddam took a seat, and Muhyi Abd al-Hussein Mashhadi, the secretary-general of the Command Council, appeared from behind a curtain to confess his own involvement in the putsch. He had been secretly arrested and tortured days before; now he spilled out dates, times, and places where the plotters had met. Then he started naming names. As he fingered members of the audience one by one, armed guards grabbed the accused and escorted them from the hall. When one man shouted that he was innocent, Saddam shouted back, "Itla! Itla!"—"Get out! Get out!" (Weeks later, after secret trials, Saddam had the mouths of the accused taped shut so that they could utter no troublesome last words before their firing squads.) When all of the sixty "traitors" had been removed, Saddam again took the podium and wiped tears from his eyes as he repeated the names of those who had betrayed him. Some in the audience, too, were crying—perhaps out of fear. This chilling performance had the desired effect. Everyone in the hall now understood exactly how things would work in Iraq from that day forward. The audience rose and began clapping, first in small groups and finally as one. The session ended with cheers and laughter. The remaining "leaders"—about 300 in all—left the hall shaken, grateful to have avoided the fate of their colleagues, and certain that one man now controlled the destiny of their entire nation. Videotapes of the purge were circulated throughout the country."

excerpt form an Iraqi newpaper, Tareek al Shaab, on the Night of Fire series

Page 16, 8/26/2007

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