When he arrived, he found the house empty apart from a couple of servants. He stole into the drawing room and waited anxiously for Thamina. Before long she entered, alone and dishevelled in her torn dress. Her surprise at seeing him was compounded by his strange appearance, in pyjamas and with his upper set of false teeth missing.
Nuri’s first question was whether King Faisal II was still alive. Although Thamina could not answer this, she told him that she was certain Abdul Ilah was dead; she had seen his corpse being dragged through the streets.
After a pause, Nuri attempted to reassure her: ‘The members of the Baghdad Pact will retaliate against this outrage quickly; our allies Turkey and Iran won’t stay on the sidelines.’
Thamina nodded numbly at him. ‘I need to change my clothes. Here –’ she switched the radio on – ‘Maybe we can find out what’s happening.’
When Mahdi arrived home, dripping wet from crossing the river, he found Nuri and Thamina listening to the Egyptian revolutionary songs that blared from the Sawt al-Arab radio station. His mother threw her arms around him, hugging him tight as he shivered in her arms.
Nuri decided that he would leave Baghdad for Kazimiya, where he could hide with members of Bibi’s family until it was safe for him to cross the border into Iran or Jordan, where he hoped to obtain support to quash the coup. It was decided that Murtada Bassam, Thamina’s brother-in-law, and Fahima, her children’s nanny, would take him there. And so, hidden in the back of the family car, Nuri left the burning city behind him.
Once he had left, Thamina suddenly became afraid of her own servants. The radio broadcasters had started to announce that there was a 10,000-dinar prize for anyone who delivered Nuri Said to the revolutionaries.
They turned off the radio, but the images on television were even more harrowing. There was footage of the bloodthirsty mob dragging the corpse of Abdul Ilah to the gates of the Ministry of the Interior, where they raised up what was left of him, as if he were a cow’s carcass. A butcher started to fillet his body, throwing pieces of it towards the people. Raifa, who had been hiding at her neighbours’ house that afternoon, watched in horror as the television showed an old woman clad in an abaya carrying a bag filled with meat. She gleefully told the camera: ‘Extra special meat for sale! It’s the most delicious meat in the world – prime cuts of Abdul Ilah, the Crown Prince and former Prince Regent!’
Later that afternoon, Jawad took Rushdi and his brother-in-law Abdul Amir Allawi and their fellow politician Dr Fadhil Jamali to hide in the Sheikh Jamil farm, which lay three quarters of an hour’s drive north-west of Baghdad, near the Tigris River. The farm belonged to Hadi, and they hoped it would be safe. Bibi took Hassan and Talal, Raifa and her children, Rushdi’s wife Ilham and her children to the nearby home of their old family friend Sadiq Istrabadi, whose release from jail Hadi had helped to secure in 1935. Saeeda was taken to Kazimiya. She looked the most confused of them all as she collected a few of her belongings to take with her. When she said goodbye to Ahmad, she squeezed him tightly to her and whispered some prayers in his ear. Nothing was said of Nuri Said, although they were all convinced that he must have made his way to one of the friendly tribes around Baghdad, from where he would escape from the country.
Everyone was waiting for some form of intervention, be it divine or from abroad. The expectation was that the British would come to the aid of their allies in Iraq, or – as King Hussein was a cousin of King Faisal II – would use Jordan as a means of offering support. The men of the revolution stood for everything that Iraq’s foreign allies – Britain, the US, Turkey and Iran – were supposedly against. Surely someone would do something to stop this?
The 19th and 20th brigades of the 3rd Armoured Division of the Iraqi Army, the Free Officers that few had paid attention to earlier, were responsible for the coup of 14 July 1958. Their leaders were the pro-Communist Abdul Karim Qassim and the pro-Nasser nationalist Abdul Salam Arif.
Hassan later learned that it must have been 5 or 6 a.m. when the 3rd Battalion of the 20th Infantry Brigade stormed the Royal Palace. Three battalions of the brigade had already broken camp that night and were en route to Jordan from their headquarters in the west. Abdul Salam Arif, one of the battalion commanders, succeeded in avoiding suspicion when he ordered his battalion and two others to proceed to Baghdad instead. There they dispersed and seized the main strategic bases such as the Ministry of Defence and the television and radio stations.
Whatever resistance the guards at the main gate of the Royal Palace put up was swiftly overwhelmed; they were completely outnumbered. Thabet Yunis, Prince Abdul Ilah’s personal guard, informed him that there had been a coup, and the palace was surrounded. He gave the Crown Prince the impression that the royal family were to be taken to some other location.
Princess Badiya, the King’s aunt, had heard the sounds of fighting from her house a few streets away, and rang the palace to find out what was happening. Twenty-three-year-old King Faisal II spoke to her calmly and told her to listen to the radio.
As the family came down the stairs they could hear loud voices outside. The first to step outside into the pale dawn air was Queen Nafisa, the King’s grandmother on his mother’s side. She held a Quran in her hand. Some officers were standing by the fountain in the courtyard in front of the house. Queen Nafisa walked over to them and asked them to swear on the Holy Book that no harm would befall her grandson and her cousin. They did so.
The family lined up in a semi-circle in front of the fountain: the Crown Prince, Faisal, two orphaned girls who had been adopted by the family, Princess Abdiya and Queen Nafisa. The Crown Prince’s wife, Hiyam, stood slightly behind them, and his guard, Thabet, next to him. Silent and solemn, they waited to learn their fate.
Abdul Sattar ’Abussi, an officer in the battalion, walked up to the Crown Prince and started to abuse him. Thabet interrupted, crying out that he had no shame to be using such language. ’Abussi raised his gun and shot Thabet dead in mid-sentence. Abdul Ilah started screaming in horror. Another shot was heard nearby. ’Abussi turned round towards the noise, then swung back to face the family and started firing, empting his machine gun into their bodies.
Faisal, the young King, didn’t die instantly. After he fell, he asked for some water. ’Abussi stepped over to him and fired more shots into his head, which split in two, spilling his brains onto the ground. Queen Nafisa held out the Quran and called to the soldiers, ‘May God curse you!’ as they shot her down. Several members of the palace staff were also killed. The water in the small fountain ran red as the bodies lay like slaughtered sheep on the ground.
’Abussi, who committed suicide a few years later, would say that he hadn’t wanted to let any members of the royal family live, in case they came back to power again, as they had done after the 1941 pro-Nazi coup. The only person to survive the massacre was Hiyam, the Crown Prince’s wife. She fainted, and was rescued from the pile of corpses by a soldier who pretended she was a palace maid and his cousin. He helped to smuggle her to her tribe, the Rabi’a near Mosul.
The officers argued among themselves about whether they should bring the bodies of both Abdul Ilah and the King out into the streets. They decided to leave Faisal behind, for fear of turning the public against them, because he was well-liked. They tied a rope to Abdul Ilah’s body and proceeded to drag it around the capital, followed by an ever-growing, insatiable mob.
Early in the morning of 15 July, the day after the coup, Nuri Pasha was still hiding in Kazimiya. He had learned that his only child, Sabah Said, the Director of Civil Aviation, had been killed. His family was away for the summer, so Sabah Said had spent the night at his club. No sooner had the mob started to rampage through the streets than a member of staff at the club had told them where Nuri’s son was staying. Part of the mob broke off and stormed the building, dragged him out onto the street and hacked him to pieces.
Nuri knew he was not safe. Suspecting that his whereabouts were already known, he asked to be taken to Bibi Istraba
di’s house in Baghdad. Bibi Istrabadi was Bibi’s friend from childhood; her father, the Pivot, had brought Saeeda to Iraq. Her family was not involved in politics, and Nuri thought it unlikely that they would be suspected of harbouring him.
The Chalabi family had slept terribly that night. Bibi and Ahmad had been given the main bedroom in the house of Sadiq Istrabadi, an old friend and former Mayor of Kazimiya, who had been arrested with Hadi back in 1935. Bibi had lain awake, worrying about what had happened to Rushdi. Early in the afternoon her dear friend Bibi Istrabadi, who was a relative of their host, ran into the house still wearing her nightgown, over which she had hurriedly thrown her abaya. She was very distressed.
Before Bibi had time to greet her and commiserate about the catastrophe that had befallen them, Bibi Istrabadi started to beat her chest. She told Bibi that Nuri Pasha had come to her home, seeking shelter, and that she had taken him to her stepdaughter’s house, where she thought he would be safer. Now she didn’t know what to do.
Bibi thought carefully. ‘May God help us. He must leave Baghdad. We’ll have to wait for my son Jawad to come back. Nuri Pasha must go to Abdul Razzaq Ali Salman of the Duleim tribe in Anbar – they’re our friends, and they’ll smuggle him to Jordan. It’s the only way.’
As Bibi Istrabadi left, Bibi called out to her: ‘Fiman illah, go in the safety of God.’
While Bibi Istrabadi had been out of the house, Nuri Pasha had taken a short nap. He had been on the run for over twenty-four hours. He was exhausted.
Before sleeping, he made sure to count the number of people in the house. When he woke up after Bibi Istrabadi’s return, he immediately noticed that one person was missing. He became anxious, and told Bibi Istrabadi that he ought to leave straight away. Unable to wait until Jawad had returned, she decided to take him to the Uraybi house after all.
She and Nuri put abayas on and walked out of the front door. They had barely taken a step when they saw that the house was entirely surrounded by soldiers, their guns pointed at them. One of the officers shouted out to Nuri that his son was dead, and now it was his turn. Standing behind Bibi Istrabadi, Nuri cocked his gun, ready to shoot himself. Suddenly an officer fired. It was all over.
Although Nuri Said was buried, his body was dug up two days later and dragged through the streets by the mob. He was hacked to pieces as the baying crowd spat on his remains.
The person Nuri had noticed was missing from Bibi Istrabadi’s house was Omar Jaafar, an in-law of Bibi Istrabadi’s stepdaughter. He had betrayed Nuri’s whereabouts and collected the 10,000 dinars.
Bibi collapsed when she heard the news of Nuri’s death on the radio a few hours later. She knew that her dear friend had been killed with him. Bibi was inconsolable. ‘How could they kill a woman like that?’ she sobbed.
It was clear that the Chalabi family could not stay at Sadiq Istrabadi’s house any longer: they had become refugees in their own city. They decided that they would join Rushdi at the Sheikh Jamil farm. At dawn the next morning the cars set out, carrying Bibi, Hassan and Jamila, Talal and Ahmad, Hadi’s sister Shamsa and her son Issam, Rushdi’s wife Ilham and their three children.
Taking the Kazimiya road towards Samarra in the north, they passed many farms. Whenever they spotted a farmer or shepherd they were filled with panic, wondering whether it was obvious that they were on the run. Bibi was terrified whenever they approached one of the palm orchards by the roadside, imagining that soldiers would ambush them.
After an hour, however, they reached the farmhouse. From the outside the building resembled a fort, and its interior was equally austere. It was sparsely furnished, with a long hall that extended right through the house to the garden and the river at the back.
The immediate task was to find water and food for everyone. Rushdi’s children were tired; his youngest, Muhammad, was only two years old. While the women attempted to rustle up something to eat, Jawad went to check on Rushdi and Fadhil Jamali, who were hiding in the pump houses, three small wooden shacks that were just about big enough for a man to fit inside.
About twenty minutes later, Ahmad heard the rumble of engines and looked out of the front door to see three armoured trucks approaching the house. In them were perhaps sixty soldiers, fully dressed for battle, wearing helmets and with fixed bayonets on their rifles. Once the trucks had come to a standstill, the commanding officer shouted out orders and the soldiers took up positions around the house, setting up machine-gun tripods.
The commanding officer, a gruff man, entered the house. His hand lay on his Webley revolver, tied by a cord to his belt. He stared at Bibi, Hassan, Talal, Ahmad, Shamsa and her son Issam, then turned to Talal and snarled at him: ‘Are you Rushdi?’
‘No.’
‘Where is Abdul Hadi Chalabi?’
‘He’s out of the country.’
‘Where is the Minister for Reconstruction, Dhia Jaafar?’
‘Out of the country.’
The officer turned to Bibi, took out his revolver and pressed it hard against her chest. Ahmad tried to step in front of his mother, but the officer pushed him back with one hand and demanded that Bibi tell him Rushdi’s whereabouts.
‘If I knew where he was I’d tell you, to save my three other sons in this room,’ Bibi replied, her voice shaking.
Unsatisfied, the officer turned to Hassan, but snorted in disgust when he realized he was blind. Ahmad screamed at him to leave Hassan alone, and that he would go with him.
Both Ahmad and Talal walked out of the farmhouse ahead of the officer, who ordered them into the front of one of the trucks. They bumped along the unpaved track to the pump houses, where the officer ordered Talal and Ahmad to get out. Pointing the gun at their backs, he commanded, ‘Take me to your brother now.’
Talal knew the fugitives were hiding in the pump houses, but he didn’t know which. He couldn’t focus; his throat was burning and he had to drink something. He bent down to scoop up a handful of water from the runnel that led to the pumps, oblivious to the worms swimming in it. He looked at his younger brother, who looked back at him. What if he pointed to the shack where his brother was hiding and caused his death?
‘Come on, what’re you waiting for?’ shouted the officer. ‘Move it!’
Talal walked slowly towards the pump houses, unsure of what to do. Impatient, the officer overtook him, went to the middle pump house and swung open its door. No one was in there. He went to the right-hand one; again, no one was there. Turning sharply to face the boys, the officer ordered them back to the house.
If he had opened the door to the left-hand pump house, he would have discovered Dr Fadhil Jamali. Unknown to the brothers, Rushdi had left the pump houses earlier and gone to the other side of the farm, looking for a way for them to flee to Jordan through the desert.
Both Rushdi and Fadhil Jamali were dressed in Bedouin clothes, long dishdashas robes and zuboun jackets. A farmer in the neighbourhood had spotted Jamali early that morning, but had then heard a report of his death on the radio. It had been read out by Henry Cabot Lodge, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, who decried the savage behaviour of the coup leaders. The farmer decided to inform the authorities, but they had accepted the news that Jamali was dead.
Back at the house, Ahmad and Talal’s cousin Issam invited the officer and some other soldiers to join them for lunch. Sitting around the edge of the room, the soldiers ate greedily. In between mouthfuls, the officer turned to one of them and said: ‘They’re not so bad after all, these people.’
After lunch, Bibi got up to go to the toilet, which was situated down the hallway. Ahmad followed her, and stood guard outside the rickety door. The officer approached, shoved him aside and made to push the door open. Gripping the man’s wrist, Ahmad stammered, ‘She’s a woman, it’s … it’s impolite!’ With a mock threatening gesture, raising his free hand as if to slap him, the officer scowled at Ahmad, but then turned away, saying that they would not leave without Rushdi. Behind the door, Bibi thought she might be about to f
aint.
A few moments later, Rushdi walked calmly into the house with Jawad. Although they had initially been unaware of the soldiers’ presence on the farm, as they were approaching the house the situation had become clear to them, but by then it had been too late to do anything about it.
Rushdi barely had time to kiss everyone goodbye. Bibi and his wife Ilham were in tears. A few words were exchanged; Bibi told him to take care of himself, and as he left, called out to him, ‘Allah wiyak aini’ – God be with you, my darling.
Jawad asked for permission to follow the soldiers back to Baghdad; he wanted to make sure that his brother and Fadhil Jamali were taken to the Ministry of Defence, as all the other arrested men had been. When Rushdi was taken into the building, Jawad embraced him and repeated what Bibi had said: Allah wiyak. Rushdi barely reacted. It was almost as if he had abandoned himself to his fate.
From the Ministry of Defence, Rusdhi and Fadhil Jamali were taken to the Abu Ghraib prison, as all the other political prisoners arrested during the first two days of the coup had been. At Abu Ghraib, Rushdi was told in person by Brigadier Abdul Karim Qassim, the leader of the new military regime and now Prime Minister and Acting Minister of Defence, that as a member of the deposed Cabinet, he had to await justice. However, as an afterthought, he added, ‘You’ll be fine.’ On Qassim’s desk Rushdi glimpsed a dirty copy of yesterday’s newspaper, with a headline announcing the news of the government’s oil renegotiation in London. He felt nauseous. How much could change in a few hours.
A few hours later, another proclamation was declared by the revolutionary government: all former Cabinet Ministers and high-ranking officials under the monarchy were to be executed. The soldiers on guard duty in the prison went out of their way to taunt the arrested officials, delighted to have such eminent men at their mercy.
Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family Page 30