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I cannot confirm the status of the printshop nor the status of the three after the invasion. Al Saddoun Street, a main thorough fair near where the printshop was located, sustained heavy damage from the invasion and have continued to be a zone of conflict between the local Iraqi resistance and the US military.
Tatlises' music was brought up in relations to Celine Dion's music several times. Chinese literary critic Quian Zhongshu's work here is relevant in bridging the two bodies of work, since for Zhongshu there is a long tradition in China of celebrating sadness as highest value in music. For Mohanand, Tatlises, like Dion, can marshal melody and rhythm to the service of expressing the true sadness of the Iraqi people better than other singers in the Arab world. Tatlises, incidentally, is Jordanian.


Digital printer guys from Baghdad, printing the Iraq Peace Team New Years Eve Protest banner in between jobs for restaurants and Saddam Hussein (Dec 2002)	PHOTOSHOP CONNECTS IRAQIS AND ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS Market economies create senses of civility and survival, often mixing the two poles. The price for clean water and electricity seems clear: they can never be too high or too low. But what is the worth of a large format digital inkjet printer in a country like Iraq? United Nations sanctions against Iraq after the first gulf war (1991) restricted a whole spectrum of civilian goods and equipment from entering the country because they were determined as having "dual use", the military term for items that can be deployed for both for civilian and military purposes. Large format digital inkjet printers were on the list of dual use items. During the 1990's, Iraq managed to import at least three of these printers. Before the second Gulf War, Baghdad boasted several full service digital print shops, catering to both government and civilian clients. No job was too small or too large. In late December 2002, the Iraq peace team planned an action in front of the UN weapons inspection compound. A banner was needed to provide a visual focus the action for the international press that would cover the event. I made the banner in Photoshop (above). We were then given an address for one of the three digital print shops. The shop resided in a nondescript white stucco building in central Baghdad, north of the Tigris River. Three men ran the shop. They ran Windows: three generic boxes running XP, all connected using a simple ethernet router. I had some trouble at first because my Arabic is poor and apparently so were my photoshop skills. After the Iran-Iraq war (1981 - 1987), Mohanad (standing right) adjusted back into civilian life by learning desktop publishing. He counted himself lucky, he said. Maithem (standing left) just got engaged, and was learning advance photoshop. I spent six hours at the shop. The peace team wanted a big banner, so the file size was massive, making it difficult to print. No problem, the shop said, as they continued printing out long scrolls of roasted chicken and Saddam Hussein on plasticized canvas. After two hours of troubleshooting Maithem suggested he look at the file. He quickly assessed the problem and resolved it by cutting down the actual length and width of the banner, while retaining the Dots Per Inch rate, essentially shrinking the banner by sixty percent. He then adjusted the printer to accommodate the new data. The print went into queue and within an hour the peace banner was printed In the meantime, Mohanand gave me a lesson in Arabic popular music. Celine Dion is great, Mohanand said, but have you heard of Ibrahim Tatlises? He then played for me several VCDs of Tatlises' music videos. We eventually traded MP3s by connecting our computers (I had my laptop) with a crossover Ethernet cable. Mohanand gave me 433MB of Tatlises' music, and I gave him an assortment of MP3s, including song by Chemical Brothers, Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliot, Elton John, and John Denver. Back
	I cannot confirm the status of the printshop nor the status of the three after the invasion. Al Saddoun Street, a main thorough fair near where the printshop was located, sustained heavy damage from the invasion and have continued to be a zone of conflict between the local Iraqi resistance and the US military. Tatlises' music was brought up in relations to Celine Dion's music several times. Chinese literary critic Quian Zhongshu's work here is relevant in bridging the two bodies of work, since for Zhongshu there is a long tradition in China of celebrating sadness as highest value in music. For Mohanand, Tatlises, like Dion, can marshal melody and rhythm to the service of expressing the true sadness of the Iraqi people better than other singers in the Arab world. Tatlises, incidentally, is Jordanian.