"Madonna lives here with the Iraqi people," he added, pointing to his heart. "I hope Madonna will know this fact and will come."
U.S. officials, hoping that a still-active cultural exchange program with Iraq can keep alive relations that fell into something of a political coma after the disclosures of U.S. arms sales to Iran, are trying to recruit American talent for the festival.
However, Western diplomats express concern that the Iraqis may be in for a disappointment when it comes to getting big-name U.S. talent.
"The Iraqis want this to be a great festival, like Baalbek in the old days," one diplomat said. "But with the war on, a lot of people are going to be afraid to come."
Bashir dismisses these fears as unfounded, noting that Babylon, 55 miles south of Baghdad on the Euphrates River, is well away from any fighting and has never been bombed. "Babylon is completely safe," he said.
'Capital of Civilization'
Also, "this is not just an Iraqi festival," he added, warming to his favorite subject. "It is a festival for the whole world, because Babylon was the capital of civilization once and has given the world so much. People from all over want to come to Babylon. All the time we have requests."
Talent already signed up for the festival includes ballet troupes from the Soviet Union and France, opera from Italy, folk dancers from Greece, Turkey, Poland and Yugoslavia, flamenco artists from Spain and Bedouin dancers from Saudi Arabia.
"The movie stars who are our guests will each recite the laws of Hammurabi in their own languages," Bashir said. "Everything will be like it was in ancient Babylon," he added. "People will be given Babylonian costumes to wear and newly minted Babylonian money to spend."
To Use Ancient Recipes
Even the food to be served will be based on 2,000-year-old recipes, he said.
The Babylon that teams of Sudanese construction workers are rebuilding on the palm-fringed banks of the Euphrates is the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned from 605 to 562 BC. The much older city of Hammurabi's time, 1792 to 1750 BC, is mostly lost beneath the water table.
The city rising somewhat hurriedly from the ruins in time for the festival is also the one that got such bad reviews in the Bible as the "mother of harlots and of earth's abominations," a reputation that Bashir says is unfair.
"There is good and bad everywhere. So what if they did some bad things back then? What we want to do is to take the good things, the art, the culture and the civilization that Babylon gave to the world, and show them off to people," he said.
And although he does not think of it in quite these terms, what Bashir really wants to do is to prove that the Bible was wrong. For in bringing together musicians from around the world to perform here, Bashir is attempting to grant Babylon a pardon from the biblical sentence imposed upon it in the Book of Revelations, when a "mighty" angel cast a stone into the sea and said:
\o7 So shall Babylon the great city be
thrown down with violence,
and shall be found no more:
and the sound of harpers and minstrels,
of flute players and trumpeters,
shall be heard in thee no more.
\f7
