Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family

by Tamara Chalabi

  While Hassan settled into university life, Rushdi was launching his political career. Although he was happy to move back under his father’s roof, Rushdi’s relationship with Hadi remained difficult. In spite of his relative inexperience, Rushdi felt that his time in Beirut and Europe had afforded him an awareness of the world that his father, who had left school at sixteen, lacked. He felt that Hadi’s attachment to Kazimiya was symptomatic of his parochial outlook on life.

  In particular, Rushdi disapproved of Hadi’s continuing relationship with Weir & Co., who he believed were taking advantage of him. He took it upon himself to enlighten his father about his views, but Hadi was happy with the arrangement. He and the company had been working together for over a decade, and the relationship and trust built during that time were more important to him than merely increasing his own profits. He listened as patiently as he could to Rushdi’s arguments, reminding himself that his son was still a young man.

  Aware that Hadi was irritated by Rushdi’s sense of his own superiority, Bibi tried to protect her favourite son from his father while simultaneously seeking to establish him as his father’s heir both politically and financially. She was proud of the way Rushdi’s university years had polished him, and dedicated herself to promoting his cause. In turn, she believed that she would be able to rely upon him in the years to come, and also privately hoped that she had found in him a travelling companion who had more time for leisure and entertainment than her husband.

  In 1943 Bibi, Rushdi and Raifa decided to visit Cairo, both to catch up with Hassan and to enjoy a holiday. Raifa had recently finished secondary school, and was brooding over both her mother’s veto on her wish to pursue her education at the Beirut College for Women and the loss of her sister Thamina to ‘Salehbassam’, as she would always call him with distaste. They travelled by Nairn bus to Damascus, and from there to Haifa, where they took the train to Cairo. On the train, much to her daughter’s mortification, Bibi spent the entire journey admiring the smart young British soldiers who were travelling to join their battalions on the North African front.

  At tea one afternoon in Cairo’s Continental Hotel, Bibi was spotted by an Indian fortune-teller adorned in a colourful turban. He approached her and asked if he could read her palm. Bibi watched in fascination as he held her hand and traced the lines one by one. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Bibi shuddered; perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all. After a lengthy pause, with his eyes still tightly shut, he spoke: ‘Yes, it is clear – you will have an odd number of children.’ Bibi indignantly told him that she had eight offspring, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say that babies were the last thing on her mind at her age when the fortune-teller put his index finger to his lips to silence her. Bibi flushed, fidgeted in her seat and let him resume.

  Next he told her that she would have a long life, but would suffer from a serious illness; and that soon the light of someone dear to her would be extinguished. As Bibi turned pale, he added that for every leaving of the world there was an arrival. Holding tightly onto her palm, he paused as if in deep thought for a moment, then said that her husband would continue his rise, but then there would be great change.

  ‘Another house?’

  ‘It is not clear … somewhere else.’ Confusion flickered across the fortune-teller’s features. Bibi did not wish to tempt fate, so she took advantage of his momentary hesitation to pull some money quickly from her purse, hand it to him and leave. She had heard enough.

  Unfortunately, this encounter poisoned the rest of Bibi’s stay in Cairo: she was convinced she would lose one of her children, and would most likely die herself from a mystery illness. Not even the popular fancy-dress balls at the Continental could take her mind off these revelations. She wanted to go back to Baghdad as soon as possible and await the imminent catastrophe.

  Soon after their return from Cairo, Raifa had a suitor. His name was Abdul Amir Allawi, a promising British-educated young doctor, and after the appropriate introductions he started visiting the Chalabi house, where he was offered sherbets of rosewater and cantaloupe juice, as was the custom for new suitors. Delighted with his wit and conversation, Bibi decreed that he was a suitable candidate for her middle daughter. When it came to the trousseau, she ordered many of the items from Cairo, having inspected the goods there a few months earlier. In this instance, Hadi respected her choice of husband for their daughter.

  Shortly after Bibi’s trip to Cairo, her mother Rumia died at the age of seventy-three. Najla felt bereft, as Rumia had always shown her love and affection, whereas her own mother often seemed too busy socializing to notice her youngest daughter. She shut herself in her room and cried for hours. Bibi’s youngest boys, ten-year-old Talal and eight-year-old Hazem, remembered how their old-fashioned grandmother would entertain them with tales of her exotic travels, while Bibi and Saeeda recalled the miracles of Rumia’s kitchen.

  ‘There was the time she made the fesanjoon for the new King,’ Bibi remembered quietly. ‘She was a good woman. I wish I had been a better daughter.’

  Saeeda nodded sadly. ‘She was so kind; she was too good for this world.’

  Not long after Rumia’s death, Bibi discovered that she was pregnant for the ninth time. At the age of forty-four, she was shocked by her state. She had a two-year-old granddaughter, Leila, by Thamina, and another grandchild on the way. At first she did everything she could to hide her condition; she even claimed that she had no idea what could possibly have caused it. Nevertheless, she remembered that her ninth child had been predicted by the Indian fortune-teller, and in the summer of 1944 she exiled herself to Dhour el-Choueir, a delightful mountain town in recently liberated Vichy Lebanon, where she planned to remain until the child was born. In late October she gave birth to a son, whom she called Ahmad. Before Ahmad’s first birthday he had two new nephews: Raifa gave birth to her first child, Ghazi, and Thamina had her second, Mahdi.

  The end of the Second World War in August 1945 raised new questions about the future of Iraq. The country still did not benefit directly from its oil, which remained squarely in the hands of European consortiums. Moreover, one of the main employers during the war had been the British Army, which no longer needed to maintain such a strong presence in the region. The Allied victory had created a dearth of opportunities for the Iraqi people. It was a potentially incendiary situation.

  Nuri Pasha al-Said’s stock was high once more, as he had always championed the British. He was brought back as Prime Minister in November 1946. However, many of the army officers who had supported Rashid ’Ali in 1941 remained bitter, and looked for an opportunity to seek revenge. In addition, the tension between Nuri and the tenacious Prince Regent, Abdul Ilah, added more pressure to the situation, as they disagreed about the best way forward for Iraq. Of the two, Nuri was the more able politician, but he lacked royal authority. The Prince Regent could always exercise power over him, although he had less ability. Abdul Ilah adopted a heavy-handed approach to government affairs, curbing the freedoms the press had enjoyed during the war.

  A family outing from Baghdad. Ahmad as a toddler stands on the far right, next to Bibi.

  The one issue that Nuri and Abdul Ilah agreed upon was the serious threat posed by Communism. The growth of the Communist movement in Iraq held dire implications for them both, and threatened to draw the country into the Soviet orbit.

  The public’s desire for reform was strong and its patience low, with increasing demands being made for political liberalization and changes to electoral law. When some of the political parties that had been banned during the war started to regroup, the Iraq Communist Party emerged as the most organized of these. The far left had long had a presence in Iraq. Marxist literature was freely available, and intellectuals from Iraq frequently met Communists from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. The Tudeh Communist Party in Iran also had a role to play in influencing the growth of Communism in Iraq, as a substantial number of left-wing Iranians lived in the Iraqi holy cities.


  Communism attracted people from all backgrounds, especially Jews and Shi’a, and those from the southern rural areas. As members of a predominantly agricultural and impoverished society, the disenfranchised farmers were a natural audience for Communists. However, the intellectual backbone and the bulk of the party lay in the cities, not among the workers but among teachers and students in schools and universities, infusing an intellectual idealism into the movement which might have been absent had it developed in a factory environment. The Communist Party was the party of youth. Ironically, the Ministry of Education’s own scholarship programme, which enabled many Iraqi students to continue their education abroad, meant that leftist influences from overseas made their way to Iraq.

  Kazimiya took a particular shine to Communist ideals. Indeed, for all that Bibi criticized Hadi’s cousin Salim for his beliefs, several of her own cousins and relatives joined the Communist Party. The mullahs’ influence had been on the wane in the town since the revolt of 1920, with many Shi’a believing that the refusal of the clerics to negotiate with the British had been short-sighted, and had limited their community’s access to power. Marx’s vision filled the vacuum created by their disillusionment. Moreover, the Party represented resistance to the established order, and was deeply concerned with social justice, two major Shi’a preoccupations. Anti-British sentiment was another attraction. The old dependence on Islam and Britain became replaced by a dependence on Marx and the Soviet Union.

  Belief in Communist ideology among the founders and intellectual members of the Iraqi Communist Party paralleled that of the zealots of early Islam on their proselytizing missions from Mecca. Pamphlets and leaflets were liberally distributed in Kazimiya. The Party’s first public declaration – ‘Manifesto of the Association Against Imperialism’ – called for a total overhaul of the country.

  22

  Love in Strange Quarters

  Of Marriage and Other Unions

  (1946–1947)

  ‘STOP, I’M GOING to die!’ Bibi declared operatically, one jewelled hand on her chest and the other extended towards the driver of the horse-drawn carriage.

  The man turned his head slightly, reins in hand, and replied dryly: ‘Madam, must you die now? You really can’t die in the kallachiya. Wait until I get to a more respectable neighbourhood and then you can die.’

  Bibi was stunned. Najla snickered, and Thamina tried not to laugh even though she was appalled by the driver’s familiar manner. They were on their way to a fitting with a seamstress on Rashid Street. None of the house cars had been available, so Bibi had asked one of the houseboys to get an ’arabana to take them. The carriage had to pass through the old Midan Square, and Bibi and Najla had begun to bicker, so no one had noticed when the driver took a right turn into a narrow street lined by little huts with open doors in front of which women lounged listlessly. That was when Bibi realized they were in the kallachiya.

  The mellifluously named kallachiya was an institution in Baghdad, a shabby maze of small brick houses, open courtyards, narrow alleyways and rooftops which were as busy as the rooms below in the summer. The lusty voices of chanteuses sang love songs, and locally brewed Farida beer and various flavours of arak, including date, watermelon and even meat, were always in ample supply.

  Each house was a separate brothel, with its own madame or pimp and its own staff, including daqbulis – boys who carried water for the men to wash with after sex. It was said that these ‘chicks’, as they were known, were also for hire. They were notorious in Baghdad, and their testimonies were considered invalid in court. Besides the daqbulis, there were different ranks of prostitute: the more beautiful and sought-after they were, the quicker they left the muddy alleyways for more comfortable surroundings.

  The kallachiya had acquired its character and traditions over many years. Tolerated if not legalized, it had continued to flourish under the Ottomans. An infirmary checked the workers regularly, and the gates to the area’s entrance were guarded by policemen, who were empowered to search clients. Many of the girls who worked in the kallachiya had escaped from their families for one reason or another, and the possibility of honour killings and revenge was always there.

  For many Baghdadi men, a visit to one of the kallachiya’s many brothels was a regular habit, even if it was just a fleeting stop during a lunch break. The clients came from many walks of life: musicians, shopkeepers, soldiers and politicians – everyone was welcome. A proud regular was the much-loved popular poet, Mulla Abboud al-Karkhi, who had been a Baghdadi landmark himself in the 1920s.

  Karkhi had spent his life reciting the woes of the common man, and had been regarded as a barometer of public sentiment. He was also unabashedly interested in women, and devoted many verses, both lewd and refined, to them. One day he found inspiration in the funeral of Dawud al-Lampachi. Besides being the city’s official lampman and lighting its gas streetlights, Dawud al-Lampachi was a famous pimp who was married to an equally famous prostitute, Fattuma Samachi. Karkhi created a satirical elegy of Lampachi’s work among Baghdad’s whores:

  Lampachi Dawud died and with him his arts.

  Come on people let us go and condole Fattuma …

  Let us go and pay respects to Fattum and Zahiya

  And Najafi’s daughter and Mariam al-Kurdiya …

  You powerful mighty ram, every whore is crying for you …

  The poem quickly became legendary in the city, and metamorphosed into a song. However, Karkhi got his just deserts when Mariam al-Kurdiya, a beautiful and renowned prostitute, spotted him in the marketplace and attacked him with her shoe in revenge for some verses about her in the poem. Bibi remembered that when news of the incident reached the dawakhana at the Deer Palace, Abdul Hussein’s guests had erupted into uncontrollable laughter which had echoed around the house. She also remembered how Karkhi had written a serious elegy for Abdul Rasul that had moved the family to tears.

  She was woken from her reverie when she glimpsed a man walking out of an alleyway with his head bent down, adjusting his crotch. Even from a distance, he looked faintly familiar, and she prayed that he wasn’t one of the household staff on his day off – the kallachiya was definitely no place for any self-respecting woman to be seen. Horrified by the prospect of discovery, Bibi leant forward and implored the driver: ‘I really will die if you don’t get me out of here right now!’ She pressed herself back in her seat so that she could not be seen by anyone on the street, and urged her daughters to do the same. But Thamina and Najla looked around them in curiosity. They were shocked when they realized that some of the women seated on four-legged wooden frames were displaying their privates under thin gauze to passers-by, like cheap goods on show in a marketplace.

  For her part, Bibi vacillated between the demands of social decorum and a profound sense of sadness. The whole idea of prostitution was deeply repugnant to her, but she was also depressed by the fate of these fallen women. She thanked God quietly for her family’s good fortune, and muttered, ‘Tff tff tff,’ to ward off the devil. Then Najla nudged her accidentally. Bibi snapped at her to be careful, and another fight ensued.

  Although Rushdi didn’t resort to the kallachiya, he continued to dedicate as much time as he could to the pursuit of pleasure, which he combined when possible with his political and business interests. There were many more bars and clubs for men of Rushdi’s social standing than there had been in Hadi’s youth; several new hotels had also opened, including the Sindbad, the Semiramis, the Baghdad and the Khayyam. The last two had large terraces overlooking the river, where customers could enjoy a late-evening drink and watch the reflections of the stars dancing on the rippling water below. Rushdi particularly liked the Zia Hotel, where he often entertained friends and business associates.

  Heading out for an evening in his black Cadillac, Rushdi and his companions would debate whether to head for the Roxy or for Abdullah’s in the mixed Bataween neighbourhood. Both clubs staged famous cabaret shows from Europe. Abdullah’s was Rushdi’s prefer
red choice, as it served dinner at 8.30 p.m., followed by a show at 10.30. Many of his associates had special ‘friends’ among the European, Egyptian and Lebanese showgirls, who they occasionally entertained outside club hours.

  In the early mornings, to soak up the spirits that coursed through their blood, the young men would often end up at one of the makeshift patcha restaurants in the Sheikh Umar neighbourhood. There they would buy patcha soup, a local delicacy, made from sheep’s entrails, which was a renowned hangover cure. In a letter to Hassan, Rushdi told him how one of his friends had found an old shoe in his soup one day.

  Rushdi greatly enjoyed his life as a single man-about-town, although he knew he would have to settle down at some point, if only to consolidate his political career. When he saw a photograph of Ilham Agha Jaafar, a young beauty from a well-known Basra family, he decided that the time had come.

  Ilham had grown up in Beirut, and Rushdi knew that some of his friends were already very interested in her. After he enlisted the help of a pilot in the newly established Iraqi Airways to fly him to Beirut to meet her, she was duly impressed. Beating two other suitors, Rushdi celebrated his marriage to Ilham in 1947.

  Rushdi’s connections to his father, Hadi, and his grandfather Abdul Hussein helped him to develop a close rapport with Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri Pasha al-Said. The two men had similar attitudes towards Iraq’s future, and Nuri decided to keep an eye on young Rushdi, with a view to assisting his political career.