"What I said about Khaled al Rahhal some years ago still applies: he recaptures the element of joy in ordinary life more than any other. His knowledge of the older alleys of Baghdad (which goes back to his boyhood and
adolescence) is first-hand, and having gone himself once through
the agony of the gutter he has come out with drawings, paintings and sculptures mostly related in theme to this basic experience, but suffused with power and existential joy, never plagued by sentimentality.


His large stone statue of an Iraqi woman and child, in Baghdad's Zowra Park, has the sensuous qualities he portrays best: a seeming flight expressive of the relish and love of life. The same thing may be said of his sculptures of heads, or horses, or bulls: they are charged with an inner power that seems to erupt in all directions."

- Jabra Ibrahim Jabra