What made matters worse was that two years after Rushdi was born, Bibi’s mother-in-law Jamila gave birth to a boy, Saleh. This state of affairs taunted Bibi as she struggled to fall pregnant herself. As before, in her anxiety she unloaded her woes onto her mother, who stoically bore her daughter’s ill temper.
Rumia’s familiar responses frustrated Bibi, and she would mimic them cruelly, rolling her eyes: ‘Be patient, my dear – God is generous; He will grant you a child.’ Rumia urged her to do special nizir, wish prayers, as well as to continue frequenting the shrine. She also encouraged her to go to the Sheikh Abdul Qadir Mosque, another port of call for fertility prayers.
Despite her irritation, Bibi listened to her mother and resisted the more esoteric approaches that many desperate women resorted to. These included visits to arcane sheikhs who dabbled in alchemy and magic, and who wrote cryptic formulas, hijabs, which they wrapped in tiny packets to be carried or buried somewhere in the house and which were meant to grant the wish of the seeker. Some sheikhs threw molten lead into water, which formed bubbles on the lead that were then pricked to break curses.
Another common practice that Bibi was tempted by, but decided not to perform, was to make a knot in the hem of her nightdress, fill it with crystal salts and sleep with the knot in her gown overnight. The next morning the salt would be collected and thrown into the river, accompanied by an incantation to break any spell.
Finally, Bibi got her wish and gave birth in October 1922 to a healthy baby boy, whom she called Hassan after her late father. He had Hadi’s colouring, with his fair skin and sparkling blue eyes. With Hassan’s arrival, Bibi’s conception difficulties were put to rest, as she quickly became pregnant again. For a while her joy was boundless.
Some weeks after Hassan’s birth, Abdul Hussein was offered the post of Minister of Education. This was the only such post to be allocated to a Shi’a, as many in government considered the Department of Education to be less important than other ministries.
However, King Faisal felt strongly about appointing a Shi’a minister to the position, as he hoped such a man would take responsibility for educating the neglected Shi’a community. Symbolically this was important: the King was trying to reach out to the Shi’a in spite of the boycott decreed by the Ayatollah Shirazi in Najaf, which continued to prevent many of them from interacting with the government or its associates.
Faisal was aware that the real reins of power had already been monopolized by Baghdad’s Sunni elite, foremost among them the Iraqi officers who had fought alongside him in Syria. The British also remained in the foreground as advisers to the King and his Cabinet, and were conspicuous in their military uniforms as they helped to train the Iraqi Army. However, although his coronation speech had confirmed that the real power still lay with the British, the new King had become a symbol of the Arab spirit for the people; he was strong and steady, and he understood what was at stake and what needed to be achieved.
Abdul Hussein’s political insight meant that he had been one of the first Shi’a notables to support Faisal openly. He reasoned that the best hope for the new country lay with the King. He knew he was taking a risk by accepting his post, given the fatwa, and he anticipated some criticism from certain hostile circles in Kazimiya – but he was not prepared for what happened as a consequence of his decision.
A 1920s studio print of Abdul Hussein taken in Damascus.
On hearing that Abdul Hussein was the new Minister of Education, Sheikh Mahdi Khalisi, an influential cleric in Kazimiya, lost no time in accusing him of heresy, and banished him from the shrine for breaking the fatwa. Posters were glued on the exterior walls of the shrine explicitly forbidding Abdul Hussein from entering it, making his fall from grace public knowledge.
The news of Sheikh Mahdi’s banishment of Abdul Hussein shocked the entire household. They couldn’t rejoice in his new appointment with such a judgement hanging over him. Kazimiya was a small place, and the shrine was the heart of the town. To be forbidden entry was quite intolerable, particularly for Abdul Hussein, who usually went there on a near-daily basis. It seemed ludicrous that he should not be allowed to enter a place where he had been welcome since he was a child, and where his forefathers were buried. There was much anger in the house towards Sheikh Mahdi.
The exception was Abdul Hussein’s brother Abdul Ghani, who reacted to the news dramatically, blaming his older sibling for bringing shame on the family by his decision to join Faisal’s government. A harsh and loud exchange of words followed between the two brothers. Abdul Hussein was outraged by what he saw as his brother’s narrow-minded, inflexible and parochial attitude. In response, Abdul Ghani challenged Abdul Hussein to tell him what was more important in his life: a British puppet such as the King, or his faith and the blessing of the clergy. In a rage, he accused him of dragging the family name through the mud.
Deeply offended, Abdul Hussein reminded him that they were living in a new country and had a new capital, Baghdad, and that it would be even worse for the Shi’a than it had been before if they didn’t embrace the changes. It was bad enough that the Shi’a only had the one ministry, but as that was the case it made sense to make the most of the opportunity, rather than resisting and revolting while the caravan passed them by. ‘Furthermore,’ he concluded, ‘when Faisal, a Hashemite Sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet, accepts Iraq’s throne, who am I to refuse a ministry?’ In reply Abdul Ghani merely folded his arms and turned away in contempt.
Abdul Hussein persisted, trying to persuade him that if they were to have any say in the country it would not be by boycotting the new government and smoking pipes with the mullahs in the shrines. If only for the sake of their own children, they needed to take what was on offer. Abdul Ghani refused to see his point of view.
Abdul Hussein began to feel suffocated in Kazimiya while Sheikh Mahdi’s ban hung over him. Furthermore, the old house was becoming too crowded for comfort now that it was home to his son Hadi’s expanding brood as well as his and his brother’s families. There was only one thing to do, he decided, and that was to move out of his late father’s house, the only he had ever known.
‘We are moving to the Deer Palace immediately,’ he declared to his wife. ‘Start preparing – and I don’t want to hear another word,’ he interrupted, as Jamila opened her mouth in protest.
Servants loaded mule cart after mule cart with trunks packed high with the family’s belongings, before making their way through the narrow Kazimiya alleyways out into the countryside. The operation took days, and had a dizzying effect on everyone in the household. Besides Abdul Hussein and Jamila, their sons Abdul Rasul, Muhammad Ali, Ibrahim and Saleh, and their daughter Shamsa, Hadi and Bibi were also included in the move, along with their infant sons, Rushdi and Hassan.
The children ranged from young adults to babies, with the younger of Jamila’s offspring being cared for by their nanny, Dayyah Saadah. Like Saeeda, Dayyah Saadah was African and an ex-slave. She had been Jamila’s nanny, and had followed her to the Chalabi household when she had married Abdul Hussein. It was inconceivable that she should be left behind in Kazimiya.
A number of other servants moved to the Deer Palace with the family, among them Saeeda and Ni’mati with his new wife Fahima, another former African slave who had been picked for Ni’mati by Abdul Hussein’s mother, Khadja. Having arranged her grandson Hadi’s marriage, Khadja had moved on to new quarry for her matchmaking. To Bibi’s immense relief, Khadja herself remained behind with Abdul Ghani and his household.
Although Abdul Hussein was upset to be leaving the home in which he had been raised, he was more distressed by the thought that he had become an outsider in Kazimiya. Following Munira’s decision to move to her elegant townhouse, where Faisal had been entertained on his visit to Kazimiya, Abdul Hussein had bought the Deer Palace from her. Bordering the river on one side, the rural property extended for several kilometres on the other side into orchards and farmland. The elaborate front garden was separated from the main hous
e by the road along which the horse-drawn tram passed on its way from Baghdad to Kazimiya. There was even an optional stop for the tram that was now called the Deer Palace Stop in honour of the magnificent statue that graced the pool in front of the house.
Bibi welcomed the move with enthusiasm, despite its abruptness. She was happy to leave the old house and its crotchety inhabitants behind. However, she was aware that the ban on her father-in-law was no light matter. She could see how affronted he was by it, despite his putting on a brave face to the world. By moving to the Deer Palace, he was in many respects going into exile in a house built by another self-imposed exile, the Nawab.
Nevertheless, Abdul Hussein quickly became busy with matters at the Ministry and the Cabinet. He helped to orchestrate a concerted effort to fight the Shirazi fatwa by reaching out to the Shi’a through education – increasing the number of schools across the country, especially in rural areas, where there were few, as there the age-old system of the kutab, an informal traditional style of schooling run by sheikhs who taught the Quran and literacy, persisted. The government-run schools that did exist were primarily in the main cities, such as Baghdad, Mosul and Basra, as were the few private schools and missionary schools for Christians and Jews. Although there was no university, there were several colleges, specializing in subjects such as law and education. Now, with Abdul Hussein’s support, a new scholarship programme was established to send Iraqi students to leading Western universities for postgraduate studies.
Abdul Hussein attended many meetings with the King, and was soon receiving large numbers of visitors at the Deer Palace, who either congratulated him on his new post or sought some favour from him because of it. Before long it seemed that half of Kazimiya had passed through his new dawakhana. He also quickly developed a rapport with the British advisers at the Ministry, whose professionalism and practicality he valued.
However, within a few months of his appointment Abdul Hussein began to doubt whether he had made the right decision, in spite of the prestige his new post accorded him. Faisal’s appointment of Sati’ al-Husri as the new Director of Education, which meant that he would effectively run the Ministry, was to cast a shadow over Abdul Hussein and other Ministers of Education for many years to come.
Husri was a highly educated former Ottoman bureaucrat and an ardent Arab nationalist. He had followed Faisal to Syria, where he was Minister of Education during the King’s brief reign there. He had expected to be appointed Minister in Iraq too, but because Faisal needed to include a Shi’a in his Cabinet, Husri had to sacrifice his role. He held a low opinion of the Shi’a, who he thought were ignorant and incapable. He also considered them unpatriotic, going so far as to accuse them of being Persians because of their religious affiliations.
Abdul Hussein fought Husri to the best of his abilities by pushing for more schools, more scholarships and more access to existing schools for Shi’a students. He believed that state education represented the best avenue available to the Shi’a; Ottoman policy had traditionally excluded them from positions within the government bureaucracy and the military, which had always been the two principal means of accessing education in the past.
As he came home one afternoon in his tenta, his official ministry convertible car, Abdul Hussein’s spirits were at a low ebb. He had just had an audience with King Faisal during which he had appealed on behalf of several Shi’a students who had been refused entry to the law college in Baghdad. His own son Abdul Rasul was successfully completing his course there, but even he had required help to get into the college because he was a Shi’a.
As far as Abdul Hussein could see, Husri had blocked these young men’s admittance for no reason other than that they were Shi’a, and he had sought the King’s intervention in order to resolve the matter. He found it distasteful to have to appeal to the King, as he felt that such a matter ought to have been resolved at the Ministry; however, Husri’s power and the support he drew upon were such that this had not proved possible. Even though Abdul Hussein prevailed in this instance, and had persuaded the King to overrule Husri’s decision, he was demoralized by Husri’s relentless attacks. Recently Husri had accused him in the press of being sectarian, and of not being a true Iraqi, but a Persian. ‘Me, a Persian – a Persian!’ Abdul Hussein repeated the insult out loud. ‘And he can barely string two words of Arabic together – how dare he?’
As he got out of the car, he decided he would have his afternoon nargilleh under the big orange tree facing the river. Lush vegetation surrounded the house, with climbers weaving up the front façade, past the arched French windows which created vibrant reflections indoors when the sun hit their stained-glass tops. Abdul Hussein walked along the madarban, the long corridor that led from the front door through the two reception rooms of the dawakhana, which formed the front part of the house on each floor. The more formal reception rooms were upstairs.
It was siesta time, and the house was quiet except for the faint mewling of his infant granddaughter, Thamina. She was Bibi’s third child and Abdul Hussein thought she was delightful. He made his way to his quarters, where he washed before going back outside to relax.
Dispirited as he was, Abdul Hussein always found peace in the gardens, which he loved. As usual, Zein al-Abidin, the head baghwan or gardener, was there to greet him while he made his afternoon tour of the grounds. Ever fastidious about appearances, Abdul Hussein had recently built up a wardrobe of tailor-made clothes in diverse Western styles, from the bonjour and the frac to the smoking jacket. On his head he now wore the sidara, an elongated narrow hat which had become the national headdress of Iraq’s notables. When it was eventually adopted by King Faisal himself it became known as a faisaliya in deference to him.
Amidst the numerous orange trees, the aroma of honeysuckle competed with potent Persian red roses and Damascene pink roses – there were rows and rows of them, alongside violet asters and red-and-white busy lizzys, while behind them yellow, orange and pink snapdragons stood to attention. Next to the second pond at the back of the house Arabian jasmine coiled around a sky-blue gazebo, while dark pink geraniums decorated its sides. The gardener Zein al-Abidin’s moments of greatest joy came when important visitors sat in the garden he had created and showered praise on the wonderful setting. As the garden was accessible by boat, Iraqi and British government officials would drop in from Baghdad on some afternoons, as did the British High Commissioner.
Another visitor was Miss Gertrude Bell, who wrote to her father in June 1924 that she had ‘walked about under the flowering orange trees’ in the garden of Abdul Hussein, whom she had described two years earlier in another letter as ‘rather a friend of mine’.
Miss Bell had many friends in high places. Having poured her energies into helping King Faisal develop his court and establish public protocol, she had kept him company in Baghdad during the early days before his family had moved from the Hejaz to join him, and was even alleged to have been his lover. Bibi was shocked and intrigued in equal measure to hear visitors talk with raised eyebrows and pursed lips about the King’s rumoured tastes and Miss Bell’s apparent lack of inhibitions.
Bibi contrived to meet Miss Bell on several of her visits to the Deer Palace, and in spite of all she had heard, was very impressed by the force of her personality and the respect she commanded among all the men. As a fellow smoker, she also admired the confidence with which she enjoyed her cigarettes in public. She could not quite see what physical attraction this Western woman might hold for the King: she had a rather long, equine face, a pointed nose and a very piercing stare. Her clothes were well cut, yet not to Bibi’s taste. However, she was quite tall – always a plus in Bibi’s opinion – and had an abundance of fair hair, which she pinned up elaborately on the top of her head and which intrigued Bibi, who was thinking of cutting her own dark hair short, in line with the latest fashions that were filtering through from Paris via the Egyptian magazines she read.
Whenever Miss Bell visited the Deer Palace, Zein al-Abidin would a
lways present her with a bouquet of fresh flowers. Inhaling their fragrance before setting them appreciatively to one side, Miss Bell would then discuss business with Abdul Hussein in her fluent Arabic, which she spoke like a bulbul, or nightingale. He was often tempted to raise the issue of Husri at the Ministry with her, and to discuss the political problems he foresaw, but he knew it would be futile. Besides being extreme in her likes and dislikes, Miss Bell was now struggling with her own situation in Baghdad, despite being regarded as the most powerful woman in Iraq. As the new state structure and bureaucracy fell into place, Miss Bell had become increasingly removed from the day-to-day affairs of running the country. Abdul Hussein was not surprised when she returned to her original love, archaeology. It seemed that the future was uncertain for everyone, and he wondered where his own path would lead.
Two years after Abdul Hussein’s exile from Kazimiya, Sheikh Mahdi was exiled for his relentless opposition to the King. Only then was the ban lifted. Abdul Hussein heaved a sigh of relief when he heard the news, and was anxious to go at once to the shrine and forget the humiliation he endured.
11
Accidents of Nature
The Baghdad Boil
(1925–1926)
DAYS IN THE Deer Palace took on a distinct pattern that reflected the often parallel lives of its many inhabitants. Abdul Hussein’s political and social standing continued to improve, and the house served him well with its large spaces in which to receive visitors and host official functions.
Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family Page 14