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azinorum -> RE: Where are you now? (5/17/2007 5:12:40 PM)
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New article about the Alwiyah Club!
At Social Club for Baghdad's Elite, Escape Is a Weekly Game of Bingo
By Karin Brulliard Washington Post Staff Writer - Sunday, May 13, 2007
BAGHDAD -- A few dozen members of this city's privileged classes chatted on fraying armchairs at the Alwiyah Club on a recent Saturday, waiting for the weekly bingo game to start. The caller usually responsible for yelling out English letters and Arabic numbers -- "B-sabaa!" for B7 -- had not shown up since his sister was abducted and slain a few weeks before. But at this colonial-era social club, one of the last oases for the Baghdad elite, bingo is never canceled.
"We insist, so that people can always say, 'There is bingo,' " said Faris al-Douri, the club's secretary general.”We tried to save what we could save."
In the club's cavelike pub, the bartender still slides tumblers of whiskey across the teak bar to men in suits. On the dusty tennis courts, players still hit aces and break to sip tea from creamy porcelain cups.
"Nothing has changed," said Aayo Khaya, 65, a gaptoothed waiter who has worked for 35 years at the Alwiyah.
In fact, nearly everything has. This central Baghdad club, founded in 1924 by the British explorer and diplomat Gertrude Bell, has always considered itself a place apart. The bar serves English spirits, but not the Iraqi liquor arak. In the early years, before it opened to Iraq's upper crust, only foreigners were allowed; even now, new members must have university degrees. Yet despite the Alwiyah's efforts to preserve its image as a haven from the despair outside its walled gardens, the despair has crept in.
The bartender recently found a bloody bullet inside an envelope left on his car windshield, the latest threat from religious extremists who condemn the club's free flow of alcohol. A curfew means no more glittery galas under the seven-tiered ballroom chandelier, and a water shortage means just one of three swimming pools will be filled this summer. Most notably, the club's lifeblood -- Baghdad's elite -- has nearly vanished. On most days, attendance is 5 percent of what it was before the war.
"To be frank, most of the principal members of the club and their families are out of Iraq," said Douri, shrugging one April day in the club's management office as BBC news played on a television in the corner. "You've heard about all these explosions."
Yet the club has tenaciously held on to its long-standing bingo tradition. The other Saturday, club member Hassan Hadi Kadhim proudly carried a stack of bingo cards -stamped "EZ Play. Made in USA." - into the club's Sun Lounge, a hall decorated with Persian carpets and a rickety piano with no bench. Like nearly everything else in the Alwiyah, the cards were worn. Kadhim, 42, displayed them as if they were antique books.
Players who want a card pay Kadhim 1,000 dinars, about 75 cents, and hand over a piece of identification as collateral. The money goes into a pot from which cash prizes - usually about $3 per bingo - are pulled.
"It is a very nice, simple game," said Kadhim, a round-bellied man with sparkling brown eyes. In the back of the room, Zaid Mohammed, a 20-year-old engineering student in a dapper gray suit, shared a banquette with his parents. He tapped his fingers to the beat of the pop music that blared incongruously through the sedately adorned room.
"He is the one who brought me here," sighed his father, Mohammed Jassem, 55, with a wry smile. "I want to sleep."
"I want to have fun!" Mohammed protested. He had won last Saturday, a hopeful moment in a monotonous week.
But the bingo is not the fun it used to be, he conceded. Before the war, the game was played outside at night, under the tall palms. Electronic light boards displayed the numbers as they were called. On holidays, the game was elevated to "Grand Bingo," and winners reaped fancy watches. More than 1,000 people would play -- meaning the cash, and the games, lasted hours.
"You can say that such a thing has been exterminated," Kadhim said, glancing at the small crowd. Now the special occasion prizes are air conditioners and cellphones, more useful wartime items. Douri describes the club in terms of before and after April 9 -- the date in 2003 when U.S.-led forces drove President Saddam Hussein from power. In the post-invasion chaos, Shiite militiamen took over the clubhouse for a few months, he said. Club leaders later reclaimed it with the help of the U.S. military and found it looted and damaged.
The Alwiyah remains a sanctuary of sorts. Female members freely wear tight, western clothing and smoke with men. Guards and checkpoints have kept violence out. Sectarianism is frowned upon as "ignorant," said Douri, a bespectacled man with thinning gray hair. He and other club leaders keep trying. They hired a band to play at noon on Wednesdays. Douri plans to launch bridge tournaments once he finds a member still living in Iraq who can teach others to play. To keep up revenue - an individual membership costs about $375 initially, then about $20 yearly - leaders have opened the door to more families, a move some longtimers complain has let in riffraff.
"All the good people have fled," said Jassem, a member for 12 years. "And those who stayed right here, they have no wings to fly."
Jassem said he and his wife, Fetooh Mehemed, 51, come now only for the sake of their son, who has little else to do but sleep and study and is too afraid to drive himself. Their old club friends have escaped, Jassem said, leaning back on the banquette, his eyes moistening.
"The Iraqi people were expected to be happy when the American army got here," he said, removing his glasses to wipe away tears. "But they crushed the happiness in our hearts."
The music paused. "The cards are ready," the stand-in bingo caller announced.
Mohammed returned with three cards. Up front, the caller enthusiastically announced number-letter combinations: "I-27! N-34!"
Mohammed slid a tiny red plastic window across the I-27 on his card. Moments later, he slid it back. A man in the corner had yelled "Bingo!"
Mohammed had begged his friends to come to bingo, but none would brave the streets. Besides, he said, his circle of friends has shrunk as their families flee Iraq. Most of those who remain are acquaintances who tease him for his shaggy hair and his affinity for American singers such as Britney Spears and Lionel Ritchie.
"Every two months, I must look for new friends," Mohammed said. Over the next half-hour, a few more victors claimed cash, and riotous laughter rang out at a table full of men downing Carlsberg beers. Nearby, Saif Issam, 26, and a pal drank Pepsis and smoked French cigarettes. It was Issam's first trip to the Alwiyah in a long time, and he had spent 90 minutes in a taxi to get here. The small crowd shocked him.
"This club isn't worth it," Issam said. "Maybe in 25 years it will get better."
Soon the game ended, less than an hour after it began. Mohammed and his family gathered their things to leave. They had lost at bingo and probably wouldn't have electricity when they got home, his father said with a laugh. Then his smile faded.
"Iraqi society is just like any other society. Put it in a pure land, with pure water and you will see that it will give you the best roses," Jassem said. "Any society in the world that would suffer the circumstances we suffer, it would collapse."
Suddenly the music began to blast again, and joyful hollers came from the table of beer drinkers. With glasses in their hands and bleary smiles on their faces, they had risen to dance.
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