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Franklin in Fallujah

March 11, 2008 6:40 PM

We were walking down the main street of Fallujah the other day -- a fact remarkable in itself, given all that has gone on in that benighted town over the past five years -- when we came across a man sitting on a stool on the sidewalk, sketching. I did a double take. Of all the towns in all the world, this is the last one where I would have expected to see a street artist. 

Fallujah is where soldiers of the 82nd Airborne opened up on a crowd of protesters in April 2003, killing 17 and starting a long cycle of resentment and revenge. In March 2004, four U.S. contractors were killed, burnt and strung from a bridge there. In November of that year, the Marines stormed the city in a long and bitter street battle that cost the lives of 95 U.S. troops and some 1,300 insurgents. But insurgents crept back, and until last year it was one of the nastiest places in Iraq. Much has changed since the Sunni tribes in Anbar decided to go over to the Americans and fight against al Qaeda. But street art?

As I walked up to this man, I was even more surprised to see the subject of his deft pencil work. There on the back of a cardboard shirt-stiffener were the deep reflective eyes and flowing hair of Benjamin Franklin -- the man responsible above all for the very idea of an American nation. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence. He was a famous American writer, scientist, ambassador, statesman...an
American icon; and now, apparently, worthy of artistic representation in Fallujah, a town that has more reason than most in Iraq to hate Americans.

As I peered over the artist's shoulder, I saw the source of his inspiration: a $100 bill, clamped to the top of the cardboard sheet, served as a model. The artist, Moayad Mohammed Hamed, seemed unaware of who the man was whom he was so carefully reproducing. When I expressed interest in his work he offered it to me for free. I pressed some dollars into his hand -- now he can work on Andrew Jackson too, if he cares to.

The U.S. lieutenant who was walking next to me stopped and took the man's details from his ID card -- he was less interested in the sketch than in the fact that a man on the street had a freshly minted $100 bill.  Where had that come from? he wondered.

We moved on, with me clutching my new art work under my arm. Benjamin Franklin isn't such a bad model for today's Iraq, I thought. He had some pretty good ideas about how to run a country; he was a moralist who was deeply suspicious of the dogmas of organized religion, and he knew all about visitors overstaying their welcome. Like fish, he said, visitors start going off after three days. Now that things have started to improve in Anbar, the U.S. Marines are acutely sensitive to not overstay their welcome in Fallujah. Franklin would approve.

March 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (2)

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Posted by: seah | Mar 12, 2008 1:18:25 AM

Posted by: Ric | Mar 12, 2008 2:40:21 AM

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