[.ca] The Ministry Of Culture: A Novel (ISBN 0312354460)

"May Allah be with you.":
James P. Mullaney's debut novel The Ministry of Culture is set in Iraq in 1984 and brings to the forefront the destructively overwhelming nature of the Iran-Iraq War. The war was indeed multifaceted, and it included religious schisms, border disputes, and political differences, and the conflict permanently altered the course of Iraqi history, straining Iraqi political and social life, ultimately leading to severe economic dislocations. The Ministry of Culture begins just as American journalist Michael Young arrives in Baghdad to cover the hostilities, hoping to report on some of the action directly from the Iraqi front lines. However, while in the capital, Michael also plans to meet with his beautiful girlfriend Daniella Burkett, of the London Times. As bombs go off close to the city's limits, Michael hopes to find a measure of comfort in Daniella and her promises of security and tenderness. Outside these walls exists another world, a very dangerous one, and I do not have all my strength to face it again just yet," says Michael from within his room, at the al-Rashid Hotel as he observes a city on the edge, the mayhem and chaos immediate. To be sure what was once a grandiose city that once flourished is now a burnt-out and decaying slum of poverty struggling to hold onto the hem of its once beautiful memory. Among the wounded of Baghdad is mural artist Ibrahim Galeb al-Mansur who as an eleven-year-old boy new that he just wanted to paint. Encouraged by his father Hassan Jaffa, the head curator of the Baghdad Museum, Ibrahim secures a job working for the ministry of culture, painting the giant murals of Saddam seen throughout Baghdad and the surrounding towns. Merely a government employee, Ibrahim is the first to admit that just wants to paint and is not that interested the government or its policies, the young man blind to the ultimate purpose of his great pieces of artwork as these sculptures and paintings, which Ibrahim is commissioned to produce decorate the landscapes. The stare of Saddam those "dark and cavernous eyes," always watching from street corners. But when Ibrahim and his girlfriend, Shalira is spending their first intimate setting together, five members of the republican guard burst into his room, and witness Shalira revealing herself. Taken away and interrogated, the shame of this incident is almost too much for Shalira to bear, and the fact that she has revealed herself to these men haunt Ibrahim's dreams. The events of that night bring on a lingering rage that begins to grow stronger inside Ibrahim, eating away at his soul, and he begins to crave the satisfaction of retribution. He finds himself drawn to the parties of the current anti-Baathists, finding support in their subversive political activities controlled by that of his father-in-law, the kindly old shopkeeper Yusuf. To Hassan, however, the matters of the republic are of a sober nature and also not without serious consequences and he fears that if Ibrahim acts in his feelings, he will take these concerns rather too nonchalantly. While Ibrahim finds himself torn between paths he must take, Michael is escorted by Qadro, his government appointed minder, to the one of the zones where an Iraqi victory has already been declared. But after a terrible explosion cripples Qadro, Michael comes face-to-face with the horrors of the war, forced to see the wounded and dying, the bodies scattered about in grotesque poses, littering the landscape as he finally witnesses the ultimate horror, innocent Iranian children bring used as expendable goods. Michael - and Daniella - discover a country where Each city is more violent than the next, the roadways, full of armed bandits, army deserters, vagrants and outlaws and where Saddam's ruling Baath regime, lurk in every corner and down every street, making sure the visiting Westerners see only what the president wants them to see. At times both mesmerizing and repellent, and filled with the sights sounds and smells of this truly fascinating country, The Ministry of Culture is a powerful evocation of a place on the edge. Mullaney's characters are lost in a society steadily being torn apart by violence, passion and a government that supervises and directs all its activity, intent to eliminate from the culture all public and private displays of disloyalty or anti-Baath sentiment. In truly stunning prose, Mullaney shows how the artistic and political words collide and how the bleak reality of Saddam's Iraq operated for so long in all of its unfettered and gruesome glory. Perhaps it's a harbinger of things to come in this country that once achieved its independence, only to be ruled by a violent dictator and then to become a violent and fragile state overcome by fear and suspicion, a country that constantly "runs in circles." Mike Leonard May 07.