Glastonbury Festival More Fun Than Flagellation



Your author, being over the age of 20, having half a brain and having already seen Wilco and Television in a humane environment more than once, chose to skip this year's Glastonbury Festival. But what am I really comparing the experience to? The Guardian's Iraqi columnist, Ghaith Abdul Ahad calls the 3 days of mud and rotten rock'n'roll "the biggest number of happy people I had ever seen in my life".

You see, my whole experience of festivals comes from two places: one is the mass spontaneous festivals we used to have in Iraq in the "good old days" of Saddam Hussein, celebrating everything from the anniversary of our victory over the Americans and their allies in the 1991 war to the grand celebrations of his eminence the necessity-leader's birthday. The best one of this kind was actually staged to commemorate the 100% yes vote Saddam got in a referendum on his presidency, which is kind of like having Glastonbury to celebrate the Hutton report.

The other festivals I have enjoyed back home are the Shia Ashura, and Arbaeen, where Shia Muslims commemorate the death of Imam Hussein 14 centuries ago, by chanting, flagellating and dancing with swords swinging over their heads in processions that re-enact the eternal tragedy of the imam's martyrdom. So if you are impressed by Glastonbury, imagine more than a million people crammed into the alleys of one small town.

It may surprise you to know that if there is one thing the Iraqi festivals miss, it's the true sense of having fun - of enjoying ourselves in ways other than flagellation. All festivals in Iraq are about one of two things: either the worship of the imam or the worship of the leader.

In summary, I think that most of the problems we have in my fucked-up country and in my fucked-up part of the world (the Middle East) come from the fact that we are a bunch of sexually frustrated wackos living in something that could easily be described as a shithole with no hope and no future.

Posted: Mon - June 28, 2004 at 10:27 AM      

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