Baghdad Diaries

by al-Radi, Nuha;

  Apparently all out-of-season vegetables on sale in the markets come from the greenhouses of our ruling family; the entire ministry of agriculture is working for them. They also have a gazelle farm and eat gazelle meat.

  M.A.W. is back in town. I told him he just missed the dog party that we’ve been having. He has an air gun that he intends to fire at the dogs when they bother him; the pellets are little pinpricks, he said. But they won’t bother him again – the animal lover returned. He was ranting about the state of his garden, saying, ‘Look, no grass. Just like a desert with dog holes.’ I told him that his gardener Abd had been pinching flowerpots from Suha’s house (she has moved to Hisham’s in Mansur), that he transplants flowers from M.A.W.’s garden into these pots and sells them. Anyway, I’m glad he’s back so that we can play tric trac* again. He had an awful journey coming back; the driver took seven hours to shit and two hours to pee and five hours to eat! I said, ‘You must have been on the road for days!’ He’s a first-class exaggerator. He came on a new British airline to Beirut that gave out free drinks all the way.

  I think I might get a cow. Majeed knows how to milk it, Hamdiya can make yoghurt and we have plenty of greenery to feed it. I thought of goats but they are so destructive and we can’t keep them tied up all day. Cows just sort of muck around, and we wouldn’t have to buy any more manure for the orchard.

  Rolf Ekeus** announced that we had been hiding our germ warfare stuff and not telling them where it was hidden. I can well believe it after hearing the uranium story. The USA has won again, the sanctions will remain. Albright need not have gone on her trip. Everyone in Baghdad calls her Fulbright, I wonder why?

  3 March

  Just returned from a long day of visitings. Had just finished reading Shirin’s book on Princess Fakhrilnissa, badly written but interesting because one knows the people involved. As I was mentally into the Ottoman empire I started on Regards from a Dead Princess by Kenizé Mourad, a far more interesting and better written book. Since we still have a few diehard Ottomans left in Baghdad, I went to check on their memories. Ataturk had taken my fancy so I asked Abla Jalila whether she’d ever met him. ‘No,’ she said. But Nahida, who was visiting her, said that she’d met him twice when she was a student – he was good-looking, with piercing blue eyes. He remembered her when they met again at a function for Reza Shah of Iran, and singled her out. All eyes turned on her, and as she bent to take her first sip of champagne, a great big strawberry hit her and splashed all over the front of her dress. Perturbation all around until the Shah’s aide came to her side and said to her, ‘In our society, when someone gets too much attention, a fruit is thrown at them to ward off the evil eye,’ so everyone relaxed and laughed. Ma said that Ataturk was very friendly with my great-uncle Naji when he was ambassador to Turkey, and later when he became foreign minister of Iraq – they both liked to drink and flirt, and got along very well.

  There was a Swiss epidemiologist at lunch at Assia’s and I told him that I hoped epidemics didn’t follow him around. He said, ‘No. Only work epidemics.’ This country is being used as a lab, with all of us as guinea pigs. They’re taking count of the last six years and what diseases have increased. He says it’s an utter disaster and that they will lift the embargo when they read his report. I told him that this embargo was a political one and would not end until the USA decided to end it. I asked him whether there was an increase in cancer and he said he didn’t know, he only does contagious diseases. I told him that he should advise the outside authorities to send a cancer specialist to check whether the pollution of the war (all the chemicals that were thrown at us and that will remain in the soil, acting as a slow poison) has increased that disease. But then I remembered that the USA experimented on its own soldiers, so why should they care if we survive or not? In fact, it’s useful for them; they can check the results in total freedom and unhampered by any legal constraints.

  I phoned Assia to thank her for lunch and was telling her that I was reading Kenizé Mourad when she said, ‘But I knew her well, in the 1970s. She was a journalist for the Nouvel Observateur and came often to Baghdad. I would take her round and act as her translator.’ Such a small world. Assia says that Kenizé Mourad grew up in an orphanage. How could that be true?

  Maybe I should start the family biography that I’m supposed to be writing by listing all the ‘firsts’ of the family in the early years of the newly independent Iraq. My grandfather founded the Agricultural Bank, my great-uncle Sa’ib was the first surgeon, my father the first agriculturalist/horticulturalist – he began all the experimental farms in Iraq. Even in our generation, Sol was the first woman archaeologist and I was the first woman potter. However, there’s no place for us members of the old society in this new one; we don’t speak the same language.

  A lot of kidnapping is taking place around Baghdad. Here’s how it happens: a car stops at the traffic lights, someone points a gun through the window and says, ‘Give me your car keys.’ While the driver is concentrating on getting the keys, a second person is busy hustling out his woman passenger. She is taken out, raped, beaten, shorn of her hair and finally thrown naked out on the street. The government is apparently worried because they don’t know who is responsible for this latest crime wave. It is not limited to a particular area of Baghdad, but happens in different districts.

  5 March

  God knows what the hell is happening. Turkey has invaded from the north and has supposedly taken Zakho. Iran and the insurgents have invaded the south and the army has been on alert for the last week. Party members are also on alert and manning checkpoints everywhere. Lots of guns have been smuggled into Thawra. Tomatoes have reached 400 dinars a kilo. My tyre mechanic told me today that about six kids between six and seven years old came to him and begged him to give them jobs as they have left school – presumably their families need every bit of extra cash. He himself is an Arabic schoolteacher but is on army duty. He doesn’t go to his army job but just gives his salary to his officer – he can’t afford to live on the pay with his wife and three kids. The tyres that come into his garage to be repaired have to be seen to be believed. I said, ‘Is it possible that a car can even move with tyres worn so smooth that there are chunks missing?’

  He just laughed and said, ‘This is Iraq the Great. In Kurdistan they call the south “Shi‘istan” (“Shi‘a-land”), the centre “Ju‘istan” (“hunger-land”) and the north, naturally, Kurdistan.’

  Since M.A.W. returned, the dogs are all back in their place and well behaved, presumably fearing the pellet gun. Salvi has a new follower. I’ve lost my war with the dogs. I don’t have the energy to chase them any more.

  6 March

  The news does not sound good: Khanaqin has fallen to the Iranians, Zakho to the Kurds and the south gone? (All turned out to be false stories.) Sol phoned from Frankfurt airport on her way to Uzbekistan, lucky thing.

  Went to a concert given by a nine-year-old, a little Mozart, truly amazing.

  Umm Imad, the maid at Ma and Needles’ house, said that if the US army marched into Baghdad they would be welcomed with open arms, adding that if she could smuggle her two boys out of the country she would. It would be worth missing them. Ma calls her the voice of the people, the barometer of Iraq.

  8 March

  Today the weather is balmy and I’m walking around without socks, a lovely feeling. My friendly robin is still around and demanding breakfast. A pair of nightingales and the magpies have discovered my cache of dates and goodies so there is a lot of activity under the bougainvillea.

  Gave a dinner party last night. Excellent. Not only the food but the combination of people – the new Indian ambassador is a poppet. Everyone was doing their own thing, and conversations veered from starving children to epidemics because the Swiss epidemiologist, Dr Bernard, was present. He has fallen in love with Iraq and doesn’t want to leave. I gave him Seton Lloyd’s book* to photocopy because he wants to learn more about this country. Ala’, who only wanted to talk about art,
was being pestered by Assia about some weird disease whose name she couldn’t remember, one that eats up the body. ‘Can’t we forget medicine?’ he asked. Dr Bernard and Henry wouldn’t stop eating rice so finally Assia went and removed the plate. I made a paté out of Iraqi truffles. Henry said, ‘Of course, you would get it wrong. In France, truffle paté is presented in minute quantities, while you’ve done the exact opposite. What extravagance!’

  ‘But these are Iraqi truffles, and I’m happily selling the contents of my studio to buy more,’ I said. ‘I don’t care. One only lives once.’

  9 March

  I was out in the garden planting tomatoes with Majeed when there was a great clacking noise. ‘What’s that?’ I said. ‘Sounds like a duck.’

  ‘No,’ said Majeed, ‘that’s a big snake laying its eggs.’ Such a loud noise. I looked closer but couldn’t see anything. Presumably they will surface when we clean up the orchard and they have no dead leaves and places to hide under – what an excitement.

  10 March

  We had a lovely picnic near Salmanpak in an orchard of pear trees belonging to Qahtan. All the trees were in bloom, and it looked like snow on the ground and on the trees, beautiful but no smell. Just the opposite of what I will have in my orchard in a week’s time – I will be reeling from the smell of orange blossom. I asked Qahtan whether he’d noticed any difference in his orchard since the war in terms of diseases etc, and he said only odd bugs that he’d never seen before. His gardener brought him what looked like a thick green leaf and as he was scrutinizing and squeezing it, red blood oozed out of it and he realized it was an insect. The gardener plants little shoots and seedlings and they get eaten overnight by strange red worms.

  Afterwards, I went to the Rashid Hotel to visit Appolone and saw the ultimate economy that a luxury hotel has to practise during an embargo – in the loo a bar of pink soap had been crudely cut in half, one on each side of the basin. I walked out and ran into Seymour:* what’s an oil conference without Seymour? He came loaded with goodies for us and also gave me a tape of our BBC interview with Tim.

  Found M.A.W. on the road, peeling onions directly into his garbage bin. ‘Why don’t you do that in your kitchen?’ I asked.

  ‘You have to take the onions inside and peel them and bring out the peel again. This is simpler and saves time,’ he answered. But I know that the real reason is that he doesn’t want to dirty his house. Then he doesn’t have to hire anyone to clean it. He’s a fetishist about cleanliness.

  By my kitchen door there was a bloody kind of worm, I look at it closely and it looks like a queen bee. I asked Majeed whether he’d seen it and he said yes, and that it was about the time when queen bees emerge to make a new hive. That’s when the bee-eaters get them. I saw one, a beautiful turquoise with brown and red splashes, drinking water from the swimming pool. He must have been the killer. Poor queen bee, working like a dog all her life, and the minute she comes out for a bit of fresh air she’s killed. What a life. Qahtan had 200 beehives but a few years ago they were decimated by an epidemic of red insect-bees that hovered outside the hives and would eat the wings off the bees as they came out – a veritable disaster that killed off most of the bees in Iraq. That happened just before the Gulf War, so I can’t put the blame on the war.

  Our new tanoor is broken – just bought at terrific expense. Hamdiya and her sisters were carrying it to its site when Salvi came from behind and stuck his nose into Hamdiya’s sister’s bum. Naturally she screamed and dropped her load. End of tanoor.

  15 March

  Had dinner last night with Seymour, who told us that the oil conference was a great success, that for the first time the authorities gave them all the documentation they asked for. Dinner went on until 2 a.m. with Ilham playing the guitar. It was fun except that I got very ill from cigarette smoke. It really was killing me. I couldn’t breathe and had to take great gulps, my mouth working like that of a fish. I have to give up my smoking friends and just talk to them on the telephone.

  Went to mend my car silencer, which has a great big hole in it. It cannot be welded. I have to get another. The man who owns this shop is an ex-civil servant who used to work at the Ministry of Oil, but is now retired. My car mechanic and full-time adviser on cars is an ex-ambassador who retired and opened a mechanic’s shop – something his heart had been set on for years. According to his wife Sarab, his holidays were never for relaxation, they were an excuse for stuffing his head into the bowels of a car. He has many people working for him, not your usual car mechanics but sons of friends – more phone every day because there are no jobs around, but he can’t take any more. The exhaust man was using his son as a welder.

  The situation is getting worse by the minute, but we don’t know anything. Lots more dead bodies turning up. They had to clear the hospitals of the not-so-sick to make room for the badly wounded. There’s a rumour going round of a failed coup attempt, nipped in the bud.

  The other day, all heads of departments and government offices were collected by bus and taken to Tikrit.* All were very nervous, they had no idea what was going to happen to them, but when they arrived at their destination they were given buckets and spades and told to go and collect truffles! They went off happily and collected a sackful to take back home. The truffles have been magnificent this year and I’m eating them with everything. Just had them mixed with olive paste and tomatoes – delicious.

  They have been trimming the palm trees in the orchard and I got a thorn in my ankle. It was just a little prick but my ankle is now swollen and throbbing in time with the ticking of the clock. Palm thorns are lethal.

  Am starting to unpack my summer clothes. Summer will come overnight and I still haven’t got the swimming pool in order. The telephone situation is becoming desperate, one screams and yells to a background noise of beeps and drones and crossed or mixed lines. I’ve just had a screaming match with Ma. When I talked to Seymour, I heard him say he was bringing over three females – in fact he brought over only one. I was just hearing everything wrong.

  16 March

  Dreamed last night of a two-headed person-cum-donkey – it sort of changed, metamorphosing from one to another: a bad guy stuck to a good guy, making terrible faces. The last thing I was reading last night before I fell asleep was about how, in olden times, Indian princes would cut up two young birds, join them to grow into one, teach them how to fly so they could show their alternating profiles – one side blue feathers, the other pink – sounds grotesque. Then I dreamed of Kruddie and I was so happy to see him that I kept hugging him and talking non-stop. He’s been dead for fifteen years and could have told me interesting things: instead I just talked. A missed opportunity – even in dreams.

  18 March

  Saw Wissam on the news with the Pope – looked in his element with all that wonderful granite and marble at the Vatican. The Pope said the embargo was wrong and only hurt the people, that embargoes should be used for short and restricted periods only. Tariq Aziz is going to spend the next two months doing an Albright – touring all the countries of the world that will have him. What are we going to offer them, I wonder.

  The Red Cross had a luncheon at Amal’s Bait al-Iraqi* and she took me along as a token Iraqi. Most were Swiss but there was an Irish lady who’s in charge of spare limb parts, fitting them on and teaching the exercises. She says false limbs are the one thing that this country can do, they’re cheap to make and not banned under the embargo. There are plenty of people here with missing limbs, and many more every day from exploding landmines. No one has bothered to de-mine the country. Another Red Cross delegate was in charge of missing people, Kuwaitis and Iraqis. I asked her how many and she says about ninety. They’ve made only one positive identification, a man who came back and didn’t bother to inform the Red Cross. When they phoned up his family, he answered and said, ‘Oh, I’ve been back for two years.’ They keep the names on their list for nine months. I asked about the Iranians but the Red Cross is not responsible for their count – non
e of their officials is allowed into Iran. No wonder so many of the Iranian prisoners have not returned or been heard of in years.

  29 March

  It’s been ages since I last wrote. I had a terrible flu and cold, sinus, throat and fever – it still won’t go away. I didn’t stay a single day in bed but took the latest antibiotic brought by Sol from Q. I’m afraid they didn’t do me much good, so went on to Advil, which improved me some. I heard on the BBC today that the USA is the biggest seller of arms. Why don’t they make medicines and good things and let the world relax a bit? Enough killing.

  Issam came to visit today and raved about the smell of orange blossom. I have gotten used to it. We had a long talk about sewage – he’s worried that if there was another attempt made to wipe us out, they might hit the sewage plants instead of the electricity, then we really would be up to our noses in shit. I told him that he should worry about the mess we’re in now rather than worry about what may or may not happen – let’s first get out of the shit we’re now in, metaphorically speaking. Then he started to talk about families, his as against the Gailanis. He can trace his back 200 years while the Gailanis go back to 1120 or thereabouts. But what’s the use of that, he says, if no member has shone since Abd al-Qadir,* and that was over 800 years ago; they’ve all been living off the fame of that one person. Issam is hoping to make something of himself, a bit late in the day but maybe he can solve the sewage problems of Iraq and be remembered forever – he is, after all, a water engineer. My horoscope says my name will live after me, and I must say that we all have not done too badly. Issam says, ‘Anyway, you’re an alwiyah because you come from a sayid* family,’ but I said that blood must be running a bit thin by now. Must remind him that he forgot about Rashid Ali Gailani.