This article originally appeared in DIE WELT.
BAGHDAD - On Fridays, you can get a taste of just how special Mutanabbi Street used to be. For a couple of hours once a week, this neighborhood in the Iraqi capital returns to its former glory when everybody who is anybody in the Baghdad's art and culture scene is out on the famous "book mile."
The street has been renowned for centuries: a place where the printed word was bought and sold, where poets offered readings, where philosophical discussions went late in the night. Musicians publicized their forthcoming concerts, publishers negotiated with writers, actors looked for producers and directors, and vice versa.
Nowadays, those who want some space on the "book street" - which is nearly a kilometer long - better get there early to try and cram themselves in among everybody from professional book dealers with first editions on offer to modest sellers of second-hand titles.
Even greater than the swarms of sellers are the crowds of buyers, and at noon men and women in equal numbers leave the street with stacks of books under their arms. Everything winds down when it's time for Friday prayers. The books are packed up again until next week, and by 1 p.m. at the latest the street has been swept clean.
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It used to be, Mutanabbi Street dealers say, that you saw people reading all over Baghdad, but today hardly anybody reads in public anymore. They put this down to the reign of terror that has and to some extent still does hold the city in its sway.
A deficit of intellectuals
As an Arabic saying goes, Middle Eastern books are "written in Cairo, printed in Beirut, and read in Baghdad." At no time was this truer than in the days of the Abbasids, who reached their political and cultural highpoint in the 8th and 9th centuries while Europe was in the dark Middle Ages.
Traces of all this aren't so easy to find anymore. The war and terror destroyed most of what remained. But now one of the old centers is being revived: the Bayt al-Hikma, or House of Wisdom, founded by Al Ma'mun (786-833), the son of Harun al-Rashid from One Thousand and One Nights. His intention was to create a gathering place for the intellectual elite - and the goal is the same today.
The best view of the new House of Wisdom is from the water - the residence of former Iraq King Faisal I lies majestically on the banks of the Tigris. After the monarchy ended, the palace was used from the late 1950s as parliament, people's court, military museum and more before its present incarnation. That it was plundered and set on fire after U.S. troops arrived in 2003 is no longer obvious because the white and beige building has been lovingly restored.
But the purpose of the renovation and reopening has not been widely announced. Our boatsman doesn't know - "an academy, a school maybe?" he ventures - although the building is just a stone's throw upriver from Mutanabbi Street and just down the street from the boat harbor.
The reason for the discretion is the dramatic security situation in Baghdad, where the intellectual elite have been under threat for the last decade. Many intellectuals have been killed or abducted. Many have fled abroad. The UN estimates that nearly four million Iraqis have left the country - scientists, lawyers, doctors, professors and teachers among them. The country has experienced an unprecedented exodus of its educated classes, who found themselves oppressed by corrupt politicians.
The result is a desolate public sector, inefficient administrative structures - and incompetent decision makers. Iraq urgently needs a new elite. The country's leadership has recognized this and has been spending generously on scholarships for study abroad.
Most of those receiving scholarships go to the United States, the UK and France, and others go to India, Russia and Egypt. The new House of Wisdom, working closely with Iraqi universities and with the support of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, is supposed to bundle the know-how acquired abroad, further develop it, and make it useful for Iraq's reconstruction.
Originally published in Worldcrunch. Republished with permission.
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