Basra’s battered culture re-emerges

BASRA - The unveiled female dancers shimmied across the stage in ornate red dresses, their hips and arms flowing to the drum beats of Basra’s famous Khashaba music as the audience clapped along.

The performance, held by the Basra Band for Folklore Arts during a festival to honour the city being designated Iraq’s cultural capital for 2009, stood in stark contrast to a festival held last year. Fearing Basra’s notoriously brutal militias, the dancers then donned cloaks and veils that revealed nothing but their eyes.