by Jean Sasson
Sati’s youthful enthusiasm proved so disruptive that his father sent him to school at an earlier age than most. When he was only five, his mathematics teacher had shown the class how to solve a particular problem in five complex steps. Sati quietly told him that it could be solved in only two simple steps. The instructor was irritated at the brash child and ordered him to come to the board and make a clown of himself so they could have a good laugh. Instead, and to the amazement of his teacher, Sati quickly scribbled out his two-part solution. Sati was so gifted that he frequently matriculated through two full school grades each school year. When he graduated with highest honors from his secondary school, Sati was the youngest graduate ever in the entire Ottoman Empire. When he was only thirteen, Sati was accepted into Istanbul’s Royal Shahany School, one of the Empire’s most exclusive schools, where he received his B.A. in political science in only a few years. By this time, his fame as an intellectual had spread all the way to the Sultan’s throne. As soon as he graduated, he was appointed governor of Bayna in Yugoslavia, and while fulfilling his duties as governor he also presided over the educational system there.
Sati’s time away from Istanbul and close to Europe was the most enlightening and inspiring phase of his educational life. He traveled into neighboring European countries and haunted their bookstores. He frequented the libraries of Rome and Paris and took part in many educational conferences. He befriended top European educators and absorbed their theories. Sati’s greatest interest was studying the nationalistic traits of other people, so that as Arab nationalists they would be prepared to form governments and institutions worthy of their people.
In 1908 Sati returned to Istanbul a twenty-eight-year-old man, wise to the ways of the world but saddened to witness the closing days of the Ottoman Empire. During the final years of the Ottomans, just as Jafar worked to create a stable rule, Sati helped to vastly improve the educational system. He was so successful in his official position that, after the fall of the Empire, President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, was known to say repeatedly, “My only desire is to rule Turkey with the same excellence that Sati Al-Husri administered his schools!”
Sati’s experiences with his numerous stepmothers when he was a child had closed his mind to the idea of early marriage. All his focus was on his work; his only social pleasure was listening to opera and symphonies. But his profession as an educator brought him to love, though the route was circuitous. Sati was head of the Yeni Mektebi (the New Schools) in Istanbul, where he experienced great difficulty finding instructors fluent in English, French and German. One day, one of his closest friends, Jalal Hussain, mentioned that his only sister Jamila was highly educated. Although Jamila was exceedingly wealthy, she had grown jaded and disheartened with her life of useless luxury. Jalal believed his sister would be an ideal teacher to work in the new school system for his progressive-thinking friend, Sati Al-Husri.
Sati fell in love with Jamila Hussain Pasha during their first meeting, and until she agreed to marry him, all his energies were turned toward courting this extraordinary woman. Sati’s marriage to a beautiful Turkish woman whose father was the Minister of the Navy and whose mother was a sultana, or princess, in the Sultan’s royal court surprised everyone who knew him.
Jamila Hussain Pasha was the only daughter in a family of six children and was the favorite of her father, Hussain Husni Porsun, who was from Kosovo, which was ruled by the Ottomans. He became an admiral in the Ottoman Navy and his distinguished career led him to the high-ranking position of Minister of the Navy over the entire Ottoman fleet. Jamila’s mother, Melek, was Ottoman, and as a first cousin of the Sultan on her mother’s side, was a member of the ruling family. Melek was a famous beauty with skin so white that it was guarded carefully from the rays of the sun, and green eyes so brilliant that it was said they flashed bright lights when she was angry. Melek was so exceedingly wealthy that her riches made her arrogant. During a terrible famine, she insisted that her six white carriage horses receive excellent grooming and the finest foods, even as Ottoman citizens were falling dead in the streets from starvation. She even pranced those horses through the famished crowds begging at the palace walls. She was known to burn money, because she enjoyed the astonishment on the faces of observers, and her home was so massive, with more than seventy bedrooms, that after her death it was converted into an enormous hotel.
Jamila was fortunate because her father was not only an educated man, but was kind and interested in having his daughter complete her education as his sons had. But in the Ottoman world, the education of females was so rare that he arranged to send Jamila to the United States to study. When this extraordinary news spread through the palace, the Sultan heard about the matter and summoned Hussain into his offices and told him that he did not believe in educating women. The Sultan said that all one had to do was take a look at Hussain’s own wife Melek to know that independence in a woman brought nothing but grief to the men in the family.
Hussain didn’t know what to say, because he knew that the Sultan and Melek matched each other with evil, and he had been given the remarkable information that upon awakening each morning, the first question the Sultan posed was, “What outrageous act did cousin Melek commit during the night?”
But after the Sultan expressed his desire that Jamila not leave the country to seek an education, Hussain could not go against his wishes, for that would have been a death sentence. So Hussain secretly hired tutors, and his lovely Jamila was schooled in her home. She became highly educated and fluent in many languages, and knew as much as any man about sociology, physiology and psychology. Mayada knew this was the major force in the love that Sati felt for Jamila, because he was a man of such intellectual brilliance that an uneducated woman would have been unable even to gain his attention, and certainly could not win his undying love and affection.
Jamila could easily see that Sati Al-Husri was a man unlike others, and she returned his respect and love. The couple were married and went on to have two children: a daughter, Mayada’s mother Salwa, and a son, Mayada’s uncle, Khaldun.
As the only daughter, Jamila inherited her mother’s possessions, which she passed on to her daughter, Salwa, who passed those treasured items on to her own daughters. Mayada inherited some valuable heirlooms and still possessed the “Decoration of Perfection” presented to Melek by the Sultan. This proclamation, consisting of a document with the seal of the Sultan, was written in gold and said that on the occasion of Melek’s eighteenth birthday she would be bestowed with various districts of land. The document came with a sash and medal made of diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Mayada had inherited one of the large diamonds and the document, but she was forced to sell the diamond in 1996 when she was living through the sanctions in Iraq and desperate to feed her children. But she kept the rare Ottoman document and hoped to pass it on to her own daughter, Fay.
The crumbling of the Ottoman Empire led to such a sudden break with tradition that many of the old ways lay in ruin, but this also paved the way for new ideas fostered by men such as Sati Al-Husri. He was so brilliant that kings sought his opinions and appointed him to positions of power.
Mayada’s memories of her grandfather Sati were interrupted by the sound of a woman weeping. It took Mayada several minutes to adjust to the fluorescent light overhead, but as she rubbed her eyes and looked for the source of the weeping, she saw that the one grieving was the younger of the two women who had been incarcerated earlier in the day.
By this time other shadow women had gathered around the young woman, Aliya. She was so grieved that nothing they did or said brought her the slightest comfort. When Aliya began to wail, Samara took her face in her hands and whispered with authority, “You must control yourself, dear heart. The guards will follow your wails like bloodhounds follow the scent of a rabbit.” She added, “Do you want them to take you away for some midnight sport?”
Mayada shivered at Samara’s words, but they worked to dry Aliya’
s tears.
When Mayada had returned to the cell a few hours earlier, she had been too distraught about her own situation to notice much about the two new shadow women. But now she studied Aliya curiously. Aliya had arrived with enough supplies to last through a lengthy siege. She had blankets and pillows and extra clothes and copies of the Holy Quran and other Islamic prayer books, and even a supply of decent food, which was rarely seen inside the prison walls of Baladiyat.
Mayada had believed that no woman in the cell could be more beautiful than Samara, but Aliya was tall and slender with a lovely face. Her most striking feature was her unusually large and expressive black eyes.
Aliya settled on the floor with one leg crossed over the other, Iraqi style, and the other shadow women sat beside her. Mayada joined them, but she was not accustomed to floor sitting, because her mother had insisted that only an ill-bred servant would sit in such a way. She had taught her daughters to sit on chairs or sofas with their legs held in a proper manner.
So it didn’t surprise Mayada that within a short time, her legs began to grow numb and she began to shift one way or another. Aliya looked at her with interest and asked, “You are new here?”
Mayada replied, “Not so new. I arrived the day before you came.”
Aliya bowed her head. “I have been in detention for over two years,” she said. “I have been warned that I can expect a fifteen-year sentence.”
Mayada now understood Aliya’s enormous sadness, for she was agonized by the idea of being held in Baladiyat for just another day and night. She decided that if she were notified that she would be incarcerated for fifteen years, she would end her life by chewing through her own flesh and digging her teeth into her veins, even though to commit suicide is considered a great sin in Islam.
Aliya spoke in a sweet, low voice. “I am from the Southern Governorate of Basra. My husband was a trained engineer but remained jobless for years. After the birth of our first child he became so fraught with worry that he left Basra and traveled to Jordan to look for work. He was unable to find anything in his profession and when he did find employment as a baker we considered it a miracle.
“After two years he had saved enough money to rent a room in Amman, and once he had furnished the room with a bed, a table, two chairs, a small refrigerator and hot plate, he sent for me and our little daughter Suzan. He said he had missed us so much that it was affecting his baking. He confessed that he had burned more than a dozen loaves while mourning the fact that his child was growing older without her father to guide her. He was certain that his depression would soon cause him to burn down the bakery, so he contacted my brother, a general in the Iraqi Army. I know it is unusual for a Shiite to be a general, but he was never offered big commands or given salary increases, like a Sunni.
“My husband asked my brother to prepare our documents. And he did. My brother is a generous man, and he also provided 700,000 Iraqi dinars [$350.00] for our passport tax and then gave me 100,000 dinars [$50.00] for the trip. My brother even agreed to travel with me as my required Mahram.”
After the war deaths of so many husbands and fathers, and the economic weakening inside Iraq connected to the sanctions, some Iraqi women had slipped across the border to Jordan to work as prostitutes to earn money to feed their hungry children. When Saddam discovered Iraqi women were dishonoring the country by selling their bodies, he ordered that all women must travel with a Mahram, who could be her husband or any male relative to whom a Muslim woman cannot be married, such as her father, brother, uncle, nephew, step-father, father-in-law or son-in-law.
Aliya continued her story. “At the Iraqi customs in Traibeel, our passports were taken away to be stamped and soon I was asked to step aside with my daughter and my brother. Pandemonium broke out when two secret policemen began to beat my brother with their fists. He fainted from shock when one of the men lunged at him with an electrical prod. My three-year-old daughter began to screech in fear. Other travelers began to shout and shift away from us. Finally, to restore order in the customs office, the guards removed us to a small office. They were screaming and shouting, demanding to know where I got my passport. I was struck mute with terror but, thanks be to Allah, my brother had revived by this time and he assured the men that he had requested a reputable passport bureau in Basra to issue the passport. When he went to collect the passport, nothing had been amiss.
“That horrible man with the electrical prod shouted that I was traveling with a stolen passport. He was so furious that he shocked both me and my brother.
“The men did not believe our innocence and transported the three of us to Al-Ramadi Detention Centre. We were locked up for three weeks. No one came to question us or torture us. It appeared that we had been forgotten. Finally my brother was released without explanation, but he could do or say nothing to make a difference in my case, since I was the passport holder. I was detained for six months in that first prison. My daughter was imprisoned with me. My poor baby was taken with me into the interrogation room. She was forced to watch while I was beaten.” Aliya’s face filled with sorrow at the memory. “The most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life was to muffle my screams while I was being tortured. They beat me, but I bit my tongue until it bled. I wanted to spare my child the terror of hearing her mother screech. One of the more vicious guards once tied my baby to a table, taunting me with the threat of torturing Suzan. I was tied to a chair so I could do nothing but watch as they lashed little Suzan. My baby shrieked until her belly button flipped inside out, and when they saw what had happened, they howled with laughter.
“I had never seen a baby’s belly button flip like that. I asked for a doctor but of course, they said no. So I wrapped my head scarf around her stomach. I thought her belly button might flip back inside, but it didn’t. But the worst came later: During one of the torture sessions, two of the men threatened to rape me and Suzan. Thank God, they didn’t rape my baby.”
Aliya paused and gestured in the direction of another shadow woman who was sitting alone in the corner and said, “Rasha was there with me during the worst of it.”
Mayada and the other shadow women turned to look at Rasha.
Mayada thought it strange that this particular shadow woman appeared to have no concern for Aliya’s situation.
Aliya waited for Rasha to confirm her story but Rasha did nothing but glare at Aliya before turning her attention to her prayer rug and giving it a thorough shake, refusing to provide Aliya with the confirmation she so desired.
Aliya sighed and told them, “Poor Rasha is as innocent as I am. We were strangers throughout our lives. We are now linked in a way we could never have imagined.” Aliya then turned to Rasha. “Can I tell your story as well, Rasha?”
Rasha refused to speak, but she grunted, and Aliya took the bitter sound as assent.
Aliya continued. “One day I was sitting in my cell holding little Suzan in my arms when the cell door was opened with a great force. I cringed, believing that I was going to be taken away for further beatings. Instead, a woman who had been tortured almost to death was thrown to the floor. Her face was raw with deep cuts, and her skull had been cracked. Blood oozed out of a hole in her head that appeared to have been made by an electric drill. Three of her fingernails had been ripped out, and so many cigarettes had been put out on her legs that the stench of burnt flesh soon filled the cell. The woman was Rasha.
“Everyone in the cell tended to her in an attempt to save her life. She nearly died two or three times, until finally one of the women convinced the guards to take her to the hospital. She was brought back to the cell the following day but was barely coherent, and it took our most creative nursing skills to nurture her back to life.
“After three days, Rasha regained consciousness. From the moment she opened her eyes, our misery increased.
“You see, the mystery of my passport confiscated at Traibeel was that the passport was in fact Rasha’s passport. Rasha reported losing her passport the year before. She had b
een jailed from that day, and the secret police, believing they were about to break up an important spy ring, intended to force one of us to turn evidence against the other.”
Aliya shook her head with sorrow. “The interrogations became even more brutal than before. Every day, each of us was grilled separately. Then we were interrogated together. Our torturers yanked out Rasha’s fingernails while demanding she tell them who she had sold her passport to. Then they would crush lit cigarettes on my bare legs, insisting that I admit to being in a spy ring with Rasha. Since nothing they claimed was true, neither of us knew a name to give them. Our claims of innocence only evoked more anger and torture.”
To demonstrate how she had suffered, Aliya pulled the fabric of her dress down to her elbow and lifted her skirt to her knees. Several of the shadow women gasped. Aliya’s arms and legs were covered in deep, raw wounds. The worst scars, however, criss-crossed her abdomen and thighs and buttocks, she told them.
Mayada realized fearfully that Aliya’s torturers had stripped her in order to humiliate her while inflicting pain, and she wondered if Aliya had been raped, but she didn’t ask that question, for no Muslim woman would ever admit that she had been dishonored in such a manner.
Aliya said, “For some reason Rasha and I have been moved from one prison to another. The worst prison was in my hometown, Basra. To be so close to home and unable to go home was the greatest torture of all. I knew that my family was only a few streets away from the prison where I languished.” Tears streamed down Aliya’s face but she continued talking. “While we were imprisoned in Basra, there was a small uprising when the population called for the downfall of Saddam. The government immediately claimed that those people had committed mutiny and captured thousands of people, ordering troops to pull down their houses and imprison the inhabitants. Entire families were tossed into prison. Men, women and children were suddenly packed together into cells meant for half the number. People began to die of overcrowding and starvation and disease. I had to watch more than a dozen children slowly dehydrate and die in my own cell. I tried to protect Suzan by keeping her tiny face covered with my abaaya, but it is impossible to keep a child of that age quiet and content enough to remain in her mother’s arms all day and all night. So she caught a terrible infection. One day she started coughing. Then mucus dripped from her nose. Her eyes crusted tight with dried matter. Before long, my baby was whining nonstop. She developed a harsh cough and soon she stopped responding to my voice. I thought she was going to die at any moment.