March 21st - Bayaa
24 Mar 2004
The Bayaa youth centre and theatre in Baghdad.
The kids painted a mural on the wall outside what used to be a Baath party building, a harp, the tower in Samara, a lion and now it’s a youth centre. There are three different age groups who use the centre on different days: six to ten, eleven to thirteen and fourteen to eighteen. The Children’s Council consists of four boys and three girls elected by the other kids from all the age groups.

Marwan adopted me on arrival. A 13 year old member of the Children’s Council, he’s enormously proud of the place. Khatar gave him the bunch of keys: “He’s the only one who knows which one is which,” he shrugged.

Shiny, beautiful multicoloured fabric covers protect the six computers from dust. They’re networked, with a printer, but there’s no internet because viruses would plague them. The covers were made next door in the sewing room where a dozen black sewing machines sit on work benches along the walls. The work benches were made in the carpentry room another door along, as were the display shelves for the pottery room. The kids all pointed out a horse’s head, painted gold with wild green eyes and flared nostrils.

“Saddam made this,” they said, showing us the picture of the boy modelling the head on the centre’s leaflet.

“And this is me,” said Omar, a thirteen year old boy with strikingly blue eyes, indicating the photo of a couple of kids learning some martial art and then they all took turns to identify themselves in the football team photo.

The last room off the yard which serves as volleyball court, football pitch, play space and anything else is the music room. Marwan and Omar picked up hand drums and fell into rhythm together, the other kids diving in to join them. Opposite the youth centre is the theatre where we did the show, where the kids do drama. It was a holiday for the Kurdish festival of Nawroz, the Tree Day, the Goddess Day, the beginning of the year and the spring, so no one was in school.

If anyone ever doubted the value of creativity for kids, the smiling faces and shining eyes at Bayaa ought to make it clear. I wish there were enough of these for every child in Iraq.