Wherever they made their homes, the Iraqi exiles brought with them the divisions of their own society, with its sectarianism, insecurities and biases. The terror of living in a police state also came with them. They were suspicious of one another and fearful of all agencies of the Iraqi state. They had good reason: all offices belonging to the Iraqi republic, such as the Iraqi Student Union, Iraqi Airways and the Iraqi Embassy, were fronts for Saddam’s secret services. The regime’s need to assert its power at home led to the monitoring of Iraqi nationals overseas. Exiles would often receive phone calls from relatives in Iraq who pleaded with them to cease their participation in activities deemed objectionable to the regime, on the clear understanding that if they did not comply with the request a cousin or brother who had been left behind might have to pay the price. Occasionally it was not only phone calls that exiles received, but videotapes containing disturbing images that revealed the fate of their relatives back home.
The Iraqi Embassies were a particular source of terror for Iraqis who had not succeeded in obtaining another nationality, and whose passports needed renewal or reissuing. This was not the standard bureaucratic process familiar to those in the West. Harrowing interrogations were sometimes followed by intimidation and even detention. The regime used the issue of passports as a means to reward loyal subjects and punish those who were seen as rebellious. With families at risk back at home, there was little that foreign-based Iraqis could do in terms of reporting their intimidation to the local authorities.
The prospect of renewing an Iraqi passport was almost as grave as going to Baghdad. For many this meant either a frenetic search for a means to acquire a new passport, or the risk of travelling with Iraqi papers that had been forged in Syria. It was said that Belize and Peru were offering Iraqis passports for those who invested a lump sum in the country. My uncles Rushdi and Talal and my cousin Ali decided to opt for Peru, and they were among the lucky ones who were able to find a solution, albeit a temporary one: Ali found himself arrested at Heathrow in 1988 for carrying what turned out to be forged Peruvian documents. In due course I learned that my aunt Jamila’s expired Iraqi passport and related problems with her residency papers in Beirut were the key factors that had finally led to her marrying my uncle Hassan, more than forty years after she had first come for her job interview in Baghdad. By that time Hassan had acquired Lebanese citizenship, and she had the right to remain with him in Beirut as his wife.
40
The Mortality of Gods
Burials of the Banished
(1988)
MY GRANDFATHER HAD begun to age. He withdrew into an even more silent world, although he didn’t suffer from any serious illnesses and insisted on smoking a cigarette a day, much to the consternation of his children. When I visited my grandparents in London during my holidays from Jordan I often saw him sitting in his dressing gown with his walking cane next to his armchair, silently staring at a silver box on the coffee table in front of him. The flat contained many of the valuable objects that had been rescued from Beirut and earlier from Baghdad, and they filled the rooms with colour and memories. Precious items nestled between fading black-and-white photographs of another world, of kings and horses, and magnificent feasts. Each item held a story.
The cover of the silver box was engraved with an intricate picture showing the Trooping of the Colour, while the four panels on each side were decorated with scenes of Buckingham Palace, St James’s Palace, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. Inside the lid in delicate engraved lettering were the words ‘Abdul Hadi Chalabi, A Valued Friend, Lord Inverforth 1955’. This was the box from Aspreys that had been presented to Hadi by the Chief Director of Andrew Weir as a memento of his purchase of Latifiyyah. It was all he had left of the estate. Representing the cost of Dolphin Square, it had turned out to be one of the most expensive boxes imaginable.
One day in February 1988 Hadi woke up with a terrible pain in his abdomen. Hospital tests found a growth in his intestines which was blocking his digestive system and needed to be removed. Bibi couldn’t bear to hear the word ‘cancer’. She dreaded visiting him in hospital, and instead spent a lot of time biting her nails at home and praying for him. The surgery was successful, but Hadi’s health continued to deteriorate, although he was still conscious and calm enough to bid his children farewell.
For a man whose life was so linked to Iraq, it was only natural that he wanted to be buried in the shrine city of Najaf near his father, mother, brother Abdul Rasul and Ni’mati, but he knew this would be highly complicated because of the political situation. Not wanting his children to risk their lives taking him there, he reminded them of an old saying: ‘Man is buried with his deeds’ – meaning that he would be remembered for his good acts, not for where he was buried.
Shamsa and Hadi in London in the mid 1980s.
Hadi died peacefully in hospital in London on 7 March 1988, surrounded by his children. Bibi had come to visit him for the last time on the day before he died, and had sat next to his bed, holding his hand and weeping for him, for their old age. The impact of his death on the family was like a divine calamity, as if God had died. It unleashed a flood of sadness, shock, anger, regret and helplessness.
As it was impossible to return to Iraq, the family decided to lay Hadi to rest in Damascus, at the shrine of Sitt Zeinab, the Prophet’s granddaughter, Imam Ali’s daughter and Imam Hussein’s sister. The idea of burying him in England wasn’t even considered. That would have been an eternal exile.
Grandchildren came from around the world to see the family patriarch laid to rest, except for those who were prevented from travelling to Syria because of passport problems: once they left their countries of residence there were no guarantees that they would be allowed to return to them, as their birth nationality had made them pariahs. It was a poignant reminder of their greater orphaning through their loss of Iraq. As exiles, there was always an awareness of the homeland of which they had been deprived. All good things were projected onto the lost land, which became a focus of nostalgia and longing. Such attachment to one’s roots, to the past, can become overwhelmingly painful.
Standing after midnight in the pitch darkness of Damascus airport with my mother, waiting for the plane from London to land with my relatives, I was filled with fear. How would I cope with seeing my grandfather’s dead body? His was the first major death in my family that I had been aware of. My heart seized when a plane landed. Hardly able to breathe, I watched as its door opened and a group of young men in combat gear came out. These weren’t my family. A man standing beside us explained that these were Palestinian guerrillas back from their training in the Libyan desert. They walked silently past us, blinking sleepily as they headed towards the baggage hall. The plane from London finally landed, and my heart seized yet again. Here were my family: we hugged each other and cried together, and my fears subsided.
The funeral took place the next morning. We drove out early from our hotel to Sitt Zeinab shrine on the outskirts of Damascus. The city had become a centre for many fleeing Iraqis. The enmity between the Ba’ath regimes in Damascus and Baghdad was not ideologically based, but was more about the competition for power in the Arab world. Both regimes wanted to be seen as the legitimate embodiment of the ‘Arab revolution’; however, the purpose of this revolution was to strengthen the regimes rather than to bring about any tangible change for their subjects.
This was the first time I had been to a Shi’a shrine, as the major ones were all in Iraq. Sitt Zeinab had a typical square interior courtyard, in the middle of which was a smaller building in which the sarcophagus was protected by perforated brace panels in the manner of the shrines at Najaf and Karbala. I followed my grandfather’s coffin as it was carried around Zeinab’s tomb by his male grandchildren before entering the cemetery outside. Guided by a cousin who gripped his elbow tightly, my uncle Hassan followed. Tears trickled underneath his dark glasses as he held out his hands in front of him to find his way in the crowd.
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p; Although Muslim tradition means that the presence of women is not desired at burials, all Hadi’s surviving female relatives were there, except for Bibi, who was too old to travel, and my aunt Najla who had stayed behind with her in London. The funeral procession included a host of uncles, aunts and cousins, second cousins, cousins once removed and great-uncles. When we finally arrived at the freshly dug plot, I saw that the procession had mushroomed to over five hundred people, including many unfamiliar recently exiled, suffering and homeless Iraqis. Everyone chanted repeatedly: ‘Heaven, open your gate – Abdul Hadi is on his way.’ It was a mighty sound. My father went down into the grave as it was his duty, as the youngest of his children, to lay the disc made from the clay of Karbala underneath Hadi’s head. Throughout the service, Syrian government helicopters hovered overhead, watching us.
In accordance with tradition, several funeral services were held for my grandfather in different places around the world, reflecting the complex identity of his extended family. The most poignant service took place in London, where the family travelled to be with Bibi. Now in her late eighties, she looked very frail and confused; she had spent most of her life married to Abdul Hadi, and had never expected him to outdo her by dying first. She found great difficulty in adjusting to her new role as a widow. Her wit and life force started to fade. She missed her husband terribly, even after all the years of public bickering and unrelenting criticism of him. Death became the only thing on her mind.
She had previously declared to her children that she wanted to be buried in Najaf, as she was very taken by an old story about Imam Ali which said that he would take those buried near him by the hand and lead them to heaven. The story offered solace to Bibi, especially as she believed it had been corroborated by an incident many years earlier, when she had been a young girl. Her mother Rumia had made a pact with her friend Amira that whichever of them died first would visit the other in a dream to report on life beyond the grave. After Amira died she came to Rumia in a dream as promised, and told her that Imam Ali had indeed come to visit her and given her much comfort in her grave. When none of her children would commit to burying her in Najaf, Bibi turned to her granddaughter Leila, who promised that she would take her to the shrine city.
I was staying in Bibi’s flat by the Albert Hall in 1988 when the news broke about Saddam’s gassing of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja. Kurdish groups in northern Iraq had been agitating for autonomy for decades, and had recently taken advantage of the Iraqi Army’s engagement in Iran to seize control of large parts of their territory. When the Iran–Iraq War began to draw to a close, Saddam launched a genocidal campaign to recover his losses in the north and to punish the population that had supported the rebellion. Chemicals, including mustard gas and Sarin, which disrupts the nervous system, were shipped in from the West.
On 16 to 17 March 1988, Saddam Hussein experimented with chemical weapons on the civilians of Halabja, in an exercise whose long-term goal was the prevention of a potential Iranian invasion. The lack of response from the West indicated to him that he was at liberty to continue his retributive al-Anfal campaign against the Kurdish rebels. It is believed that, besides the devastating damage that was inflicted on the environment, as many as 182,000 people were killed.
The news reports were muddled, and seemed at times to assign responsibility for the attacks to Iran. As a result not all Western governments condemned the atrocities, although the visual evidence – footage of old men bent over dead babies in doorways – was highly incriminating. The gassing of the Kurds was preceded by the assassination of Sayyid Mahdi, the brother of Sayyid Muhsin al-Hakim, the Grand Ayatollah of Najaf.
It was absolutely clear that there was no possibility of my family’s return to Iraq under Saddam’s rule.
41
The Lost Talisman
When Everything is Taken
(1989–1992)
IT WAS 5 MARCH 1989, two days before the first anniversary of Hadi’s death. As was the custom, a memorial service was to be held on the anniversary itself. This would include the recitation of the Quran, as well as readings of poems, panegyrics and prose passages. A large lunch would be served and alms given on behalf of the deceased to the poor. Bibi’s daughters set about making the preparations, but she herself was upset and said she didn’t want to attend the memorial, that it was a waste of time and they should give the money to the poor instead. She eventually settled down towards the end of the day, and went for a walk after dinner with Thamina and Raifa along the long communal hallway.
That evening Thamina put her mother to bed before going home to her own apartment across the street. She had barely taken her coat off when Bibi called to say that she wasn’t feeling well. Quickly, my aunt put her coat back on and ran back. When Bibi told her she had severe pains in her stomach area, Thamina assumed it was of one of her usual imaginary ailments, but Bibi insisted that this time it was different. The doctor was called, but couldn’t find anything wrong. However, Bibi began to suffer from spasms, and cried, ‘I’m telling you, these are death pains.’
After the doctor had left all Bibi’s children who were based in London came to be with her. Rushdi sat all night with her, while Thamina held her hand. Najla had a cold, so she sat outside the room so as not to infect her. Bibi continuously repeated to her children: ‘Darlings, Najaf, Najaf, Najaf. Don’t forget.’ After midnight she grew quiet; her children sensed that she was fighting death. She quietly prayed and asked God for forgiveness, then repeated one last time: ‘You have to take me to Najaf.’
Unlike Hadi, who died peacefully, and who didn’t burden his children with the responsibility of where to bury him, Bibi had a difficult death. Yet she willed herself to die.
In fact, none of her children could fulfil her final wish. None of them could risk going to Iraq, and they couldn’t bear to send her body off alone like a package. They decided to bury her temporarily next to Hadi in Damascus, until such a time as they could move her to Najaf.
Bibi’s funeral was similar to Hadi’s, but was rendered all the more poignant by her final request, which hung over the family. Leila was beside herself for failing to fulfil her promise to her grandmother, while Hassan spent days in solitude, weeping and forbidding anyone to talk to him. With Hadi and Bibi gone, the link to Iraq truly seemed to be slipping away.
Seven months before Bibi’s death, in August 1988, the Iran–Iraq War ended in stalemate after eight years of fighting. Estimates put the death toll at between one and two million. Like the First World War, the conflict had involved torturous trench warfare and the use of mustard gas, which burned skin and blocked the respiratory tract, which if not immediately fatal caused severe long-term damage to the lungs, and cancer in many cases. The war achieved little besides strengthening the grip of both governments on their subjects.
Saddam Hussein presented himself to the world as a combination of two historical characters firmly rooted in the Iraqi psyche: the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar the Great, who captured Judah, and Saladin, the Sultan who won victories against the Crusaders – both empire builders who had fought enemies who threatened Iraq’s integrity. They both came from the land that is present-day Iraq, although ethnically neither was an Arab, a somewhat ironic fact as Saddam placed great emphasis on his own Arab ethnicity.
Saddam exploited Arab nationalism and Ba’athism in very utilitarian ways. Conflating these ideologies with his ruthless and oppressive regime, he promoted a heightened sense of his own importance within the region, and of the region within the world. In accordance with his logic, any action undertaken by him assumed mythic, historic proportions. This is why he and his supporters called the Iran–Iraq War the Qadissiya, in reference to the historic Sassanian (Iranian) defeat at the hands of the Arab Muslims in the seventh century. Similarly, the first Gulf War was called umm al ma’rek, the ‘mother of all battles’.
Saddam’s ideology, which was really all about his own survival as an absolute leader, was grounded in his tribal background
and an intense dose of machismo. While fellow tribesmen of a certain standing were respected by him, the peasantry were despised, while the urban classes – the bourgeoisie in particular – were resented. Saddam engaged in a comprehensive project of refashioning Iraq according to his own world view, tastes and fantasies. Under his rule, the urban charm of Baghdad was replaced by vulgar extravagance, manifested in the city’s architecture and personality cults.
Although he had depleted the state’s coffers in the Iran–Iraq War, more horror would soon follow with Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. During the first Gulf War in 1991, he brutally repressed a Shi’a uprising in the south which had been encouraged by George Bush Senior, who then looked away as Saddam’s forces rounded the insurgents up. Tens of thousands are reported to have died. The impact this had on Iraqis abroad was tremendous, as their disappointment paralysed them. Again Saddam had survived against all odds, and with the assistance of the very country that had declared war on him.
When the family’s fortunes dwindled after Bibi’s death, her daughters observed that she had considered herself to be a lucky talisman, as her father-in-law Abdul Hussein had noted when she had married into the Chalabi family. My father recalled one of her superstitions: on her first sight of the new moon each month she would close her eyes, latch on to someone and ask them to lead her to a mirror for good luck. Before she died she gave her granddaughter Leila a photograph of herself and told her with absolute conviction, ‘Keep this next to you; I’ll bring you luck.’ But soon after she died, any good luck that she had bestowed upon her tribe vanished as the banks established by my uncles ran into political and financial troubles.
Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family Page 39