World's bravest orchestra plays on in Iraq

In September 2007, amid the wreckage of an earlier suicide bombing in Baghdad's Karraba district, Ghada Hussein Al-Almy (center) directed the Al Mada street theater troupe’s opening-night performance of “A Day in our Homeland.”
Courtesy of RAND Corporation

BAGHDAD, Oct 29 (Reuters) - When the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra (INSO) holds a concert in Baghdad, organisers don't like to advertise: in fact they would prefer as few people as possible know about it.

Welcome to the bravest orchestra in the world.

The INSO, established in 1959, has survived decades of war, international sanctions, government neglect and vicious sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and forced millions to flee for their lives.

It saw its music library and instrument store looted after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, and one of its main concert venues was destroyed by U.S. missiles.

Some members have been kidnapped or killed in sectarian violence, others have received death threats and 29 have joined the exodus of more than 2 million people who have fled Iraq.

But amid the discord, the orchestra seeks harmony.

Its 60 members are an ethnic and religious cross-section of Iraqi society -- Shi'ite, Sunni Muslim and Christian, and Arab, Kurd and Turkman. They see themselves as a family of survivors.

So it was with pride that the orchestra launched into Johann Strauss's 'Blue Danube' to kick off the first concert of their new season, held on a Thursday afternoon at a social club in the western Baghdad district of Mansour, for an audience of invited guests.

"The symphony orchestra is ours. A thousand state changes, but we are still going," said Mohammed Amin Izzat, the orchestra's conductor since 1989.

Before the U.S.-led invasion, the INSO would advertise concerts in the media, especially on television. Now this happens by word of mouth, with organisers phoning a list of supporters or putting up posters in music colleges.

"We cannot advertise now because any gathering is a target for terrorist operations," Izzat said.

CHECKPOINTS, BOMBS

Guests for the concert at the Mansour social club are told to be there at midday "for security reasons". No time is given for the event because both the musicians and the guests have to navigate police and army checkpoints and blocked roads.

By the time the concert starts two hours later the hall, which can hold about 500 people, is almost full. The audience is made up of friends and relatives of the musicians and members of the club. Most have paid 10,000 Iraqi dinars ($8) for a ticket.

Dressed in black suits, and with instruments in hand, the musicians climb the stage to perform works by Bach, Dvorak, Vivaldi, and an Iraqi folkloric piece.

The orchestra's youngest member is 14-year-old oboe-player Duaa al-Azzawi, daughter of the orchestra's librarian Majid al-Azzawi: "I want to be famous. Now I practice every day for an hour," she said at a rehearsal a few days before the concert.

The INSO has 10 concerts scheduled for the 2007/8 season, including a trip to the United States, where it played at the Kennedy Center in Washington in 2003 to an audience that included U.S. President George W. Bush.

Izzat is hoping for better luck than in the 2006/7 season, when surprise curfews forced the cancellation of several concerts. Despite improved security, checkpoints and roadside bombs still stop musicians from getting to rehearsals.

One violinist was killed in a roadside bombing three months ago while Duaa's father, trumpeter and librarian al-Azzawi, was briefly kidnapped in March by gunmen and bundled into the boot of a car.

"This incident affected me for one day, then the next day I took my children to school and I went to the orchestra," he said. "We love our job, we have to keep going."

Pianist Natasha al-Radhi, 67, is a Czech who moved to Iraq 40 years ago and is married to an Iraqi man: "I cannot leave Iraq, I have a family here. I am a grandmother now. There, I have no one," she said.

HEYDAY

The orchestra's heyday was in the mid-1980s, when it hosted foreign musicians and conductors from the former Soviet Union, Germany, France and Hungary.

This "golden age", as the musicians refer to it, came to an abrupt end with the Gulf War in 1991, which ushered in a decade of punishing sanctions that impoverished ordinary Iraqis.

Government funding dried up, the musicians' salaries, paid by the state, were just 30 Iraqi dinars ($22) a month, and they were unable to replace old or broken instruments.

Since the U.S. invasion in 2003 their salaries have increased to $570 a month, but they still complain of government neglect and say they depend almost entirely on foreign aid.

They have received donations of musical equipment from Japan's Yamaha Corp and a Swiss non-governmental organisation. The orchestra also has sponsorship from a mobile phone company.

"We represent the cultural face of Iraq. It is not acceptable that the world cares and gives, while the country neglects us completely," Izzat said.

If the INSO manages to complete its 2007/8 programme as scheduled, that would be one indicator that U.S. and Iraqi security forces are having some success in quelling violence.

But perhaps a better one will be the day the musicians can advertise their concerts again without fear.

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Nothing else matters: Iraqi heavy metal returns

Iraqi heavy metal band Brutal Impact's lead singer Muthana Mani shouts the lyrics to Raining Blood, a song by American band Slayer.



By Charles Levinson, USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — At a private dinner club on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad, Muthana Mani screamed threats at a wild-eyed crowd of young Iraqis.

"I'll see you die at my feet! Eternally I smash your face! Facial bones collapse as I crack your skull in half!" he roared.

Two years ago, these kinds of threats in Iraq typically came from members of al-Qaeda, or violent sectarian militias. Saturday night, they were directed at 250 Iraqi fans of heavy metal music who fearlessly donned eye shadow, anarchist pendants and black T-shirts and came out of hiding to attend Iraq's first metal concert in five years.

Throughout the two-hour show, the crowd thrashed about, a sea of sweating bodies and banging heads. They screamed obscenities and broke tables. It was a scene that would have made any American metal fan proud.

It was also another indication of just how much security has improved here. When religious extremists controlled Baghdad's neighborhoods, being a member of heavy metal's unique subculture could amount to a death sentence, says Mani, 21, the lead singer of Brutal Impact, one of the two bands that played the concert.


"If I wore a T-shirt like this one," Mani said in an interview after the show, pointing to a logo of a bleeding skull, "they'd have killed me."

During the most violent years of the war, Iraqi heavy metal fans were besieged by threats from all sides, says Aws Adnan, one of two 21-year-old engineering students who organized the show.

Sunnis accused metal fans of supporting the Mahdi Army because they wore black like members of the Shiite militia, Adnan says. Shiites, meanwhile, suspected fans of being from al-Qaeda because their unkempt goatees resembled the mustacheless beards popular among hard-line Sunni Islamists, he says.

As a result, Iraq's metal musicians practiced for hours behind closed doors. For Latif Ahmed, the long-haired drummer for both bands, the concert was a long-awaited act of revenge against the extremists that he says sent him death threats via text message, warning him to cut his hair, shave his goatee and stop playing drums.

"I just decided that I'd had enough staying home all the time, hiding all the time," said Ahmed, 22. "I decided to do this gig to say that metal exists here, and we are ready to kick some a—."

For many of the band members and fans in attendance, heavy metal has played the role of a trusted therapist during five years of war.

"The youth in Iraq are searching for some way to release their anger, their sadness, and heavy metal is the only way for them to do that," Mani said. "It's the only way for them to feel free."

Even as they recited bloodcurdling calls to violence, however, these headbangers carried a message of unity to fans. Brutal Impact is itself a testament to coexistence with two Sunnis, two Shiites and a Christian among its members.

The second band, Dog Faced Corpse, debuted their original song, Consanguinity. It is a call for brotherhood among Iraqis, explains guitarist Amin al-Jaff.

The band's name refers to apocryphal reports at the height of the killing in 2006 that militants had stitched a dog's head onto a victim's headless body.

Many of the fans at Saturday's concert were attending their first live metal show. They were too young to remember a band called Acrassicauda, which played Iraq's last live metal concert in 2003, just after the U.S. invasion. Its members later fled to Turkey.

"This is something totally new for me. It's craziness and crowded, and it makes you feel so excited," said Zeinab Qassem, a 19-year-old dentistry student in a strappy black dress that stopped well before her knees. It would be a brazen Baghdad outfit even in the best of times.

Next to Qassem stood Nadaa Haidar, a bespectacled girl in an Islamic head scarf, sporting black nail polish for the occasion. Both girls pumped their fists in the air, flaring their pinky and index finger to form devil horns, the universal metal sign, as they sang along to a cover of Metallica's hit song Nothing Else Matters. They didn't miss a beat.

"There's nothing wrong with wearing a veil and listening to metal," said Haidar, 18. "Islam doesn't like metal, but I'm not hurting anyone so it's OK."

Adnan and the concert's other organizer, Mustafa Muhana, pawned their laptop computers, a mobile phone and a bass guitar to pay for the show. They had nearly broken even from $10 ticket sales until the venue's owner approached them after the show and demanded $800 to pay for the damaged tables.

Adnan shrugged. "Anything for metal," he said.

Thanks to USA TODAY

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Music returns to Baghdad as vice squad enforcers retreat

by Sammy Ketz Sammy Ketz – Wed Nov 12, 12:53 pm ET

BAGHDAD (AFP) – After years on the run from Shiite and Sunni militias and morality police, Iraqi musicians are slowly returning to the streets of Baghdad, looking to fill the silence left by the fading civil war.

"The Mahdi Army and Al-Qaeda only ever agreed on one point -- that we are servants of the devil," said Mohammed Rashid, 37, a music shop owner in the Fadel neighbourhood of central Baghdad.

In the back of his office hang the portraits of a saxophone player and a tambourine player, both murdered by the Mahdi Army's Shiite militiamen in early 2006 at the height of Iraq's grisly sectarian violence.

"At his home in Sadr City and in front of his children, they killed and burned the corpse of my saxophone player, Ayad Hair. On the same day, they took Ali Mohammed and killed him. His corpse was found more than two years later."

"They explained to their families that this will be the fate of all those who transgress holy law," said Rashid, who reopened his shop earlier this year.

He faced similar harassment from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni extremist movement loyal to Osama bin Laden that has launched scores of attacks across the country targeting Shiite civilians and US-led security forces.

"In March 2006, after they took over the neighbourhood, a group of masked jihadists destroyed my shop," he said. The trumpets and drum covers still bear the jagged scrapes left by the vandals.

"What you are doing is forbidden, because music is the work of the devil," Rashid remembers the assailants telling him before he fled to Syria. "If you reopen your shop, you are dead."

The neighbourhood was once famous for its traditional music groups, bands of drummers, trumpet and timpani players that would accompany a groom to his bride, cater to circumcision celebrations, and herald major holidays.

But under the strict interpretation of Islamic law imposed by Al-Qaeda on the areas it controlled, musicians were considered a threat to morality, along with alcohol vendors, barbers and women who did not cover their hair.

When the ban on music was first announced the owners of seven shops on the street complained to the local Al-Qaeda strongman.

"It is an order from God, he will provide for your needs," the man replied, according to Abdel Karim Rashid, a 34-year-old trumpet player who was reduced to selling fruit juice to survive the group's radical Islamist rule.

He did not take up his instrument again until mid-October 2007, when a local Sunni militia allied to US-led forces drove Al-Qaeda from the neighbourhood.

He remembers rushing outside and blowing a song of celebration into the surrounding alleyways. "It was a liberation. We were drunk with joy. I thought I had risen from the dead."

Hussein al-Basri, the head of Iraq's artists union, says there were more than 300 traditional bands playing in Baghdad on the eve of the US-led invasion in March 2003 but most of them stopped playing in 2004.

Since then around 50 musicians have been killed, and the number of active bands has dwindled to around 100, he said.

Music is still a dangerous profession in some parts of the country.

Eight months ago an orchestral group that had travelled to the southern town of Aziziyah was attacked by the Mahdi Army, which destroyed their instruments.

In the Allawi district of central Baghdad, Ahmed Omar Magid, 27, whose father played in the royal symphony in 1954 during the reign of King Faisal II, suffered the same treatment at the hands of Sunni fighters.

"They were an intrusion in our lives. They wanted to impose a culture without joy, but Iraqis enjoy the good life, and they love music," he said.

Today Magid plays eight different instruments for 170 dollars a night and his six bands perform at around a dozen weddings a month. "Many artists have fled the country but some are beginning to return," he said.

His neighbour Ali Kassem, a 40-year-old who used to play trumpet in a military band, is planning to perform at a party with his two teenage sons.

"We have had some really rough times! I have friends who were killed when they showed up to play for fake weddings set up as ambushes," he said.

"And yet I am sure that nothing in the Koran forbids our art."


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In Iraq, a different kind of drama stages a message of reconciliation
A brave band of Iraqi women are defying insurgent threats and taking back their streets.

By Edward O'Connell and Cheryl Benard

from the December 18, 2008 edition


Baghdad - The actor stands on a makeshift stage at a bombed-out, dusty intersection in Baghdad. It's an unusually cool evening in September, and a crowd that looks like most of the neighborhood has assembled to enjoy the rare entertainment.

"Sunni! Shiite!" he yells. "Whatever ethnic group – I don't care! Spurn each other's hand no longer. Long life and success – to both of you!" This is the message of reconciliation carried by the Al Mada street theater troupe, led by one of Iraq's rising female stars, Ghada Hussein Al-Almy.

While female suicide bombers in Iraq have been getting all the headlines, a very different cadre of women has emerged on the scene with the opposite goal of forging peace and paving over the sectarian differences. Above all, these activists want to take back the streets and neighborhoods of their country.

We have spent the past several years studying how women promote conflict resolution in places such as Belfast, Sarajevo, and Damascus. But we've seen nothing like the women activists we encounter now in Iraq, especially given the personal risk they take to advance their message.

Ms. Almy's street theatrics are only one example of this courageous new female activism. Other women roam their local streets as self-appointed social workers, looking after displaced persons, widows, and street children. Some have set up welfare centers and education programs, persisting in the face of leaflets and letters threatening them with death. Still others pound the doors of government offices, demanding nonsectarian help for the needy Sunni and Shiites in their neighborhoods.

Such activism has a long tradition in Iraq. During the civil war between warring Kurdish parties in northern Iraq in 1994, hundreds of women from both sides got together for a three-day march on Kurdish parliament. Finding the doors closed and the peace talks stalled, they broke into the building and carried out a two-week sit-in strike that forced the warring parties to reconvene and negotiate a cease-fire.

Nowadays the activists are employing unconventional platforms such as Almy's to start a grass-roots counter-revolt against war and division.

Almy is a Baghdad University professor-turned-"theater resistance leader," as her fans call her. In the wake of some of Iraq's worst suicide bombings, she and her troupe decided to use culture as a defensive weapon, producing and staging plays that mobilize the audience against violence and killing.

In July 2007, minutes after a suicide truck bombing, Almy marshaled her "quick reaction theater troupe" and got to work. The next day, they visited the bomb site and began to build an impromptu stage. She assembled poets, actors, and musicians – including some of Iraq's most famous – for some all-night brainstorming. They began to create an original script, and to rehearse.

Six weeks later – timed to coincide with Ramadan – her troupe performed "A Day in Our Homeland." Focused on one of nearly 200 casualties from a bombing in Baghdad's Karrada district, the play followed the struggles of a dying young man, his grieving fiancé, and his badly wounded mother. The play was staged only a few feet away from the bombed-out apartment building where they had lived.

The open-air dramas typically run for two weeks at locations around Baghdad where bombs have been exploded by extremists. Almy's statement to the extremists is simple: "You will not take away our way of life, or our culture."

"We are trying to use culture as a weapon," Ghada told us. "We want to make the terrorists feel the strength of our culture."

The thousands of all ages who throng to her regular events add their own exclamation point to her stark objective.

Unfortunately, many courageous and innovative efforts such as Almy's go unreported. Indeed, she is only one example of an informal but growing network of women activists in Iraq who, despite threats to their safety and that of their families, are finding ever more creative ways to resist.

Another woman we encountered from Baghdad, Kareema, shook her fist in the air as she showed us a flier she had received "compliments of Mr. Sadr's Jaysh Al-Mahdi militia" threatening her if she didn't stop her popular cultural program.

The threats only seemed to strengthen her determination.

Unlike Almy, who dons an elegant hijab to complement her otherwise-Western apparel, Kareema declines to wear the hijab or abaya in public.

The first lady of Iraq, Hero Ibrahim Ahmed (Talibani) later told us, "I saw this woman [Kareema] on TV, reporting from Basra, without a hijab.... I thought this is the bravest woman in Iraq, I must get to know her."

In their efforts to counter violent extremism, US and Iraqi authorities have overlooked Iraqi women as voices of inspiration and persuasion. Both parties should refocus their resources to support these women who are already engaged – but not networked. A simple start: security for these grass-roots events, marches, and protests that stimulate the public's role in Iraq's reconciliation should be made a priority.

Almy frowned when we suggested that other women may not want to put their own lives and the lives of their families in peril.

"Don't you see us? We are already on the front lines of this war for years," she said. "We are beyond fear, beyond loss. We are not the crazy suicide bomber or the weeping widow the West portrays us to be. We are creative and courageous; we are the new women of Iraq!"

• Edward O'Connell and Cheryl Benard are co-directors of the Alternative Strategy Initiative at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. They travel regularly to Baghdad and other Iraqi cities in conjunction with RAND's work on building civil societies.

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An End to Baghdad's 'Dark Era'
Nightclubs on the City's Famous Abu Nawas Street Are Open Again and Popular -- Even With U.S. Troops

Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 28, 2009; Page A07
By Sudarsan Raghavan

BAGHDAD, Feb. 27 -- The American soldier stepped out of the Baghdad nightclub. In one hand, he clutched his weapon. In the other, a green can of Tuborg beer. He took a sip and walked over to two comrades, dressed as he was in camouflage and combat gear.

Inside the club Thursday night, U.S. soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division ogled young Iraqi women who appeared to be prostitutes gyrating to Arabic pop music. A singer crooned soulfully through scratchy speakers to the raucous, pulsating beat -- an action that Islamic extremists have deemed punishable by beheading.

Twenty minutes later, several drunk men coaxed an American soldier to dance. He awkwardly shuffled his feet, wearing night-vision equipment and a radio, joining the women and boisterous young men in an Arabic chain dance around tables covered with empty beer bottles.

For most of the past six years, U.S. troops and other Westerners in Baghdad have barricaded themselves behind blast walls and traveled the streets in armored cars, fearing attack or capture. Time spent in what Americans call the Red Zone -- all of the capital except for a protected part of central Baghdad -- invited and often brought calamity. U.S. troops do not leave their bases or outposts unless they are on duty.

The soldiers on Abu Nawas Street said they were visiting the club to talk to the manager about security, but they were socializing publicly with Iraqis in a way that was unimaginable even a few months ago. The scene reflected the increasing sense of security in the capital and many parts of Iraq,

but it was impossible to know how many U.S. soldiers in Baghdad have the opportunity or the inclination to drink a beer while on patrol, apparently in violation of rules banning alcohol consumption in combat zones.

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A U.S. military spokesman, responding to a query about the soldiers, was incredulous.

"Just so I understand this clearly, you saw U.S. soldiers at a nightclub in downtown Baghdad outside of the Green Zone in uniform drinking and dancing?"

asked Tech. Sgt. Chris Stagner.

Club manager Salah Hassan said Thursday's visit was not exceptional.

"The Americans come here four or five times a week," he said. "They buy drinks and pay for them."

Others at the club said the soldiers had been there more than once. "I love the Americans," said Amal Saad, a petite young woman with blue contact lenses and thick red lipstick. "I like it when they come here. I feel so safe."

"Many times, I went with them in their Humvees," she added. "They took me to shops and bought me chocolates and gifts."


Hassan said he started his club with a $10,000 grant handed out by the U.S. military to launch small businesses, an integral part of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy to pacify Baghdad. "They come and dance," he said. "We know each other well. And they tell their friends, and they also come."

Under a Status of Forces Agreement the U.S. and Iraqi governments signed in November, an American soldier who commits a serious crime off base and off duty is subject to Iraqi laws, although the United States retains the final word in determining whether a soldier was off duty. Drinking and dancing may create a hard-to-dispute impression that a soldier was at leisure.

"Everyone is having a good time," said Spec. Eric Cartwright, 26, of Granada Hills, Calif., as he watched his comrade do the chain dance. "No one is scared about what's going to happen to them. This is a good sign."

In the 1970s, Abu Nawas Street was the nexus of Iraq's night life. Bars stayed open until the early morning. In 1994, Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to win the support of religiously conservative Iraqis, closed all the nightclubs.


After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents targeted alcohol sellers. They issued death threats to singers and dancers, forcing many to flee the country.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in an effort to portray himself as a secular nationalist, allowed the reopening of the nightspots three months ago, a move that has bolstered his popularity among many urban Iraqis. Still, most nightclubs have remained closed for much of the time since his order, a period that includes several Muslim holidays.

Threats from extremists remain, but the heavy security measures across the capital have brought confidence.

Nightclubs are starting to open up in other parts of Baghdad. Hotels are hosting dance parties for well-off Iraqis. Social clubs, where alcohol and gambling are part of the fare, are seeing more customers. Performers are returning from exile.

And Abu Nawas Street is arguably the safest street in the capital. It runs along the Tigris River, ending at one entrance to the Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government buildings are situated. Hassan's nightclub is on a stretch of street that is blocked off on either end by blast walls and checkpoints guarded by Iraqi private security contractors and police. Several American and European media organizations have fortresslike bureaus up the road, each with its own private force. American troops patrol on foot virtually every day.

"This area is well protected," Hassan said. "If I didn't have the security, I wouldn't be able to do business. Customers will be afraid to come. They will be kidnapped or killed."

The previous night, he said, gunmen entered a nightclub near Andalus Square in central Baghdad and kidnapped two customers.

A few minutes later, Hassan became nervous about discussing the visits by U.S. soldiers. He asked that the name of his nightclub not be mentioned, even though it was written on a signboard outside in English. "The Americans will come and shut me down," he said.

At a club next door, the patrons were too drunk to care about threats. Each had paid a $45 entrance fee -- a princely sum for many Iraqis -- to hear Adeeba, one of the nation's most famous singers. The dark-haired diva didn't disappoint.
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She blew kisses to the all-male audience, and began:

Believe me, I did not get bored of you.

Believe me.

A dancer wearing a tight red-and-black outfit gyrated across the floor, as the audience erupted in screams. Young men, some in fashionable jackets, wiggled their hips and waved pink tissues. One man went up to the balcony and threw handfuls of cash that floated down toward Adeeba and her five-man band.

Adeeba, who like most Iraqi singers uses only her first name, returned two months ago from Bahrain -- after fleeing Iraq three years ago. "There was no work and if anyone was caught singing, they would behead her," she said.

She was encouraged to return because of the improvements in security and also because "living outside my country killed me." She had also heard that the nightclubs had reopened.

"The dark era is over," she said with confidence.

Her audience agreed.

"Listening to her made me feel the security," said Muntader Khazal, 18, who sells clothes.

"We never expected that such a day will come in Iraq," gushed his friend Hussein Sheba, 17.

Meanwhile, at Hassan's nightclub, the American soldier danced, arm in arm, with his new Iraqi friends.

Special correspondent Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.

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"We used to have discos, casinos, high-class clubs ... We hope to see those days return, one day, inshallah (God willing)," said speakeasy owner and businessman Omar Ali Kundo, 59, a member of Iraq's Yazidi minority.
He was harking back to the days of Saddam Hussein in 1980s, but before the crippling US-backed international sanctions imposed in 1990.
"Saddam closed down the bars after the 1991 (Gulf) war" to encourage Muslim countries to break the embargo, recalled Kundo, whose club only reopened in September after a four-year closure.
With violence now at its lowest level since the March 2003 invasion, the better-off are venturing out at night although they go home by 10 pm in part through darkened streets, some cordoned off after roadside bomb blasts.
Unlike 1920s America during Prohibition when alcohol was banned, Kundo's club operates more or less out in the open despite the dangers from conservative militants.
From a renovated two-storey house on a corner, with the lower parts of its walls painted in soothing pink and blue pastels, the men-only club serves food and is divided off into several rooms.
Unarmed guards keep a close watch on the cars parked outside mindful that armed counterparts at a nearby newspaper office have been known to shoot out the windows of any vehicle left too close to their building.
Kundo, whose office is adorned with Christian and Muslim ornaments as the Yazidis "believe in all the prophets," said he used to own 14 such clubs, "each worth half a million dollars," in the "good old days" of secular Iraq under Saddam.
That was before the US-backed sanctions, and before the US-led invasion. But now he is down to one, plus four liquor stores around town. The club faces competition from up to 10 other such establishments.
The businesses are unlicensed, or "unofficial," as his manager put it.
Kundo's establishment attracts an average of between 100 and 150 customers a day, starting from midday, and drinks include Iraqi and imported arak as well as whisky to go with the traditional meals.
Apart from the bingo upstairs, where the numbers are read out over a loudspeaker, the club puts on a poetry reading night once a week and has plans to build an open-air venue at the back complete with a stage for live music.
"It is part of our mission to bring poetry and literature back to the people," said manager Kazem Abid Ali.
Other bars and restaurants around Baghdad are also beginning to bustle again.
On 52 Street in the upmarket district of Karrada, around which the River Tigris wraps itself on two sides, eateries such as Saj al-Reef, Crispy, Toast, and a brightly-lit new place, Chef City, are all busy at weekends.
"Business has been good for the past six months," said Ali Zaydan, 28, taking phone orders for his takeaway which also does home delivery by motorbike or taxi.
Despite lax security, with no checks on entry, "people keep coming because they have nowhere else to go, no other entertainment," said cashier Saad Derzi at a restaurant next door.
"We replace the glass in the windows at the front each time there's a car bomb. We've done it three times in the past year, including a car bomb right in front when people were hurt by flying glass," said the 38-year-old.
"The situation is much better. It's not ok, but better," said Hussam Ali, 29, an IT lecturer at Baghdad University and part of a group of five couples, all working professionals, with their children, including baby Mohammed.
"You can't compare to before the invasion, but it's getting there."
Asked if they were nervous, the women in the group all smiled and shook their head as Arabic music played in the background and a satellite television showed the latest MTV hits.
Jadriyah and Mansur districts with their ice cream parlours and juice bars are also considered relative "safe havens" for Baghdad's modest nightlife. And restaurants on the riverside Abu Nawas serve "mazghouf" smoked river fish.
In a capital city of six million people, it's certainly not the Baghdad of 1,001 Nights. But after three wars in less than a quarter century and 13 years of tight sanctions, an air of optimism is in the air.

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