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01/12/2011 22:08
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The musician, Ranya Nashat Listening for harmony By Dan Zak, Saturday, November 26 BAGHDAD — It was a full house. People even sat on the stairs, listening to Iraq's National Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven's Third in the National Theater, which was pillaged and charred during the anarchy following the 2003 U.S. invasion. The scene in October would have been unimaginable five years ago, when Iraq was at its worst, or 11 years ago, when Ranya Nashat was first assigned the French horn in school and was hypnotized by its shiny brass and majestic tones. "It's miraculous," she said of the show. "When I started with the orchestra in 2007, there wouldn't be more than 45 people in the audience." Now 19 and starting college in Baghdad, Nashat plays the horn with the national symphony and the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, which recruits its budding talent from many corners of the country. She sometimes practices in the bathroom at home, in the southern Baghdad neighborhood, using a towel to mute the horn's resonance so she doesn't disturb her parents and younger brother. Horn music has been the melodic counterpoint to a childhood of discord: The agony of learning a close friend had died during the massacre at Our Lady of Salvation Church last year. The yearning of the horn solo during the third movement of Brahms's symphony No. 3. The sharp disbelief over insurgents gunning down her uncle in 2005 as he stood in the doorway of his home. The quieting effect of the horn on the frenetic violins in the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth. She doesn't know how she and her peers survived their traumatic childhoods. "We were so young," she said. "I can't remember how we dealt with it. I guess we just got used to it." When asked to define the American legacy over mochaccinos at a coffee shop near al-Watheq Square in Baghdad last month, she stared off into the distance and sighed. "Everything and nothing," she said. "I'd choose 2003 before now. It was safer. You need safety in order to live and evolve and be an active member of society."
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