مقتطف

In the eleventh century, there was a remarkable man named Tanukhi, who was born in Basra but lived and worked in various parts of what is now Iraq and western Iran. He hailed from a family of transmitters of Hadith, the traditions of the prophet Muhammad’s word and deed that together with the Qur’an form the basis for Islamic law. But Tanukhi was inclined early on to study the profane literature of the Arabic and Islamic city culture that was emerging around him, also a respected pursuit at the time. He learned from some of the most important scholars of his day and acquired a well-rounded medieval education, which used to be called adab, a term that meant the sum of stories, ideas, and knowledge necessary to make a person courteous and “urbane.” This kind of education was meant to foster balance and a sense of fairness. Still a teenager, he won the sensitive job of inspecting weights and measures at one of the empire’s mints. He moved on to bureaucratic work near Baghdad, and within a few years had earned the post of judge. Medieval Baghdad was not a place that atomized knowledge and pigeonholed people into specialized fields; it was a place where a belief that you were wise could win you an appointment in the courts.

Tanukhi left more than a trail of rulings behind him. The stories he heard from witnesses and defendants fueled his fertile imagination, and the experience of reasoning his way through cases refined the color scheme of moral gradations he saw between right and wrong. Like all judges everywhere, he met people who had suffered and hoped for a little relief. He found himself meting out wisdom and advice as well as judicial pronouncements, and eventually saw fit to share his insights with a broader audience through writing. He chose as his vehicle an edifying style of entertainment that goes by many different names and never falls out of style. Back then it was called “Relief after Distress” (al-Faraj Ba’d al-Shidda), although in today’s pop psychology terms, we might call it “Post-Traumatic Joy.” In volume after volume of collected works, Tanukhi wove together memories and stories to demonstrate that bad times do not last forever and people can always reasonably hope for relief – a courtier saved from execution by his boss in a moment of compassion, a husband reunited with his estranged wife by a stroke of luck. The hope that Iraqis today will encounter relief after many years of distress makes Tanukhi’s idiom all the more prescient.

How would Tanukhi have judged the educational and legal systems of Iraq under Saddam? Of his own day, he registered the following complaint: “The desire for learning is waning, and there is a lack of noble aspirations. The populace are distracted from such things by care for their living, while the magnates are satisfied with the gratification of brutal passions.” The poverty of Iraq in 2003 and the moral depravity of its departed rulers make these comments relevant again. As for knowledge taught in Iraqi schools, Tanukhi might have found fault with much of it, beginning with the Iraqi pledge of allegiance. For several generations now, children in the country’s schools have worn mandatory blue-gray uniforms and gathered once a week around a flagpole. They have watched one of their classmates raise the Iraqi flag while a teacher clutching a megaphone led the following call and response:

“Our President?”

“Saddam Hussein!”

“Our slogan?”

“One Arab nation with an eternal message!”

“Our goals?”

“Unity! Freedom! Socialism!”

After which one lucky youngster with a semiautomatic rifle got to fire a round of blanks over the heads of his classmates.

Imagine the legacy of a morning salute like this on Iraqi children. The tender years of childhood never leave us. They form the prism through which we view the world. Whereas between family and teachers, Tanukhi’s upbringing exposed him both to the tenets of Muslim tradition and to the complexities of urban society, enabling him to parlay the two brilliantly into a legal and literary career, Iraqi families centuries later continue to emphasize education – but recent generations of young people in the country have a set of classroom memories that parents and outside observers find distressing. They have come of age in a society conditioned to locate truth and pursue justice in the persona of one elusive man – a man who has neither taken kindly to critical thinking nor valued the concept of litigation. A recent issue of the Ba’th state’s legal gazette contains a quote from Saddam on the cover page: “Justice is above the law.” In light of the legacy of Saddam’s sensibilities, the educational and legal systems Iraqis attempt to build over the next few years require an overhaul for the children of today and relief for the children of yesterday.