The complexity of visualizing the negotiated spatiality situated between memory, imagination and trauma across the years between 2003 and 2020 for Iraqis has required a palimpsest method of deep mapping that cut through conceptual, spatial and geographical layers of information. Maps produced conceptualize the spatial storytelling of Iraqis with lived experience of war and violence…
Protecting heritage – map 1
Dr Rawaa Qasha is an Assistant Professor and Director of Scholarships and Cultural Relations at the University of Mosul, a Christian from Alqosh, North of Mosul. Rawaa’s map attempts to preserve the heritage, identity and geography of the Christian village of Alqosh. Rawaa’s family and ancestors have strong connections to the mountainous landscape, the monastery…
Retraumatizing memory – map 2
A Kurd from Sulaimani, Dr Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin, is the Director of the Digital Cultural Heritage Research Centre (DCH) and Lecturer at the City Planning Engineering Department, Sulaimani Polytechnic University (SPU). As Rozhen was telling her story, she pictured an image that collided with a distant memory of the Kurdish uprising in 1991, where a…
Lingering trauma – map 3
Ali Al-Baroodi, from Mosul, is a photojournalist expert on Mosul, translator and an academic at the Department of Translation, Mosul University. Ali’s map is a homage to home, a home lost and re-found after enduring multiple traumas materially and conceptually during the Battle for Mosul in 2014. The map shows the moment shrapnel entered the…
Killing cities – map 4
Raad Sultan, originally from Mosul, is an Architect and a Faculty member of the School of Architecture at Mosul University, currently a PhD researcher at the University of Plymouth, UK. The more responsibilities people had the more varied scales of violence they were exposed to. Raad’s map illustrates the routes across several parts of the…
Traumatizing home – map 5
Amera Ibrahim is a biologist who at the time of interview was working as an associate for Sinjar Academy (a charity supporting the education of Yazidis in Iraq) who is originally from the North of Sinjar. Born shortly before 2003 in Sinjar, Amera’s encounter with violence and trauma was at the hands of ISIS in…
Rupturing homes – map 6
Shahab Sameer is a writer and a member of The Union for the Literaries and Writers in Iraq, originally from the South of Sinjar. His map represents the trauma of thousands of Yazidis from Sinjar who were brutally uprooted from their village by ISIS attacks in 2014. Identity through the material objects of Yazidis’ traditional…
Escaping domestic & urban violence – map 7
Originally from the highly dense mixed neighbourhood of Adhamiyah in Baghdad, Basma’s marital and social life compounded with violence on the streets of Baghdad drove her to leave the country taking risky and treacherous routes into the UK with her young daughter. Basma Al-Azzawi, is a Baghdadi ceramicist and currently a single mother seeking asylum…
Concealing lives behind an iron gate – map 8
Zeinab’s map oscillates between refuge and trauma as her life was constantly threatened by violence due to her father’s activism and refusal to join the Ba’ath Party while being a well-known radiologist in one of Baghdad’s main hospitals, Yarmouk, and being an active member of the Communist Party. They moved across Iraq from south to…
Creating domestic spaces of refuge – map 9
This piece is a joint autoethnographic map of the seemingly fleeting yet deeply traumatic few months that followed the night Baghdad was struck in March 2003. Sana and Farah lived in Baghdad within two kilometres of each other, their friendship was strengthened by a shared fear of violence in addition to their family ties. They…
Violating homes – map 10
Dr Ula Merie is a Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Babylon, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Architecture, Iraq, originally from Baghdad. Sectarian violence in Baghdad between the years of 2006 and 2007 tore part of Ula’s house to pieces displacing her and her family multiple times into different neighbourhoods across and over the…
Navigating urban fabric – map 11
Dr Dhirgham Alobaydi, from Baghdad, is the Chair of the Department of Architecture Engineering at the University of Baghdad, College of Engineering. Dhirgham’s map traverses national and international borders with several lines of mobility as Dhirgham and his family sought refuge though back alleys and other difficult routes between city and countryside, and national and…
Traversing city & countryside – map 12
Being the only female teenager in her family, Sanar lived an overly-protected life despite her ambitions. Living in the highly conservative and traditional Mahmudiyah area south of Baghdad meant that the lines between the urban and the rural were blurred just as the lines between freedom and oppression were obscured. Sanar Hasan is an award-winning…
Sheltering in mud houses in the south – map 13
Professor Jaafar Jotheri is a Geo-archaeologist at the University of Qadisiyah. Jaafar is originally from Babylon but in 2003, he was studying for his Masters degree in Geology at the University of Baghdad. Jaafar’s map reveals the traces of refuge-making in the continuous charting of routes of mobility: from the city to the village, from…
Opening doorways between two homes – map 14
Born and bred in Basrah, Abrar Wadi is a Civil Engineer and a feminist activist. Abrar takes pride in her heritage and activism as they come in regular friction with patriarchal societal traditions and taboos. Born during the years of UN Sanctions, she was a child in 2003 who became addicted to the Iraqi flat…
Cutting through violence between cities – map 15
Originally from Basrah, Dr Nawrast Sabeh studied geology in Mosul for her Masters and PhD between 2003 and 2013. Over the span of 10 years Nawrast had to cut through the country multiple journeys alongside the river Tigris between the two cities. While she was living the violence in Basrah, she was thinking of the…