MOSUL // When ISIL controlled eastern Mosul, playing music was a crime punishable by lashes. Today, music stall owner Mohammed Mohsin is making up for lost time.
The extremist group’s religious police confiscated and burned his CDs after taking over the city in a lightning 2014 offensive.
But Iraqi forces regained control of east Mosul in January and Mr Mohsin set up his stall again on a pavement in a busy shopping district.
He plays pop songs from a small set of speakers connected to a computer as he lays out CDs by famous Arab artists.
Iraq’s best known pop star Kadhim Al Sahir and Iraqi-Saudi singer Majid Al Muhandis take pride of place.
“Music is a pleasure that people were deprived of under ISIL,” Mr Mohsin said.
He remembers the day the ISIL fanatics ordered him to shut down his stall. “They told me: ‘You have to close. All this, music, songs, dance, it’s forbidden. Forbidden in the name of religion,’” he said. “They took my stuff, my CDs and other things ... they burned them in the street.”
Anyone listening to music risked being summoned by the religious police and whipped. “Now, thank God, Daesh is gone and the shops are re-opening.”
Iraqi forces are still locked in fierce clashes to oust ISIL from west Mosul and muffled explosions rumble across the Tigris River which divides the city. But in the eastern half of the city, and despite the destruction left by the fighting, life is returning to normal, bit by bit. The return of music after the enforced silence represents one step back to how life used to be.
Across the street from Mr Mohsin’s stall is Mosul University, or what remains of it. Formerly one of Iraq’s main academic institutions, today it is little more than a pile of ruins, but residents have begun the titanic task of clearing away the rubble left by the fighting.
Iraqi flags have replaced the black flags of ISIL, and Iraq’s federal police patrol streets where the feared religious police roamed until just weeks ago.
Women now go out in public without the all-covering black veil imposed by the fanatics.
“We had to hide our faces,” said Um Yousef, who now wears a simple shawl. “We couldn’t walk around without being accompanied by a man.”
Nearby, women’s clothing stores display fine lingerie, elegant skirts, flowery trousers. All were forbidden by ISIL. .
One even displays a long tunic adorned with the inscription in English: “Paris is always a good idea”.
Small pleasures, such as sitting in a cafe drinking sweet black tea, smoking cigarettes and watching American TV on a wall-mounted screen, are permissible again.
But they never forget that the battle is not over for everyone.
“Here it’s OK now ... even if the city needs cleaning up,” said Mohammad Mahmoud, 28. “But over there, in west Mosul, it’s still war.”
* Agence France-Presse
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