The same day Rushdi was arrested, a mob broke into Thamina’s house to arrest Saleh Bassam for helping Nuri Said. Upon entering the house they saw Thamina’s sixteen-year-old daughter Leila in the hallway. A soldier put a rifle to her chest and asked her where her father was. Leila’s nose started to bleed, but the soldier kept his rifle pressed against her. The other soldiers ransacked the bedrooms, destroying the children’s toys and anything else they came across. They found Saleh Bassam in one of the rooms and took him away. They also arrested his brother Murtada.
Despite the condemnation of the coup by the US representative at the UN, forty-eight hours after it had taken place there was still no sign of foreign intervention. Jordan, which had recently formed a United Arab Union with Iraq, did nothing. It was obvious that help wasn’t going to come.
Whether it was as a direct result of the Suez débâcle which Britain had suffered a few years earlier, or a calculated plan to sell out their friends, it was unclear what lay behind the apparent indifference of the British. There had been a subtle shift of attitude amongst the British in Baghdad, who were clearly aware that propaganda against the monarchy had reached immense proportions within Arab circles.
The British Embassy was attacked by the mob on the day of the coup, and the residence was burned down. One British staff member was shot dead. Several other buildings were also attacked, and the statue of General Maude, like that of King Faisal I, was destroyed. Yet the only action the British government took was to lodge a protest with the new military government through its Ambassador. With few exceptions, like the Minister of Finance, Muhammad Hadid, a British-educated economist who had been a founder of the former opposition National Democratic Party, the entire Cabinet was now in uniform.
Although bound to Iraq by a treaty of friendship, the British did not intervene to stop the coup. Sam Falle, an Embassy official in Baghdad, wrote of the new regime as having ‘some quite decent people known to us’. It was he who would unwittingly confirm Britain’s attitude towards the new government in the week after the coup. Waving to a neighbour who happened to be Hadi’s brother-in-law, Falle called out in Persian: ‘Halla khob shud’ – Now things are good.
The British were not averse to finding new friends, or building upon their well-established relationship with Brigadier Qassim, who despite his closeness to the Communists promised that British interests in Iraq and its oil would not be affected by the change in regime. Britain officially recognized the Qassim government two weeks after the coup, on 1 August 1958.
The extent of Britain’s commitment to the Baghdad Treaty proved to be a tribute made to King Faisal II in the House of Commons by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, followed a few days later by a memorial service at the Queen’s Chapel for the dead King and his family. Faisal, Abdul Ilah and Nuri were made honorary Knights of the Grand Cross.
When the revolutionaries had seized Baghdad, Hadi had been in Tehran. There were strong cultural, social and commercial ties between Iran and Iraq: a few years earlier, one of the Shah’s sisters had been considered as a bride for King Faisal II. Like the Turks, the Iranians wanted to counteract Nasser’s interference in Iraq, but they were clearly waiting for US approval to act. Everyone’s hands seemed to be tied.
Initial reports of events in Baghdad were inaccurate and chaotic. In the Iraqi Embassy in Tehran Hadi listened to the local radio station, expecting to hear that Iraq’s friends were mobilizing to retaliate against the renegade officers. Instead, he heard declarations of support for Abdul Nasser, and worried how his family would survive. As long as the coup’s leaders were intent on arresting supporters of the old government, he could not return to Iraq. Even in Tehran he was not safe: pro-coup staff at the Iraqi Embassy had alerted Baghdad to his presence there, forcing him to seek lodgings elsewhere.
As the days progressed, a covert channel of communication was opened between Hadi and his family, with the Iranian Ambassador in Baghdad, a friend of Thamina’s husband Saleh Bassam, transmitting coded messages. The most important message explained that Hadi had to keep quiet lest he jeopardize Rushdi’s life.
In Iraq, the entire family was under surveillance, and were banned from travelling. At the Ministry of Defence, Talal was warned that should his father be convicted of conspiring with the Shah’s government against the new authorities, the Chalabi family would be eradicated to the last person.
Over 120 individuals, among them Rushdi, remained behind bars awaiting trial. The charges against them were not disclosed. In the weeks that followed the coup they were moved to the jail in Bab al-Mu’adham. They were forbidden visitors, although they were allowed letters from home, and in some cases food. Ni’mati delivered Rushdi’s food to the prison, but was not allowed to see him. The family had absolutely no news of him.
In the Chalabi household, Hassan assumed the role of strategist, looking for ways to save his incarcerated older brother, and keeping everyone’s morale up while his younger brother Jawad implemented their plans.
Meanwhile, Thamina still lived in terror of her servants turning on her. Several had helped themselves to her valuables, taking some silver pieces and valuable porcelain vases; they justified their thefts on the grounds that they were more deserving than the mob, and then they disappeared. A few servants remained who she was too afraid to fire, although she did not have the means to keep them either. Throughout it all, Fahima stood firmly by her side, helping her to cope amidst the chaos.
When the schools finally reopened at the end of the summer, the changes were palpable. Martial, drum-based Egyptian songs were played over and over as a background to lessons. There was an unspoken acknowledgement that something irreversible had taken place – with the street scenes of death and mutilation, sacred taboos had been broken – and the situation was balanced on a knife’s edge. The killing of the royal family had emboldened many people who, regardless of their personal ideologies, embraced the new order as a means to survive. Even schoolteachers were not immune, singling out children whose families were associated with the old regime. The first thing the children had to do when they returned to school was to rip out pictures of King Faisal II from every textbook. For Ahmad and his nephews Ghazi and Mahdi, the playground became a battleground: they were ‘traitors, sons of traitors’. One boy accused Ghazi’s mother, Raifa, of being so decadent that she washed in milk. Another day, Mahdi, whose father Saleh was in jail, was cornered by a group of older boys and had a toenail pulled out as the group prodded him and chanted abuse.
The younger children, Ali, Hussein, Nadia and Kuku, were enrolled at Madam Adel’s school because their English school, Ta’sisiyah, had been closed down temporarily owing to the revolution, as there were fears for the safety of its British teachers. At Madam Adel’s the teachers taunted the children.
Even home was no longer safe. Gangs of young boys started appearing in A’zamiya, standing outside the various family houses and shouting out insults and accusations: ‘You traitors, you foreign agents, go to hell!’ Men whose military uniforms gave them licence to enter any house they pleased carried out searches which were designed to provoke and humiliate the family. It seemed to be almost a type of tourism for them, as they stomped through the elegant houses, hating the inhabitants even more for living in such luxurious surroundings.
Ahmad could not bear it. Although he was not yet fourteen, he attacked the soldiers when they rummaged through his family’s belongings, and openly carried a large photograph of the dead King with him. He had been especially upset by the killing of Faisal II, for only a few months earlier he had escorted him on his visit to the Jesuit-run Baghdad College. When he carried his photograph with him on a train to Basra, accompanying his sister Najla to her husband’s house there, soldiers yanked it out of his hand and slapped him across the face.
One morning, a month after the coup, Thamina woke to the sound of soldiers knocking on her front door. She pleaded with God to save her, but they had come for Fahima. Thamina pleaded with them to let Fahima be.
What could they possibly want with a poor woman like her? she asked. She was just a nanny. Ignoring her, they took Fahima and shoved her in the back of their jeep. Unable to sleep, Thamina maintained a vigil of prayer for Fahima, begging and supplicating God to save her.
Three days later the telephone rang. It was Fahima. She was at her family home in the old town quarter of Baghdad. She had just been released from jail, and would come back to Thamina’s house the next day. Too afraid to talk over the telephone, she saved her story until she saw Thamina in person.
The women hugged, and Fahima told her that the soldiers had offered her 500 dinars to tell them about her mistress’s involvement in Nuri’s escape. Nothing had passed her lips, even though the soldiers had roughed her up. Fahima had persuaded them that she hadn’t even been at the house, as it had been her day off.
The safety of the children became an even more serious issue following the government’s announcement that a new ‘people’s court’ would be set up to try the imprisoned ‘traitors and imperial agents’. Colonel Mahdawi, a cousin of Brigadier Qassim’s, was appointed president of the court, although he had no judicial or legal experience.
The first trial was that of Major General Ghazi Daghistani, a high-ranking military officer loyal to the royal family. The standards of interrogation were extremely poor, and the witnesses unreliable. The court quickly turned into a platform of incompetence, providing the masses with entertainment as former figures of the regime were insulted and berated by the court’s president. It was labelled a kangaroo court by the Western news agencies, which reported on the irregularity of the procedures, the erratic and verbose judge and the silencing of defence lawyers. The children of those who appeared on trial were taunted daily by their schoolmates. One boy was so traumatized by the abuse that had been hurled at his father, General Arif, during his trial, that he dropped dead from a heart attack at the age of thirteen.
Finally it was announced that the charge against Rushdi and two other ministers was standing against the ‘freedom of the people’. In despair, Bibi called on all of her ancestors who were descended from the Prophet for divine intervention, although deep down she wondered whether they would heed her prayers, given what had happened to the King and his uncle. They had been from Ahl al-Bayt too, and they had been killed, as Hussein had been at Karbala a thousand years earlier. No one had stopped it. She could not believe the abruptness with which the coup had turned her entire life, and those of her family, upside down. They had taken a terrible fall, personally, politically, socially and economically.
Abdul Karim Qassim declared Iraq a republic and appointed himself President of a three-man Revolutionary Council, whose other members were ’Aref and Talib. Qassim was to be called al za’im, the leader. The constitution that had been created in 1925, along with its executive, legislative and judicial bodies, was scrapped. Martial law was declared. There was to be no parliament, senate or any other representative body, elected or otherwise.
FEBRUARY 2005, SADR CITY
I’m standing on an unkempt, sandy football pitch in the middle of Sadr City in east Baghdad. This is the reclaimed land that the city planner Doxiadis designated for public housing in the 1950s. There is no sign of public housing, not even a proper sewerage system in place. Situated in Iraq’s capital and housing over two million people, this impenetrable shanty town is the largest urban village I have ever seen, with animals of all shapes and sizes roaming the unpaved streets. It is difficult to believe that I am in a country with huge oil reserves in the twenty-first century.
It’s the tenth day of Ashura, and I’ve come to see a re-enactment of the ancient battle of Karbala. With me is my friend Abu Muhammad, an Iraqi Turkmen from Kirkuk who has worked for my father for many years. Although I never met Ni’mati, Abu Muhammad is the closest person I can imagine to him, as he is both an employee and a true companion. He is also a very devout Shi’a. Even before the ceremony begins his eyes well up with tears, in anticipation of Imam Hussein’s eventual martyrdom in this morning’s passion play. Abu Muhammad is one of the former regime’s many victims: his brother was executed by Saddam in the early 1980s, forcing Abu Muhammad (who was a grocer at the time), his wife and five young children to flee to Iran. Like many other Iraqis, they struggled to survive, and found themselves in a shanty town called Karaj.
Today the football pitch is packed with thousands of people, all of whom live in Sadr City, many below the poverty line. Besides featuring in the news as the headquarters of the anti-American rebel Mahdi army, Sadr City was previously known as ‘Saddam City’, and before that as ‘Revolution City’. Its inhabitants for the most part are descended from the tribesmen who migrated from Iraq’s southern marshlands fifty years earlier, attracted by the bright lights of Baghdad. They are still struggling to get education, economic empowerment and political rights. As I look at the little children playing in the mountains of garbage which must have been piling up for years, I reflect for a moment on my enthusiasm as a student for Baghdad’s modernizing projects of the 1950s. I can understand now why God and the martyred Imams are a welcome distraction amidst such squalor.
The play starts with the narrator’s jarring voice lamenting the tragedy of Karbala over rusty loudspeakers. The main characters in the battle re-enactment ride Arabian horses that have been ‘liberated’ from one of Saddam’s palaces. Nearby I can see their stables, converted rusting municipal buses. Glancing at Abu Muhammad beside me, I notice that tears stream down his face as the lamentation grows louder and the first victim falls on the battlefield.
I remember my uncle Hassan’s story of going to the Ashura ceremony at the Kazimiya shrine as a blind boy seventy years earlier, and wonder whether the cumulative pain people felt then would measure up to that shared here today.
BOOK FOUR
Fields of Wilderness
DECEMBER 2007
I’m sitting with a friend, Muhammad, who has recently returned to Iraq for the first time since fleeing the country after the 1991 uprising against Saddam’s regime. He has been living the life of an exiled, penniless refugee in the West. He’s sombre and pensive as he tells me about meeting his mother and siblings a few days earlier for the first time in fifteen years. His father died while he was away, and he feels his absence today more deeply than ever.
An intellectual, Muhammad is the son of a mullah who instilled in him a smattering of Communist ideals as well as religion, giving him Marxist literature to read alongside the staple Shi’a texts. He likes to quote Gorky, but his references are still quite Islamic. I tease him, telling him that he proselytizes even when he thinks he doesn’t. He always retorts by adopting Marxist terminology, using Arabized versions of class labels, such as al-aristoqratiya and al-bourgoisia. He loves to wind me up by mentioning the ‘expired epoch’ in reference to Iraq pre-1958. I ask him to tell me of any other period in Iraq’s modern history that was as peaceful, relatively democratic and progressive. He doesn’t answer me. Instead he laments the evils of Saddam’s regime and the criminal destruction of Iraq’s soul. I agree. The unpaved roads across the country can be tarmacked fairly quickly, but how do you rebuild a human being, revive his spirit after such abuse and humiliation?
Like many Iraqis who welcomed Saddam’s fall, Muhammad had great hopes for positive change. Now that he is back, he finds himself struggling to balance his expectations with the realities. His bewilderment extends to his own family who stayed behind, who look different to him, dress differently and sound different. This causes him grief as he wonders where he belongs.
During his exile he devoted a great deal of energy to the Iraqi opposition, hoping for the day when Saddam would be gone. Now he tells me that he doubts whether he can live in Baghdad any more. I remind him that in London he lived on the margins, having little interaction with mainstream British society. He nods, but then he tells me that he doesn’t expect me to understand what he means, because I come from al-aristoqratiya. I tell him that I doubt exile as a personal sentiment has
class consciousness. It’s something deeper. It becomes another layer of oneself.
‘You’re very argumentative today, aren’t you?’ he remarks.
He turns to the subject of the current ruling elite of Iraq, al-tabaqa al-hakima, and their incompetence. He feels disdain for many of them – among them those who were once his companions in exile – especially those with Islamic political affiliations. Perhaps I am right, he tells me, and the ‘expired epoch’ really was the best period the country has known since it was created, even though everything he was taught at school told him otherwise. I laugh and tell him he should really stop struggling to make sense of this ‘expired epoch’ – there have been several other expired epochs since, including Saddam’s, which pulled Iraq deep into a dark abyss and the current uncertainty. I tell him he should revisit his class labels, as they have expired too.
28
Lost Lands
Seeking Shelter
(1958)
HADI WATCHED THROUGH the small window as the plane circled over the green and gold English countryside. His thoughts went back to his first, terrible trip to Britain in 1930, with his dying brother Abdul Rasul. Over the following twenty-eight years he had returned to London many times, on business trips to the offices of Andrew Weir & Co., and on holiday. When he came on business he always travelled with an assistant who could translate for him, and often with his manager, Salim Tarzi. This time he was arriving as a very different kind of visitor. All he had with him was the single suitcase he had taken to Iran six weeks earlier.
For the first time, he had experienced great difficulty in obtaining a British visa. His diplomatic passport proved to be an obstacle now that he was the ex-deputy head of a defunct Senate and a former official of a deposed monarchy. He understood the delay in granting him his visa to be a sign of Britain’s support for the leaders of the coup: the British did not want to send out the wrong messages to the new government in Iraq.
Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family Page 31