Members of an artistic British Iraqi family wrestle with the fallout from decades of secrets, seemingly endless wars, and differing values in ways that sometimes confuse and irk each other.
In the turbulent circumstances created by the Islamic State’s takeover of Iraq in 2014, Bridget Mathloum, an artist and the elderly widow of Haydar, finds herself at varying odds with her three adult daughters—Ishtar, Zainab, and Mediha—over the proper way to preserve the family’s artistic legacy. At the heart of the disagreement are friction and distrust over the disposition of a cache of paintings by Haydar, a contemporary painter who was part of an influential group that ushered in a modern arts movement in Iraq during the 1950s. Beyond that, Bridget’s daughters differ in their attitudes toward their ancestral homeland and their approaches to their personal artistic endeavors. Nizar, Zainab’s son, faces his own existential dilemma after his return from a tour as a war correspondent in Yemen and his exposure to terrible brutality and inhumanity. As the family works out how to best preserve and promote their legacy, larger questions loom involving the fallibility of memory, personal responsibility in the face of state overreach, and the value of women’s work in the arts. The corrosive effects of war on the psyche of residents of the Middle East is summed up neatly in an exchange between Nizar and a new lover; when he explains that his own father had died “in the war” before he was born, the not unexpected reply is, “Which war?” A selected timeline of Iraqi history from 1917 to 2014 is included in the text, as well as an author’s note explaining the historical figures upon which Haydar and Bridget’s characters are based.
An illuminating look at the value of the arts in public life and the preservation of culture—and families.
