Culture and the New Iraq: The Iraq National Library and Archive, "Imagined Community," and the Future of the Iraqi Nation

Abstract

The problem . . . (is) that culture is not a priority. . . . The Iraqi Cabinet did not pay attention to the importance of culture to the new Iraq. They think culture is something that's just not as impor- tant as education or the economic well-being of the country. So we need now to persuade the politicians that culture is extremely important for the transition from dictatorship to democracy. —Saad Eskander, director, Iraq National Library and Archive 1 Dr. Rieux works steadfastly on. Around him, Oran falls prey to dis- ease, despair, and death. As plague ravages his city, Rieux continues life much as he always has—ministering to the sick and providing some measure of comfort to the dying. Knowing that he is helpless in the face of monstrous disease and cut off from the world outside the city walls, he nonetheless works steadily through the long days during which he quite literally stares death in the face, powerless to provide any true relief, before returning home to sleep a few hours until he begins the cycle again. Rieux, the protagonist of Albert Camus' 1948 masterpiece, The Plague (La Peste), stands as a modernist hero. 2 Written as an allegory of the Nazi occupation of France, The Plague details the absurdity of human attempts to maintain some semblance of a normal life in the face of absolute disaster. Rieux could buy or bargain his way out of Oran; he could join his wife abroad and wait out the plague before returning to his shining city; or he could sequester himself as much as possible within the city limits, quarantined away from the bloody rats in the streets and his fellow citizens dying around him. Of course, he does nothing of the sort. Without the delusion that he is actually making a difference in the lives of those he tends to, he simply does what he has been trained to do. He may be fighting what is ultimately a losing battle, and the reader