by Ali Bader
Abd al-Rahman was perplexed by this sexual traffic. He saw respectable men enter the narrow alley in their posh cars. Prostitutes wearing expensive clothes, jewelry, and fur coats, met and rode off with them. Toothless old women were doing the bargaining and collecting the money. Other young women were standing in the doorways; the male customers looked them over, and then took them into the house.
Twenty minutes later Saadun came out of the house, disheveled, closing his fly, his shirt half undone. He was laughing and shouted at the boy, “Don’t worry, I won’t bite you.” When he reached the carriage he said to the horse, “Don’t be upset. If there were prostitutes for horses I would take you to them.”
Abd al-Rahman laughed at his apprehensiveness. The two men drove back to the fish restaurant near the church.
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The restaurant was in a modest district of town, but the night and darkness hid the decrepit houses and the poverty of the place. The two men sat on a couch covered with woolen rugs, ready for their fish dinner; the smell of fried fish filled the place. Saadun lit two cigarettes and gave one to Abd al-Rahman. While they were waiting to be served, a woman in an abaya passed by coquettishly. Saadun’s eyes followed her silhouette until she disappeared from view and he said, “She could break metal.” The comment amused the boy, who was constantly amazed at Saadun’s sexual prowess and unflagging interest in women. Saadun recalled how the boy had run away from the prostitute and hid in the carriage like a rat, to Abd al-Rahman’s great amusement. He asked the boy what he thought of Rujina.
“I don’t know” he answered.
“You’d like to try it with her, wouldn’t you?” Saadun asked. Abd al-Rahman was silent. Simultaneously he felt a cold shiver run through his veins and a warm feeling in his skin. They arrived home late, drunk with joy.
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Shortly after midnight the following night, Abd al-Rahman opened his bedroom door and saw Rujina standing in the dim light of the hall. She was wearing a revealing muslin dress. He approached her, breathing heavily, his eyes filled with desire. He kneeled and caressed her thighs; they then went into her room. He suggested they go to the roof, but she was afraid someone might surprise them. She took off her clothes, lay on the bed, and called Abd al-Rahman to join her. He averted his eyes from her nakedness, which reminded him of his mother’s body moaning under his father’s hairy legs. He sat down on the bed softly, and she took his head in her hands and placed it against her warm breasts. He passed his lips over them. Suddenly the door flew open and the light switched on. The two jumped in terror and heard his father shout, “Adulterous woman! First me, and now my son too!? And in the same bed!”
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Naked, the boy ran to his room, hurtling up the stairs. He was mortified to pass his mother standing in front of her bedroom on his way. He quickly covered himself, rushed into his room, and slammed the door shut behind him. They were even now: he had seen her naked, and now she had seen him naked. Still he couldn’t forget how she had stood motionless as he was running up the stairs naked before her.
The philosopher’s childhood certainly provided sufficient material to make a serious existentialist out of him. A single document stated that the al-Sadriya philosopher was deeply influenced in both his philosophy and conduct by Edmond al-Qushli. It was the only document of those I found, either among those the lawyer Butrus Samhiri had shown me when I visited him in his office, those owned by Hanna Yusif which he gave me at our first meeting, or even the important papers that were held by Sadeq Zadeh. Edmond al-Qushli, the assiduous Christian, who worked first as a translator for an Indian company then as a teacher at Frank Aini School, lived with his grandmother Adileh in the district facing Mahallet Jadid Hasan Basha in Baghdad. In the fifties he was considered an existentialist, in the sixties a Trotskyite. When he was young, people referred to him as ‘Edmond son of Adileh.’
One wonders why Abd al-Rahman became the preeminent existentialist philosopher in Baghdad while Edmond al-Qushli turned his back on existentialism completely—he even fought against it. It is possible that Abd al-Rahman was a victim of a Trotskyite plot organized by Edmond al-Qushli, with the help of the great bourgeois of the time, Faraj Khaddouri. But in offering this theory we would face another hurdle: How did a proletarian Trotskyite join with a comprador bourgeoisie against an existentialist of the sixties, a descendant of an aristocratic family that had been in gradual decline from Ottoman times, to the monarchy, and later under the republic?
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It is well known that Edmond al-Qushli became acquainted with existentialism at the end of the forties reading the Egyptian journal al-Katib al-‘arabi edited by Taha Hussein. This contradicts the rumors spread by Iraqi philosophers of Abd al-Rahman’s generation who claimed that they carried existential thought into Iraq. But Edmond had read Abd al-Rahman Badawi’s translations of Arnold’s writings and some of Sartre’s articles on the subject long before the sixties. In the fifties, specifically in 1953, he became very attached to Suhail Idris, the existentialist Arab thinker and friend of Sartre’s. He brought existentialism to Iraq from Paris in his suitcase, as the Iraqi existentialists like to say.
Edmond fell in love with Aida Matraji, who was the Arab Simone de Beauvoir in the fifties and the sixties. He had two photographs hanging on his wall in his grandmother Adileh’s house, one of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and, on the opposite wall, a photograph of Suhail and Aida together. He considered Aida more beautiful than Simone de Beauvoir and Suhail Idris more handsome than Sartre, because Sartre was short and Suhail was tall. And while Sartre saw matters with one eye, Suhail regarded them with two. He also confided to his existentialist friend Sarkun Saleh—who was introduced to existentialism around the end of the Second World War, in the Waqwaq café in Antar Square—that he loved Aida because she was honorable, whereas Simone de Beauvoir lived her life as many Frenchwomen did and had known hundreds of men before she slept with Sartre. This explained why, according to him, Arab existentialism is greater and more honorable than French existentialism.
Edmond al-Qushli might also have been influenced by the Baghdadi journal al-Fikr, published by an Iraqi painter with the help of his mother, Hajjeh Zakiya Abed. The journal closed down when she died. It was the same journal in which Naim Qattan published a news item copied from the French press about a conference Sartre had given in Paris. The place was so packed that the police had to intervene to get help for those who fainted in the crowd.
Naim Qattan was introduced to existentialism through readings in French. One of the important documents that Hanna Yusif gave me, however, stated that Edmond al-Qushli was too young in the forties to be interested in philosophy. But it’s a fact that he was influenced by one of his friends who used to frequent the Waqwaq café (it might have been Sarkun Saleh himself) and became familiar with existentialism through the journal al-Katib al-‘arabi, where he read Arnold’s translated articles and those of Abd al-Rahman Badawi.
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Edmond used to go to the Waqwaq café every day, sit on the wooden couch covered with mats, drink tea, and smoke. The café was always crowded and warm. He would sit close to the large glass windows overlooking the street to watch the passersby while listening to the sounds of classical music—Bartók, Debussy, Rubenstein.
Other café habitués were Husain Mardan, who always sat at a remote table in the corner. He would usually be joined by Boland al-Haydari and Fuad al-Takarli, and the three of them would read from a small book of Husain Mardan’s. Their physical appearance conjured a state of neglect that reflected their fascination with existentialism: they wore cheap clothes and didn’t shave. Desmond Stewart was a habitué of the Café Brazil. To the great delight of all, he was usually surrounded by young men listening to his translation of excerpts from Sartre’s work.
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Edmond al-Qushli became acquainted with existentialism before the al-Sadriya philosopher, but there’s not a shred of proof that he influenced Abd al-Rahman, especially insofar as Edmond reject
ed existentialism decisively sometime around the end of the fifties or the beginning of the sixties. The two men met during the philosopher’s return visits to Baghdad after his departure for Paris to study. It was after he learned of the affair between his cousin, Nadia Khaddouri, and the philosopher that al-Qushli rejected existentialism, colonialism, and capitalism. He thought up a new concept for rebellion, because he was neither moved to existentialism by the resistance nor satisfied by it, finding the philosophy to be effeminate, cowardly, quiet, and defeatist. Nadia distanced herself from him because her family had moved up in society and become part of the merchant class. Abd al-Rahman managed to win her because he was rich and belonged to the aristocracy, and Nadia’s father was more interested in money than religion—what use was existentialism in this case? Edmond wanted a revolution, and this couldn’t be an existential revolution because existentialism is not revolutionary. He wanted a sweeping Trotskyite revolution that would involve confusion, destruction, demolition, tearing away, and uprooting. There would doubtless be a revolution, one that he would lead. The first house he would destroy would be that of the bourgeois Abd al-Rahman, then the Khaddouri’s. He would then proceed to annihilate one house at a time, one floor at a time. He would tie the members of those families with ropes, load them onto donkeys, and parade them before the people. Thanks to the revolution, he would be able to win Nadia, control her, and make her submit her to his sexual desires. He’d rape her, and it would be a Trotskyite rape. He’d win her over in an original way. He wouldn’t say to her, “I adore you,” but rather, “You’re my revolution. You’re the reward of those who struggle against colonialism, capitalism, and reactionaries. You’ll be mine because you belong to me. You do not belong to the feudalists and the aristocrats.”
This was the revolution that Edmond wanted to launch and which he planned, a revolution far removed from nausea, nihilism, and estrangement. But Nadia ended her relationship with Abd al-Rahman. He gave up on her and went to Paris, where he married a Frenchwoman, a relative of Sartre. The revolution toppled the Khaddouri family, and Nadia was attracted to the Trotsky of his time. He married her after the revolution, but he didn’t rape her. Instead, he felt that he was being raped. This is how Edmond the Trotskyite befriended the bourgeois Khaddouri and both rallied against the philosopher of al-Sadriya.
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The impoverished Elias Khaddouri worked making sweets in the Guarabed store owned by an Armenian merchant, while Faraj Khaddouri made straw baskets in Hasqeel Tawfiq’s shop on the Murabba’a quarter. They lost their friends and had many detractors who made fun of them whenever they talked and shoved them on the stairs of the apartment building where they lived.
They moved to Yasin al-Khudayri’s warehouse on Nazim Basha Street but didn’t stay there long. The owner of the khan won them over with his kindness. They were extremely sensitive and in dire need of compassion. They expressed their appreciation for him through their love of work, and their affection increased whenever he forgave mistakes they made out of carelessness. He treated them with obvious deference, drinking with them on the balcony that overlooks the river and watching the sun set across the bridge.
After he went to London, where he chose to live, the Khaddouris were at the mercy of Abboud ibn Nazira, a harsh man who had plucked out the beard of the comic journalist Ibrahim Saleh Shukr because of a feuilleton he wrote that made fun of the government. They could not work in the atmosphere of imaginary plots he created and decided to leave. They went to Mahallet Qunbur Ali and rented a store and a small workshop, where they made rattan chairs.
Their pitiful financial state was obvious, and only through gargantuan efforts could they improve their lot. They worked day and night, and the situation slowly improved. After two years, owing to good work and trade ethics, they had achieved an acceptable financial status. The signs of wealth were apparent in their lives, and a number of posh shops opened around them, selling sweets, clothes, jewelry, shoes, and furniture. The most dramatic change happened after a deal they made with the business man Rick Dowell, a former British soldier in the first cavalry regiment that was led by Sir Frederick Maude, which entered Baghdad after the First World War.
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Rick Dowell crossed the span that was later named Maude Bridge with the Sikh, Karka, and Gurkha soldiers occupying Baghdad in 1917, then proceeded to the palace in Mahallet Jadid Hasan Basha. He participated in the review of the British Army on al-Rashid Street, as can be seen in the one existing photograph of the event. Rick spent five years in Baghdad and did not return to London until the British troops withdrew, in the nineteen-twenties.
Rick returned to Baghdad after the Second World War to place flowers on the tombs of his friends, who were killed during the war of occupation, fighting against the Ottoman soldiers led by Khalil Pasha. He also visited the soldiers who were buried in the British cemetery near Bab al-Muadham. Elias and Faraj offered the ex-invader a beautiful chair made of the best rattan. This expression of generosity along with the wonderful welcome he received moved him to tears; he decided to sign a contract to export the finest of those oriental chairs upholstered with rugs to be sold in the Marks & Spencer store in London. The deal transformed the small atelier into a huge company with colored lighted billboards reading: “Khaddouri Company for the Export of Rattan Chairs.”
Faraj and Elias were invited to exclusive parties with select guests. They became good friends with the Lawi family who owned car agencies on al-Rashid Street. Every Friday evening they went to parties organized by Sassoon Lawi. It was at one of those parties that Faraj fell in love with Elain Ifrayem, the most beautiful Jewess of her time.
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Elain had a fair, youthful complexion very much like that of an Italian woman. She would move among reception guests with a cheerful face, wearing a white sleeveless blouse and short skirt. She exuded calm and joy. Faraj watched her while spreading butter on bread, feeling her presence immanently, letting his imagination run over her, and inhaling her scent whenever she came close. She melted at the slightest compliment or praise. She stood before him, neck straight, the contours of her chest visible under her well tailored clothes. The whole atmosphere of the illuminated reception hall and its warmth during the cold winter evenings augmented his awareness of Elain’s femininity.
Elain was in love with Robin Assaf, who worked in the Guri medical supply depot. The Guri and Lawi families were enemies. Elain’s family also considered Robin an adversary because he worked in their enemy’s headquarters. They couldn’t destroy or even harm Robin financially because he was already penniless, so they decided to ruin him socially, a strategy no one expected.
The elder Ifrayem, an accountant, knew that a person’s worth was measured by the amount of money he possessed, which explains why he scratched Robin from the list of eligible suitors for Elain. Faraj was also an inappropriate match due to his religion. It was at that time that one of the sleaziest persons in Jewish circles, Mayer ben Nassim, the Lawi family accountant, appeared on the scene. Faraj Khaddouri paid Mayer a visit in his office to seek his help in his amorous schemes.
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The office was filthy. Pistachio shells and cigarette butts cluttered the floor, and the place was disgusting. Mayer wore worn-out black clothes, the buttons were gone from his vest, his rugged wool shirt was stained with coffee, and his necktie was torn.
At the end of their long conversation Faraj was surprised to hear Mayer declare that there was an easy solution, “a simple trick.”
“Yes my friend. It’s easy,” said Mayer, laughing. His face was fair and thin, his nose long, and his black eyes almost round. Smoothing his greasy hair with his hand, he explained his idea to Faraj. “Just give me a photograph, and I’ll give you a fake Jewish birth certificate. It’s easy my friend, very easy.”
One of Butrus Samhiri’s documents bore this description: “Mayer ben Nassim is a malicious Jew, a usurer, degenerate, and coward.” The Lawi family and Mayer ben Nassim convinced Ifrayem that Far
aj Khaddouri was a closet Jew. Faraj gave Ifrayem a lot of money for Elain’s sake. He was willing to do anything to win Elain.
This is how the Lawi family was able to destroy their enemy socially. They humiliated and insulted him and forced him to run away to America a few days before Elain’s wedding.
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Elain converted to Christianity. The procession after her church wedding was led by a Chevrolet, a wedding gift from the Lawi family to Faraj, a down payment for his friendship and the price of his silence.
The procession of the newlyweds, preceded by gold-plated carriages, moved through al-Rashid Street, from the Plazia Restaurant to the Europe Palace Hotel on the Tigris River, where the newlyweds were spending one night before honeymooning in Venice, Rome, and Milan. Faraj enjoyed his wife’s fair body under the Adriatic sun and returned home drunk with happiness.
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The major change for the Khaddouri family was the location of their new house. They—Faraj and Elain, Elias and his wife Paulina, and their daughter Nadia—moved to al-Maarif Street, near the Armenian church.
The Khaddouri family chose to live in the outskirts of the city near the white palace where the king occasionally spent time. They built a large mansion, quite tall, surrounded by an impressive fence that separated it from the meadows and grazing animals. A huge garden featuring a fountain with a striped mosaic pattern facing the entrance of the house was the family’s favorite gathering place in the evenings. The men smoked water pipes and the women happily sipped coffee with cardamom from porcelain cups.
