Rahim Alhaj. Photo by Douglas Kent Hall.

A mother and child are walking through an open-air marketplace in Baghdad when an explosion shreds the air. The smoke clears, the mother is gone, the child searches for her in vain.

Homing pigeons circle desperately over a house whose roof, blown away by a direct hit, once served as their nesting place—and as the secret meeting place for forbidden trysts between a Sunni and a Shiite.

A handicapped teenage boy frantically attempts to flee from an attack by car bomb and automatic weapons, all but certain of his impending death.

In many Iraqi conversations, anxious relief surfaces in phrases such as “The explosion happened. I was so lucky” or “I was almost. . . .”

Oud player/composer Rahim Alhaj, a native of Iraq and a naturalized American citizen, came into possession of a number of letters written by Iraqis who described such events, experienced during the American occupation and the subsequent hideous sectarian violence. Their personal stories so touched Alhaj that he determined to give them voice in music, composing Letters from Iraq, Music for Oud and String Quintet, in a white heat in 2014 and 2015. The eight short pieces, faithful and powerfully emotional reflections of the writers’ experiences, will make their New Mexican debut this Sunday at Chatter, and the album, recorded in Albuquerque by New Mexican musicians, will be released on February 10 on the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label. Continue reading →