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Issue no.64 Nov 13 - 26, 2009
Culture FILMS
MUSIC
LITERATURE
INSIDE
An ode to a fragrant Kurdish flower ROSHNA RASOOL IN RANIYA
HERITAGE
Grains of time S awar, qara kharman, birwezh, danula, doh koshik, qubli and harisa are all types of grains made of wheat, which are integral to Kurdish cuisine. Housewife Kazhal Mohammed invited SOMA Digest into her home to watch her prepare the vastly popular dish called sawar. “Back in the day, sawar had an important role in warming relations between people,” she recounted. “ Once the grain had been cooked, the people of the area would queue with a plate to receive some of this cooked grain, danula.” Children in particular would run to queue for this dish, she said. “Most of the time, the women of the area would cook a number of pots of grain to make sawar all together and help each other in the process,” she added. Sawar is part of the grain family and the grain that is used to make sawar must be yellow so that once cooked, it shows up its characteristic color. M a n y would a d d tomato paste to the grains and once cooked, it took on a rich orange hue. The process of making sawar is not easy and it needs to pass through a number of steps. After the grain has been chosen, it is washed and put in a big pot of water. When cooked, it is drained and spread over an area for a couple of days to dry naturally. Once dry, it is gathered and bad grains or little stones are removed. The lot is then taken to the mill to be granulated. Amina Khan, a housewife who cooks sawar regularly, explained how she makes a large quantity of sawar for the winter. “Each year I make three big containers of sawar to be kept for the winter. My children often complain about me making sawar as they know all the hard work that goes into making it but I don’t listen to them and do it anyway and have it in the pantry for winter,” she said. Sawar also has medical benefits. Shopkeeper Osman Kawa, explained that a kilo of sawar in the bazaar is now 2,000 Iraqi Dinars (ID), adding: “Most of those who buy sawar suffer from diabetes and as it
has lower sugar content, it is a more suitable grain for them to consume and doesn’t cause them any harm.” Sawar can be cooked in many different ways and a popular sawar dish in the Erbil area is ‘shila sawar’, a stew consisting of cooked sawar and meat in tomato puree. “Now when women cook sawar it is different compared to the days when it was either plain yellow or plain red and only those who had the means could eat it with cooked meat,” said Mohammed. She added that nowadays some cook it by adding meat or vermicelli, and many new recipes have been improvised. During the days when it was difficult to obtain rice grains, ‘yaprakh’ (vine leaves stuffed with rice) was made of sawar rather than rice. Another one of these grain dishes that is popular in Kurdish cuisine is ‘qara kharman’. These are grains that are harvested before they are completely mature. They are then roasted before b e e n spread out to be in the open air. The result is a green grain. This differs from sawar in color and in the way it is produced as making ‘qara kharaman’ does not need to be boiled. For sawar, the grains have to be completely mature whereas for the qara kharman, they must only be of the vibrant green color for which it is recognized. Birwezh is another member of the grain family and is used for Kurdish dishes such as ‘kofta’ and ‘koba’. Unlike sawar, birwezh is white and also like qara kharaman the grains for preparation do not need to be cooked. When the birwezh is used for cooking it needs to be soaked in water for several hours beforehand and later grinded to form a kind of dough which can be shaped into a ball to be filled with a particular filling. Despite the hard work and time that goes into the preparation of these grains, food plays an important role in Kurdish life and is a relevant feature of Kurdish culture. — BY ROSHNA RASOOL IN SLEMANI
The exhibition in Jordan’s capital was an innovative way to empower Iraqi artists. (photo by Rebeen Ahmed)
Amman’s world Jordan expo aims to empower Iraqi plastic artists. Darya Ibrahim AMMAN n a very Iraqi atmosphere and in a very traditional neighborly manner, an exhibition presenting a number of paintings by Iraqi artists was held in Amman. The exhibition was opened on 17 October in the Foresight Gallery in the Umuzaman area in the capital of Jordan in the presence of Prince Raed Bin Zaid and with the participation of more than 75 Iraqi plastic art artists. “This is a gathering of Iraqi artists from different fields of plastic art. Collecting the art took a long period of time because some of the artists are very young, some are older and some of the works belonged to artists that had passed away,” said Ibrahem Al Abdali who organized the exhibition. “We wanted to generalize the exhibition and not restrict it only to the participation of some artists. The exhibition showed the power of Iraqi artists,” he added. There were a number of reasons why Amman was chosen as the location, Al-Abdali explains, but the main one was because the great majority of the Iraqi artists who participated in the exhibition are residents in Amman or had come from outside Iraq. “I am a university teacher in Amman and as I arranged it, I had to do it here,” he said. Batul Fakeki, a participating artist, said what was of greatest interest to her about the exhibition was the exchange of expertise between the two generations of artists: “This is also a message to the artists of the
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whole of Iraq to unite in their aim to build up Iraq again. The union has to be between Iraqi artists inside Iraq and those outside Iraq in exile.” This exhibition is one of a number of efforts to put Iraqi plastic art back on track, especially after the big gap which was created after the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein. All the participating artists admitted that there were some differences be-
tween Iraqi plastic arts before and after the liberation process, which has its own positive and negative points. According to Fakeki, Iraqi art was more active in Saddam Hussein’s period noting however that the artists were not free in their practice during his reign. “Before the liberation process, Iraqi artists were more active, more prepared and art was more progressive. But [back then] it was obligatory for everyone to participate in the activities and do their art, but now we are all free in which exhibitions we participate, so I hope the next exhibition will be in Iraq,” she said. Preparing for the exhibition took six months which included advertising for the event, preparing the paintings, collecting them and then finally putting on the big show in someone’s house. Suaad Al Essawi happily shared her idea about the gallery and believes it is a great honor for her to give her own house to the Iraqi artists to use as a gallery hall. “I had great feelings towards this gallery, because I’m very pleased to have those Iraqi artists in my house. I think the artists were able to present the sadness and the suffering of Iraqis in their paintings,” she said. “Any artist who had a particular style before the Iraqi liberation process in 2003, he or she still has the same style now, but the activation border has changed, the Iraqi artists are more open-handed now and they can execute their works more extensively," said Al Abdali. "Because the two generations of artists lived through the suffering of Iraq before and after the liberation process in 2003, they have been influenced by both periods and it is reflected in their paintings clearly and we cannot make the differences between them, but I think Iraqi art has progressed because it is based on the power of invention,” he added.
The exhibition in Jordan is just one of a number of efforts to put Iraqi plastic art back on track after years of neglect under the former regime. (photo by Rebeen Ahmed)