by Sinan Antoon
Jesus may have entered his heart, she said, but the devil was still in his head! Their mother, who was a relatively recent arrival from the village, only spoke to them and their father in Chaldean. They all understood her but they answered her in Arabic.
3
The graduating class of 1950 stood in front of the main building of Baghdad College, right under the large sign with the school’s name emblazoned on it, in both English and Arabic, along with a short reference to the Jesuits who had founded the school and taught there. Seven students stood in the back row against the school’s imposing door. One step down, another eight formed the middle row. Father O’Casey, who was from Boston, stood in the center of the first row flanked by three students on either side.
Second from the right in the back row was Youssef, whose face and upper chest alone were visible. Standing between Nasim Hizkayl and Salem Hussein, his long arms were spread like wings across his friends’ shoulders, drawing them closer. It was not surprising that the three of them lined up next to each other: they always sat together in class and spent recess together in the quad—so much so, that Father O’Casey called them the ‘pack of wolves.’
“No, Father,” Youssef had told him, “we’re a harmless flock of birds.”
Soon after graduation, the flock dispersed, however. Salem went to medical school and his father, who was a prominent businessman, interceded on Youssef’s behalf and got him his first job as a legal translator with the Iraqi Date Palm Authority. If it weren’t for the scholarships the school offered to outstanding students from modest families, Youssef would never have attended Baghdad College. Nasim, for his part, went to work for the import-export firm called Andrew Weir. Although their lives got busy, the three of them would meet up from time to time, and they never imagined that the flock would lose one of its members.
Just weeks before the photograph was taken, the government passed the 1950 emigration law stripping Iraqi Jews of their
citizenship. Yet Nasim appeared unworried when Youssef and Salem questioned him about the rumors of a Jewish exodus; his father gave the idea no credence, Nasim said. He would repeat his father’s words that it was nothing but a passing cloud, and they were not leaving Iraq. The violence of the Farhud had been truly scary when it happened years before, but it was over, and things had settled down. Although there were still occasional attacks, the situation was bound to improve.
About a year after the photograph was taken, the three of them were strolling along the banks of the Tigris. Nasim was quiet that day, he seemed really preoccupied and his handsome features were drawn. His eyes, indeed his entire face, were bathed in gloom. Only after Salem had pestered him about looking so miserable did Nasim reveal what weighed on his heart.
“This may be the last time we ever see each other,” he said.
“Why? Where are you going?” a bewildered Youssef asked naively.
“My father has registered our names under the emigration law.
We’re going to Israel.”
A heavy silence descended on them. There’d been five attacks on Jewish properties and other places that were frequented by Jews, and the Masuda Shimtov Synagogue had been firebombed. Although it later transpired that the perpetrators had been Zionist militants, the attacks succeeded in frightening Iraq’s Jewish community. Nasim said his father was no longer allowed to do business, his assets had been frozen, and his property confiscated. That was why the family had decided to join the rest of the community and register for emigration.
Nothing was audible but the sound of their footsteps and the rustle of the palm trees, whose branches swayed in the breeze that had stirred up as if to bid Nasim goodbye. When Youssef asked about his departure date, Nasim said he wasn’t sure when they would be leaving.
“Probably in a couple of days,” he ventured.
Youssef was having a hard time understanding how it had all come to this. “How long will you be gone?” he asked. It was a question without an answer. With a brash optimism, bordering on naïveté, Salem tried to dispel the sadness that had taken hold of them,
“Don’t worry, you’ll only be gone a few months. As soon as the question of Palestine is settled, you’ll be back.”
Nasim was tearful as they said goodbye in front of his house in Battawiyin. They hugged him fiercely and he told them he’d write from there, but no letters ever arrived. Salem couldn’t believe that he would never see Nasim again. From time to time in the months that followed, he’d insist on walking down the street where their friend had lived, but the house always looked
abandoned. Over the years, Nasim was fondly remembered whenever Youssef and Salem reminisced about their youth.
4
Wearing a dark suit and tie, Youssef is sitting at a desk littered with papers and files. In the early weeks, his job responsibilities were limited to translating foreign correspondence from English into Arabic and writing letters pertaining to contracts, offers, and bids or translating them into English. When work was slow and he was bored, Youssef would browse through the books in the small government agency’s library. Most were about agriculture and commerce and one entitled Sacred Tree: The Date Palm in Semitic Civilizations , by British Orientalist Sir Roger Kingsley, piqued his interest.
Youssef kept a notebook where he wrote down the more difficult words he came across which he needed to look up in the dictionary. The idea soon formed in his mind to translate the book—the writing was fluid and the book was a mine of historical information. He started on the project, translating a little every day or whenever he had a chance to work on it.
He was fascinated by the introduction, which recounted the history of the date palm and its almost sacred role in Mesopotamia. There was ample evidence for this in the sculptures and bas-reliefs of sanctuaries in Babylon and Assur, on temple walls and city gateways, as well as on ceremonial thrones and crowns. Used medicinally, dates were also used to produce the
‘elixir of life.’ Cutting down a date palm tree was punishable by a fine under the Code of Hammurabi. Another section of the code warned date palm farmers against neglecting their orchards and enjoined them to be vigilant about pruning and pollination. Palm tree fronds symbolized both victory and good fortune, and were carried as such by kings. An entire chapter devoted to the role of the date palm in Islam pointed out its centrality in the Islamic tradition, from the Quranic sura named after Mary in which she shakes the date palm until she is blessed with its fertile fruit, to the descriptions of Paradise where dates, pomegranates, and other fruits await believers. The author also referenced a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad according to which, “in a house without dates, the inhabitants go hungry.”
Over time, the date palm also became sacred to Youssef as he became indebted to it, and to all its siblings, for his livelihood. Even though he did not labor with his own hands to grow and care for the tree, he spent more than half his life working at the Iraqi Date Palm Authority.
5
Wearing a white summer shirt, gray trousers, and sunglasses, Youssef is standing beside a date palm, his left hand buried in his trouser pocket, and his right resting on the trunk of the towering tree. Its fronds shade him from the blazing sun casting
the tree’s shadow across a long line of others. Youssef appears in the prime of youth and in good health. The photo was taken by a man who appears in the next picture on the wall standing beside Youssef. His name was Jasim Abul-Shawk, but everyone knew him as Abul-Nakhl, Mr. Date Palm, because his life was dedicated to the study of Iraqi date palms; he not only wanted to know everything there was to know about them but he was also determined to boost their yields.
Jasim was from Abul-Khasib and his father, who was a wealthy businessman, had sent him to the American University of Beirut.
From there, he went on to Berkeley in the U.S., one of a group of students sponsored to study horticulture abroad by the Department of Religious Endowments in the 1930s. Jasim obtained both his undergraduate and master’s degrees
with distinction and wrote his thesis on the pests and diseases common to date palms. Back in Iraq, he joined the Ministry of Agriculture where he quickly rose through the ranks. He also lectured at Baghdad University’s School of Agriculture and founded a model farm in Zaafaraniya where he carried out research on every species of date palm in the country.
They had met when Youssef had visited Zaafaraniya on an assignment to write a report about the model farm. Their acquaintance developed further after Youssef got permission from his then boss to attend Jasim’s lectures weekly so as to deepen his knowledge of the subject. Youssef asked a lot of questions, both during and after the lectures, and his enthusiasm and seriousness impressed Jasim. It was Youssef’s good fortune that Jasim was appointed to head the Authority’s board of directors two years later. Jasim was so taken by Youssef’s dedication that he began to nominate him to join commercial delegations traveling abroad to promote Iraqi dates and also backed his promotion within the Authority. A deep bond developed between the two of them, and every time Youssef told his friend that he was truly Abul-Nakhl, Mr. Date Palm, Jasim responded by saying, “And you are the Master of the Palm Fronds, Ibn al-Nakhl.” Youssef’s heart was stricken when Abul-Nakhl resigned in 1964 as a result of some intrigue on the part of Tahir Yahya, the prime minister at the time. After that, Abul-Nakhl devoted himself to his family’s orchard in Abul-Khasib and to completing a voluminous tome on the date palm tree.
“Be careful . . . those guys are going to ruin it all,” he told Youssef that day.
When they hugged goodbye, Jasim said he’d never worked with anyone better and he assured Youssef that if it weren’t for the fact that he didn’t have a degree, he could easily have risen to head the Ministry of Agriculture or, at the very least, become deputy minister. Those who succeeded Jasim had neither his field experience nor the required academic credentials. Invariably political appointees, they were entirely dependent on Youssef, the senior-most official at the Authority who was by now not only
knowledgeable but exceptionally experienced. Youssef’s independence protected him whenever the winds of change began to blow. A succession of rulers appeared in the picture frame above his desk, from the monarch to Abdel-Karim Qasim, and from Abdel-Salam Arif to Abdel-Rahman Arif, and on down to Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, during whose regime Youssef became the director-general of the agency as a result of his longevity in service. Saddam Hussein came along after that and his picture was still up on the wall when Youssef retired many years later.
Youssef didn’t remember when exactly his love affair with the date palm began, but his feelings gradually grew stronger as a result of his job and all the reading he did about the amazing plant when he was just starting out. He did remember very clearly jumping up in the air as a little boy, his arm reaching for the bunch of dates that his father regularly bought at the market and hung outside. “I want one, I want one,” he would shout, and Hinna would come out and pick the almost-ripe dates for him. At the old house in the Christian quarter, they didn’t have a courtyard, and when they moved to Battawiyin, there was only one solitary date palm in the small courtyard there. But in the new house, which is old now—and where Youssef still lives—the garden was spacious enough for three palm saplings. Although one of them died, the remaining ones grew to be taller than the house.
Youssef didn’t know that racemes like those he struggled to reach would one day become his livelihood, and that they would nurture him for the rest of his life. Nor could he have guessed that the date palm, which was so sacred to the ancients as a source of life and sustenance, would attain a similarly elevated standing in his eyes one day. There was nothing strange about it, he felt.
Anyone who chose to delve into its history and uncover its riches could not help but become enamored of the date palm.
6
It was the Nowruz festival, and even though the colors didn’t translate into the monochrome of black and white, Youssef’s sisters, Amal and Salima, were wearing traditional, brightly colored, embroidered Kurdish dresses. They were standing in front of a house whose imposing wooden door was clearly visible; a year apart, the two girls were eleven and twelve. The stone house was in Sulaymaniya, the city they lived in for four years after Habiba got her first posting following graduation from nursing school. Gorgis had moved there because in the 1950s it was unthinkable that Habiba might live by herself in a strange and faraway city. He’d taken Salima and Amal with him and the two girls had struggled at the beginning because of the language barrier. Everyone in Sulaymaniya spoke Kurdish, and they would only be able to communicate with their schoolmates after they too had learned to speak it. Back in Baghdad, they continued to use it as their secret language; even though their father scolded them for it, they would resort to Kurdish whenever they didn’t want others to know what they were saying.
7
Youssef loved to brag about his affair with Sophia Loren. It went way back and continued even after she married Carlo Ponti, he’d say. On hearing this, people would simply burst out laughing.
Undeterred, he would tell his interlocutors that it wasn’t just a pipe dream, and that although he was one among millions of her admirers, he and Sophia corresponded regularly and met once every few years. Whenever he traveled with an official delegation from the Date Authority to Europe, she would come to visit him in the city where they were staying. He would then urge his disbelieving audience to see for themselves. He’d walk them to the lounge and show them a photograph taken in 1972 where the two of them appear side by side as he leans over to kiss her. The sight of this photo would elicit responses ranging from incredulity to amazement and admiration, followed by a babble of questions and pleas for more details and other pictures of him and his Italian sweetheart. Youssef would provide whatever answer he fancied and then he’d own up: the photograph had been taken at Madame Tussauds, the London wax museum, and the stiff and frozen likeness of Sophia he was about to kiss was the polar opposite of the hot-blooded movie bombshell. What’s more, his attempted kiss had earned him a rebuke from one of the guards because he had disobeyed the prominently posted signs asking visitors to refrain from touching the wax figures.
8
A year younger than Youssef, Ghazi was the second of the boys.
He’d always been stockier than his siblings, even when he was young. The photo was taken in 1959 when Ghazi and his wife, Samira, were in their mid-twenties. He’s dressed in a suit and tie, while the lovely Samira sports a low-cut sleeveless dress that shows off her cleavage. They’re sitting at a table strewn with plates, glasses, and bottles, and behind them one can see men and women dancing in the hall of IPC’s club in Kirkuk. Ghazi is frowning for no reason, as always, but Samira is smiling for the camera.
Ghazi went to work for IPC—the Iraq Petroleum Company—in Kirkuk and remained there until 1961 when he returned to Baghdad and got a job with Rabco, a paint manufacturing company. There was always a certain distance between Ghazi and the rest of them, and even after he and Samira returned from Kirkuk, he only came by the old family house on holidays, and did only the bare minimum to maintain his connection to them. Hinna blamed it on Samira. She accused her of spiriting him away to her people when they came back to live in Baghdad and of convincing him to leave for the U.S. after three of her brothers emigrated there. In 1979, they emigrated and settled in Michigan, where Ghazi bought a store that he co-owned for many years, before eventually retiring to San Diego, California.
Youssef had always known Ghazi to be distant; ever since childhood, he’d been the least warm of all the siblings. After he left Iraq, they would go long periods without any news. Ghazi never offered to help out like Salima and Amal did, during the 1990s, without Youssef even asking. Ghazi always ended a conversation with the formulaic, “You need anything?” to which Youssef invariably responded with, “No, hamdullilah, everything’s fine.”
Hinna and Youssef were both surprised in 2000 when they got a call from one of Ghazi’s grandchildren who was in Baghdad
with a group of activists delivering medical supplies to Iraqi hospitals and, thus, symbolically breaking the embargo. Although he was just twenty years old, Basil, who was born and raised in the U.S., spoke almost fluent Arabic. He struggled with rolling his r
’s and pronouncing his l ’s properly, but his Arabic warranted a
“Paha!” from Hinna—an exclamation reserved for exceptional achievements or things that truly impressed her. Basil was studying political science at UCLA and he had developed an interest in Iraqi and Middle Eastern history. He had become politicized in college and had joined Los Angeles area activists opposed to the sanctions regime, volunteering to travel with a delegation on a visit to area hospitals, as well as the Amiriya shelter and the National Museum in Baghdad. Youssef and Hinna had urged him to stay with them but Basil felt he should stay at the hotel with the rest of the group. He made sure to visit more than once, however, and Hinna cooked kubbah hamudh and biryani for him. He spent his last night in Baghdad with them following the small party they gave for their remaining relatives in Baghdad to come and meet the visiting émigré.
9
Elias, the third brother, is in his early thirties. His hair is jet black, his radiant face lit by a broad smile, and he’s wearing an elegant black suit. Shakeh, his Armenian wife, is in her white wedding dress and her long gloves come all the way up above her elbows. They’re holding hands and smiling. They met as a result of Elias’s political activities, and Shakeh was the sister of his comrade, Mano. Youssef wasn’t surprised when Elias got involved in politics and became a Communist. He’d always liked a good argument, even as a small child. They used to call him ‘Mr. No’ and ‘Hellion’ because he was forever criticizing and opposing everything.