Wednesday
This picture of the Iraqi National Museum deputy director Mushin Hasan sitting amidst the ruins of the ransacked museum with his head in his hands, is one of the most haunting images of the war.
It's imprinted in my brain and I think of it at various points through the day and it always leaves me with an incredible sense of loss, a horrible feeling at the pit of my stomach. The idea of the ancient civilisation of Mesopotamia was just something I had constructed from history textbooks. It was on my fourth standard history exam paper. Fill in the blanks: The cradle of human civilisation is ----------- I guess we will have to be content with the teeming museums of Europe and America. The Baghdad National Musuem of Antiquities has quietly passed into history.
But all is not lost. The various manuscripts, sculptures, the gold vessels--they'll turn up at auction houses in London, Paris and New York. Or in some Sheikh's palace. Or in some other palatial home as "conversation pieces." And someone will offer to reconstruct the museum.
My mother-in-law once visited Pakistan. She said the markets were chock full of rugs and artefacts from Afghanistan. Pieces of furniture, boxes and carpets that seemed to have been literally stolen from people's homes. Antiques. Nothing but loot, she said.
It's fascinating. The notion that people buy these things and install them in their homes--all this loot. Strip old havelis of their windows and doors and fix it on to a spanking new apartment. "Yes, our door's come all the way from Jodhpur, really"
