Al-Mutanabi street back to life once again

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Al-Mutanabi street, or, as many call it, the artery of Iraq’s culture, is getting a new look different from that of more than a year ago, when most of its buildings were destroyed by a car bombing attack, rendering its famed book market stagnant and prompting its visitors from Baghdad and other provinces to abandon it, opting for safety. This cultural edifice is getting a facelift today that started from the Souk al-Saray area stretching to the end of the street from the direction of al-Rasheed street. Works to pave the streets with alabaster, paint the old buildings in yellow and restore dilapidated landmarks there are on-going. Some book lovers and collectors agreed with the current works to lend the street a new appearance, calling however, for better security conditions to protect the street, while others believed the works have altered the street’s heritage spirit. “We really wished that the buildings, with their old Baghdadian style of architecture and wood, would be left as they are. Now, the buildings are neither heritage nor modern,” Mazen Lateef, a bibliophile, told IraqiNews.com. He said the street would need stone benches for the visitors or new cafés and more organization of car parking lots. “The book market on al-Mutanabi has remarkably started to get a new lease on life as poetry maniacs began to appear once again and selling activities flourished too,” said Lateef. Muhammad Salman, another book lover, said the reconstruction stages are so far good but more efforts should be exerted by the official organizations to maintain the street’s luminous features and to dedicate cleaners on a permanent basis and also to bring back power lines and phones to the street. An owner of the famous Adnan bookstore told IraqiNews.com that there was a dire need for organizing security conditions on the street by assigning permanent Iraqi police patrols at the two entrances of the street. Naeem al-Shatri, an avid reader, agreed. “There has to be Iraqi police checkpoints at both entrances to prevent attacks by terrorists and suicide bombers who might target the street again,” said Shatri. A powerful explosion had rocked al-Mutanabi street in March 2007, leaving at least 35 people killed or wounded and causing severe damage to the street, including the famous al-Shabandar Café. A year ago, a campaign was announced to re-build Iraq’s most intellectual street to be conducted by the organizations concerned, including the culture ministry, the municipalities & public works ministry and the Baghdad local council. The street, named after the great Arabian Abbasid-era poet, is one of Baghdad’s most renowned and celebrated book-selling centers. Lying between the river Tigris and al-Rasheed street, it had been named during the Ottoman rule as al-Khameniya, a Turkish word that translates ‘army barracks’. The Abbasid era, which dates back to the 9th century, has been associated with a great leap in authoring and translation of science books. During that time, Arabian poetry, as well as other arts and literature, has seen unprecedented flourishing progress. AmR (I)/SR 1