The Tobacco Keeper

by Ali Bader

  I can now draw connections between two basic themes. The first is the ongoing influence of his meeting with the Russian conductor who, without really knowing where the country of the young man before him was, advised him to find inspiration in his people. The second is his research into folklore, which started with the numerous comparisons he made between low and high, or classical, art. This was what the Muslim presenter had pointed out, although Haidar Salman was not sure at that time whether the man understood its full meaning and implications or not. And, of course, there was his visit to the Iranian Museum and the letter he wrote about the Shah’s portrait, painted by the Andy Warhol.

  It’s clear that Haidar Salman felt considerable hostility towards the mob, the masses and the populace in general. His aversion was perhaps born out of the public’s inability to understand his music. He’d always felt something of a rift between him and the masses. But this hostility grew after the Farhoud, which proved to him that the masses were the prime enemy of everything beautiful. Those who opposed beauty, according to him, stood against all that was life. His attitude towards the masses suddenly changed from indifference to pure enmity, from acceptance to denunciation. How did this happen?

  Since the revolution had its own artists, engineers and leaders, the officers also wanted to create a composer for the revolution. Haidar Salman was their first choice. He would be created and presented as a model made wholly in the revolution’s laboratory. They made the proposal to him openly. They suggested turning him into the revolution’s musician and composer. He thought that the proposal was ridiculous, although he didn’t say so, and his refusal of their offer was clear and categorical. Classical music, he believed, couldn’t move the masses and was therefore of little use to revolutions. Music that didn’t appeal to the base instincts of the populace couldn’t possibly work. Revelation and insight, which were part and parcel of the second persona, were far from revolutionary. Classical music was by its very nature indifferent to words, but revolutions depended on them and used them in patriotic songs. The revolutionaries asked him to compose an opera about the people breaking their chains and were willing to send him to the Soviet Union to compose the work. But he didn’t like the idea, for he didn’t care for the masses, or their history of outbursts, and feared them.

  He remained silent for a long time following the departure of Jawad Selim in the company of the painter Nahida al-Said, whom he’d met at the house of his friend Hekmat Aziz. Then one of the people present raised his glass to toast the masses. So they all did, except for the revolution’s composer, who refrained from raising his own glass.

  Haidar wanted his music to emerge from his inner self and not from external ideas.

  Although his ideas at that time were neither coherent nor fully clear, he wanted to mould them into something new. He wanted to compose pieces that people would view in the same way as a woman looking at the living being coming from her womb. He wanted to construct his thoughts in the same way a painter constructed a scene on a blank canvas. Art was taste, first and foremost, and then harmony and proportion. Revolution, in contrast, was the destruction of all harmony. He didn’t wish to make a fortune with his music or see admiration in the eyes of ordinary people. He wanted his music to mould people and push them forward. But how?

  The revolution naturally focused its entire attention on the masses.

  The first year of the revolution represented a total break with the past. But the revolution later followed a different course, with an increased tendency to appeal to the masses. Haidar hated this populist tendency. He feared the masses and regarded them as a source of danger. He was overwhelmed with apprehension every time he saw their faces and bodies moving with a uniformity that obliterated individual distinctions. They moved with tremendous force to destroy everything. That was the cause of his fear of them. During that first year it was not an issue. Only in later years did he begin to sense it. The lines were still too faint to form a complete picture. But matters became clearer bit by bit. A whole new culture emerged, generating a new vocabulary that hadn’t existed before. This was what he wrote to Farida: ‘There are new slogans such as “Death to mercenaries” and “Death to imperialist collaborators”. Everybody here speaks of death and calls for it. Can you imagine that the masses are cheering their leader, Qasim, asking him to “Execute, execute, don’t say it’s too late”? Post-revolution Baghdad has become a totally different place. The revolution has strengthened populist and vulgar tendencies and the mob’s hold on the streets.’

  On his return from Moscow, he looked out of the window as the plane banked over the airport. Baghdad seemed no more than an arid stretch of land through which the River Tigris meandered, its waters as muddy as milky tea. Thin green belts encircled the towns, which looked like barracks protected by barbed wire and reddish mud-brick walls. Once the aircraft had finally landed, he made his way across the worn and dusty airport carpet. The walls were plastered with violent slogans and tasteless, vapid pictures. He felt disgusted, offended by the march of ugliness and the hostility to beauty that always accompanies revolutions. It touched him to the quick that mob culture was growing rapidly, and that this would inevitably lead to an explosion of sorts. Pure force had the upper hand on Baghdad’s streets. They were full of armed soldiers with yellowish khaki uniforms, trim beards, berets, machineguns and revolvers. Militiamen walked the streets while the masses carried posters demanding that the revolution or the leader be protected, and asking for the execution of secret agents. There were long marches, unbearable heat and endless lines of students, soldiers and workers who clapped rhythmically, shouting out slogans, their faces enraged and excited. There were men and women travelling on buses to greet the leader. The radio stridently urged them all to take to the streets because the revolution was under threat and conspiracies were being hatched all the time.

  The revolution, on the other hand, did nothing at all for the people. Houses collapsed amid clouds of reddish-brown dust, while shops, which looked like cubes with their front face missing, were in a miserable condition. The roads were full of potholes and grime was everywhere. Anarchy dominated life in general.

  He wrote to Farida: ‘Baghdad has turned into a military tribunal handing out death sentences. The leader receives his well-wishers as well as the angry masses, for the revolution is always threatened by many powerful enemies. There have been twenty-three attempts on the leader’s life. Military justice is still putting people to death and the number is steadily rising. Things will become more complicated in future if we legitimize the use of arms, for the bullets will never stop.’

  Just as Haidar had discovered Tobacco Shop through Karl Baruch, it was through Sergei Oistrakh that he came upon the idea of kitsch.

  Haidar Salman saw a congruence between kitsch art, which is a vulgar form, and political kitsch, which portrayed Qasim, the leader, in gaudy colours. He was shown sitting with a stern expression, or with a smile on his face or wearing his military beret. Photographs showed him from different perspectives: in profile or portrait, full-length or three-quarters. The leader alone embodied post-revolutionary existence. Life was portrayed in terms of kitsch, with tasteless, fiery colours representing the revolution crushing its enemies.

  After the revolution, the Folkloric Art Society was set up, ushering in a new artistic movement in Baghdad. It aimed at representing life in positive, upbeat terms, to represent the changes that hadn’t happened because the enemies of the revolution did not want change. The reality of the streets exposed this as a lie. They were narrow, crowded and suffocating. Buses tooted incessantly amid the throngs of the tired and angry masses. Emaciated horses pulled their poor carts while lines of donkeys carried the tatty furniture of immigrants from the countryside to the city. Black-clad, barefoot women carried huge bundles on their heads, and porters tied ropes around their waists to indicate their willingness to carry any loads. Dirty, barefoot children were assailed by flies.

  The letter that Haidar sent to Farida,
dated 1 November 1962, was brief and clear. He couldn’t specify exactly what he wanted, but he felt that he was in mortal danger. His wife Tahira was in Moscow for medical treatment. He wrote to Farida that Tahira was always pale, thin and in very poor health. His son Hussein went to Saint Joseph’s School in Al-Alweya. He spoke incessantly about his wife’s illness but never about their relationship. His real interests at the time, as his letters indicate, were music and politics. He believed that the decline in artistic and aesthetic taste had left a huge mark on politics and vice versa.

  Haidar Salman’s family life wasn’t in the best of shape, for his relationship with Tahira was vague and undefined. Many rumours linked him with the painter Nahida al-Said, who was introduced to him by Jawad Selim who was visiting Hekmat Aziz. Selim came to know Aziz in Tehran and would always visit him at his house in Al-Adhamiya.

  Selim was the one who built the Freedom Memorial as an outcome of the revolution. The brilliant sculptor had created this memorial in the shape a Sumerian cylinder seal. But the man who wished to be the revolution’s architect created its base and the frieze in the form of a populist poster. That was why Haidar Salman loathed the memorial so much. He often argued about it with Nahida. Nevertheless, he frequently mentioned Nahida al-Said and her ideas in his letters to Farida. What was it that attracted him to the painter’s ideas so much?

  He wrote to Farida that he’d recently made the acquaintance of a young woman painter. The young, pretty woman caused a drastic change in Haidar’s outlook. At least he found in her vision and ideas some consolation for his music. Her paintings didn’t tackle the populist, folkloric and patriotic themes that were so popular in those days. Rather, they were informed by universal concerns and represented absolute subjectivity and idealism. Such traits were abhorred then, because it was generally accepted that art shouldn’t be separated from life. Art, according to this view, came close to political propaganda. It had the function of re-examining existing tradition in order to create new modes of expression. This was what Jawad Selim and his school did.

  The US-educated young woman, Nahida al-Said, was only looking for intellectual, emotional and intuitive forms and not for any ideological meaning or content. This was what attracted Haidar to her and what he needed at that time, although he couldn’t articulate it. He refused to express stereotypical images of people or realistic events through his music, although he believed that the grounded and spiritual aspect of music could elevate people and enhance their intuitive capacity. Music was able to unite and refine people, to urge them to work hard and respond to the instinctive beauty within their souls. He believed that it was for art to eradicate ugliness and introduce beauty to the world. It replaced the anarchy of clashing colours and discordant rhythms with harmonious melodies that embodied absolute beauty.

  But who among the artists or any others was listening to him at the time? In fact, very few of his friends paid much attention to such ideas. There was heated debate in the newspapers and magazines as to whether art should exist for its own sake or for society’s benefit. Despite the vulgarity and crudity of the arguments, everybody accused Haidar of falling prey to the influence of bourgeois aesthetics. This was a serious charge at that time. He felt truly lonely and alienated. Almost every day he would leave his house and walk Baghdad’s streets with his hands in his pockets, wondering if there was anything uglier than the environment surrounding him or more repellent than the prevalent vogue of political and folkloric kitsch. Was there anything more sordid or distasteful? As soon as any discussions started, he would burst out in their faces. He believed that kitsch would produce greater violence in society. Lines, dots, surfaces and three-dimensional forms would disappear and be replaced by corpses left hanging in public. The people, who had been encouraged to be resentful, with strident colours, vulgar music and loud anthems, would become a hugely destructive force that might be impossible to reverse.

  Haidar’s friends in turn would flare up in his face as they defended the people’s art and the crowds, except for Nahida. Her ideas were close to his and she often defended the views he expressed at the meetings held at Hekmat Aziz’s house.

  It was probably Nahida al-Said’s defence of his views that attracted him to her. A new sensation was impelling him. As she approached him with her pure, fair complexion, her clear eyes and slim arms, he was in flames. Looking into her eyes or smelling her scent, he was overcome with both terror and infatuation. He felt completely numb in front of her. Were they involved in a relationship at that time?

  All the evidence points to the fact that the composer spent most of his day at her apartment. He also spent most of his nights with her when his wife Tahira travelled to Moscow. The only surviving piece of evidence for this relationship is the painting that she produced of the composer. He is completely naked and holding his violin in his arms like a woman. The warm colours and technique of the painting represent the playing of music as a kind of sexual encounter. These were naturally Haidar Salman’s views of music. In one of his letters to Farida, he described the half-naked Nahida painting in her studio while he lay on the couch drinking vodka.

  Almost everyone knew of their affair. Haidar Salman even felt that his sick wife tolerated the relationship. This was what most of the people that we met confirmed, particularly those who knew the two of them at that time. But what we were looking for was the reason behind Haidar’s admiration for Nahida al-Said. Was he attracted to her anti-revolutionary ideas or the way she was influenced, like him, by bourgeois aesthetics? In fact, all events point to differences in their views regarding the revolution. All those whom we asked about Nahida al-Said and her life confirmed that to some extent she believed in the revolution. But her thoughts were vague and inconsistent (incidentally, Nahida al-Said was a committed communist). Haidar’s own ideas were clear. In his view, revolution destroyed harmony. It was a violent blow that disturbed peace and serenity. No fruitful or consistent change could possibly happen in the midst of overriding chaos. He thought of revolution as the serum to cure us of a minor illness. Instead, it destroyed the harmony between our bodies and nature, leaving our bodies weak and exhausted. We should point out, however, that Haidar Salman never completely broke with the Communist Party, unlike Al-Sayyab, who abandoned the Party altogether and attacked it. The Party preferred at that time to keep Haidar within reach, even when his ideological stand was different from theirs. That was deemed much safer than engaging in a headlong confrontation with him, as happened with Badr Shaker al-Sayyab, who opened fire on the Party and published a series of articles entitled ‘I was a communist’.

  Did Haidar Salman intuitively understand certain things that others didn’t? The events of the evening preceding the 1963 coup suggest that he did. All the guests who attended Hekmat Aziz’s party at his house in Al-Adhamiya that night agreed that Haidar’s behaviour was very strange. It was February and the cold had descended on the wet trees in the garden, while the warmth of the living room inside the house made the artists who were sitting in a circle around the fireplace woozy. None of those who were present knew anything about what the next day would bring. Haidar stood near the fireguard with a glass in his hand, while Nahida al-Said stood beside him, also drinking. When he came too close to her, a horrified scream flew out from Nahida’s mouth as he flung the wine at her face and clothes.

  There was a blazing row between Nahida and Haidar, which disturbed all the guests. In a little while, at the request of Hekmat and his wife Widad, they both went upstairs to resolve their problems quietly. Almost an hour later, a tearful Nahida ran down the stairs, but none of the guests were aware of her leaving until she slammed the front door behind her. When he rejoined his friends Haidar was totally drunk. Everybody was in high spirits that night. They roasted lamb cutlets on the fire, sang loudly and danced; at one table, there was a card game going on. Then Haidar screamed. It was hard for those present to understand the meaning of this scream until he told them that Baghdad stood on the edge of a precipice: a
volcano of burning lava was erupting and the city was concealing a new weapon, ready for a new day and a new era.

  So how did Haidar Salman know about the coup? Who told him that the following day would usher in a huge turning point in the history of the country and that there would be an unstoppable eruption? Did Haidar have any contacts with the insurgents? That was impossible. Everyone who knew him confirmed that his name was on the list of people to be liquidated by the coup.

  Nevertheless, Haidar Salman awoke the next day to the clarion call of the coup. He had a hangover and a splitting headache. He was stunned to see the tanks of the nationalists and the Baathists on the streets. He trembled to see the populist trend in Baghdad at its most extreme. The winter sun was casting its slanting rays on the wall opposite, and a deathly hush had filled the house. Tahira was still in Moscow and Hussein was with his grandfather, Ismail al-Tabtabaei. At that moment, Haidar felt a vague anxiety. He had a strong sense of déjà vu as horrific images passed through his head. The country he was longing to return to reminded him once again of the events of 1941 when he was a child.

  The phone rang. He ran to pick up the receiver. Hekmat’s voice came over the line, warning him against staying in Baghdad, for the nationalists and the Baathists had issued statements vowing to crush all communists. Orders were given to the youngsters carrying machine guns and wearing National Guard armbands to kill and hang the communists. He hung up, his hand trembling. He couldn’t get any detailed information from Hekmat because the whole country was under curfew. What he could hear was the sound of bullets going from house to house and street to street. Two images haunted his mind and would not be dispelled. He saw Nahida’s face, tearful at his behaviour the previous night, and he saw her coming out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. As she changed her clothes, he looked at her beautiful body, totally entranced by its grace and firm roundness.