Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family

by Tamara Chalabi

  ‘He doesn’t speak a word of Arabic,’ continued Abdul Hussein. ‘Probably from Hamadan or somewhere around there.’ When Munira sniffed unsympathetically, he snapped, ‘Not every fifteen-year-old would have done what Hadi did, and brought him home. You could at least be proud of your nephew!’

  Munira glowered, but Abdul Hussein persevered: ‘Anyway, he seems to have taken well to the horses in the stables. We’ll sort him out. His name is Ni’mati.’

  Munira leaned forward, her face covered with one hand, her elbow propped on the table-top. Abdul Hussein abandoned any further effort to enjoy his lunch. ‘What is wrong now, sister? Speak!’ he exclaimed. ‘You have everything you could possibly want – this palace, a respected and rich husband. A beautiful garden, that wonderful deer. All these servants … What on earth is wrong?’

  ‘This deer will be a curse,’ Munira said sullenly. ‘There has already been a crowd outside, staring at it. And they’ve started calling our house “the Deer Palace”.’

  ‘What rubbish!’ Abdul Hussein erupted. ‘Let the people talk – they talk anyway, and now at least they’ll have something pleasant to gossip about.’ He rose to his feet, threw his napkin on the table and curtly took his leave of her.

  Munira remained in her seat. Her fingers clenched her water glass, which she suddenly hurled at the wall. She watched as the liquid dribbled down to the floor. The servants could clean up the broken shards later.

  Abdul Hussein called for Sattar and the carriage driver, but they were nowhere to be found. He was so angry that he forgot to leave the Nawab a message about the important business of the shrine and the carpets. He tucked his fez under his arm, squashing it with the sheer force of his irritation, and started to march out of the garden, eyes fixed on the ground. Belatedly, he shouted back at a gardener, ‘Tell those imbeciles to follow me now!’

  He crossed the grounds that faced the newly-named Deer Palace and walked down towards the riverbank, where he waved at a boatman to bring his guffa over. Guided by the expertise of such boatmen, round-bottomed guffas had been whirling their way down the Tigris for thousands of years. As the little boat transported Abdul Hussein towards Baghdad, the soft breeze calmed his heated temper a little. He could see boys flying homemade kites from the rooftops that lined the river. On the other side, he spotted one of the steamers of the British Lynch company heading south to Basra. It was time for his siesta, but he was still too agitated to rest.

  A guffa on the Tigris in Baghdad, circa 1914.

  He decided to cross to the eastern bank near the old city, where he could sit in one of the cafés near Maidan Square and smoke a nargilleh – a water pipe. Many cafés had sprung up there in the last few years, havens of music and liveliness, and Abdul Hussein was sure a visit to one would lighten his mood. But as the small boat neared the bank, he remembered the weeping old man back at the shrine, saddened by the behaviour of his three errant sons … An idea came to him, and he told the boatman to turn around and take him to the pontoon bridge at Kazimiya.

  The pontoon bridge consisted of wooden boats tied together. As Abdul Hussein approached it, it gently rocked from side to side. Observed from a distance, the crowds of women in their black abayas who were crossing the bridge formed a single swaying mass.

  Disembarking nearby, Abdul Hussein paid the boatman and made his way back home. There he found Sattar, and asked him to send one of the servants to fetch a builder and his tools. He ordered another member of his staff to find a huge metal cooking pot. The boy returned with the household’s largest pot, which could hold enough rice for fifty people. The boy must have thought his master had gone mad when he told him to fill it with soil and then cover it carefully so its contents were not visible.

  Next, Abdul Hussein sent Sattar to visit the weeping man’s eldest son and invite him and his brothers to come to his house straight away. Surprised, the young men returned with Sattar to find the large covered pot waiting for them in Abdul Hussein’s courtyard. Abdul Hussein grinned at his guests and gestured to the pot: ‘Your father has left this pot and its contents with me in safekeeping for you. I’m instructed to give it to you once he has passed away.’

  Presumably concluding that their father had even more money than they had imagined, the three brothers obediently followed Sattar and the other two servants into Abdul Hussein’s house. There, Abdul Hussein introduced them to the builder he had summoned, and explained, ‘I am going to store the pot here in this corner of my stables. This builder will construct a small box to cover it so that no one can tamper with the contents until it’s time. I want you to witness his work now.’

  Some weeks later the old man came to visit Abdul Hussein, looking very much happier. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done,’ he exclaimed, ‘but my boys have come back to me! They’re completely changed, and now each one takes his turn to look after me. I’m so relieved.’

  ‘That is good news,’ Abdul Hussein said warmly. ‘I simply reminded them of the Holy Book’s recommendation that we care for our parents.’

  ‘Allah yikhalik – may God protect you. They seem to have heeded your advice. I don’t know how to thank you.’

  Abdul Hussein smiled. He was quite sure those sons deserved the eventual disappointment of discovering that the pot was filled with mud. The important principle, as always, was that until then good order and harmonious relations be restored within the family.

  2

  Stacking Rifles

  Hadi and the War

  (1914–1916)

  BY EARLY NOVEMBER 1914, the frivolities of stone deer and spurious pots of gold were far from Abdul Hussein’s mind. Turkey had officially entered the Great War on Germany’s side.

  The Germans had been consolidating their relationships with countries in the Middle East for several decades through a variety of measures, such as assisting in reforms within the Turkish military and helping to build railways. The ambitious Berlin–Baghdad railway project had been drawn up to give the Kaiser direct access to Mesopotamia’s oil fields. Given the strong German presence in the Ottoman Empire, there had been no real choice of sides for the Sultan to take once the war broke out.

  A few days after this ominous development, the menfolk of the town convened in Abdul Hussein’s dawakhana in the late afternoon. The mood was bleak. They sat puffing away on their cigarettes, drinking istikan after istikan of tea nervously and noisily. Some slumped back in their chairs; others were hunched forward, chins propped glumly in their hands. Indeed, their heads looked so heavy that their various headdresses – fezes, yashmaks with i’gal cord which held the cloth on the head, charawiya caps – seemed to be falling off or else tilting sideways. All the assembled men, Abdul Hussein included, had but one thing on their minds: the lives of their sons.

  The military had begun to enlist young Muslim men to serve at the front. During past military campaigns there had been a systematic procedure of conscription according to ages and professions, but this time the Turkish Sixth Army division, headquartered in Baghdad, had simply sent out sorties with instructions to bring back all able-looking men.

  There were reports of boys as young as fifteen – a year younger than Abdul Hussein’s eldest son Hadi – being dragged screaming from their homes by roving patrols, even as their mothers pleaded with the soldiers. Men took to hiding, and locals helped each other to avoid conscription. At the sound of the first drumbeat in the town square, and the rallying cry of ‘Safarbarlik var, safarbarlik var’, many ran out of their shops and homes, some disguised in women’s abayas, some fleeing the city to seek refuge among the tribes. And so the army adopted a wilier and yet more pitiless strategy, arresting the next of kin in order to put pressure on dodgers and deserters. Some deserters were even hanged, pour encourager les autres.

  Non-Muslims such as Christians and Jews were exempt from conscription as was traditional in the Ottoman Empire, where all wars were fought in the name of Islam. Instead, a hefty exemption tax of thirty Ottoman gold pounds was imposed on them. Mi
litary doctors and conscription officers profited by taking bribes and accepting favours from the effendis, the urban elite, to send their sons to local posts instead of to the front.

  Abdul Hussein’s fears for Hadi were exacerbated by his worries over the wider political situation. The Ottoman Sultan had called on all his Muslim and Arab subjects to fight the British infidels who were attacking the realm. The pronouncement was clear: they should mobilize as Muslims in this war, a sentiment that resonated deeply in all of them. Yet this feeling was clouded by disquiet. Did the state really represent them any more?

  For all his disappointment at the slow pace of reform, Abdul Hussein had a very deep attachment to his Ottoman world, yet much about Turkey’s involvement in the war seemed illogical to him. As the men in the dawakhana weighed the war in the balance, tempers became increasingly frayed and voices were raised. He endeavoured to be the voice of reason.

  His brother-in-law Abdul Hussein al-Uzri was among those to fan the flames by dismissing the war as a European conflict that was irrelevant to their lives in Mesopotamia. Married to Abdul Hussein’s sister Amira, Uzri was a poet and the editor of a local newspaper, al-Misbah, in which he freely aired his views. His comments provoked a furious response from Abdul Ghani, Abdul Hussein’s younger brother, who argued that war in Europe concerned them greatly; that the Germans needed the Sultan to be on their side in order to buffer the Ottoman lands from the encroachment of the British and Russians. Moreover, he said, it was their basic religious duty to fight el-Ingiliz, the English, who were coming to occupy their land. He turned to Abdul Hussein for support.

  Abdul Hussein chose his words carefully. ‘If they are attacking Islam we must defend our faith – after all, our Sultan is the head of the Caliphate – but we must be clearer on the premise of war.’

  ‘I say we must fight, we must defend our faith! They will attack our land, they will control our holy sites,’ Abdul Ghani insisted.

  ‘What a fool you are, Chalabi!’ Uzri countered. ‘They’re not interested in our holy sites; they want to protect the oil fields in the south, in Persia; that’s what they want – they don’t care about our Imams. This war is not our war; it doesn’t serve anything! Istanbul doesn’t care about us, the Ottomans simply want to sacrifice us for their vanity,’ he shouted excitedly, throwing his fez on the ground with force.

  Abdul Ghani folded his arms stubbornly. ‘I disagree. This is about our faith, and we have to defend ourselves. What do we have if not our religion?’

  Abdul Hussein watched in dismay as the dispute grew more heated. Several of his guests were of the view that the Ottomans were ill-prepared for war, whatever God’s will for the outcome might be. One man glumly volunteered that the British war machine would crush any Ottoman opposition. Another spoke in favour of adopting Iranian papers, as Iranians were exempt from conscription. Finally, one asked Abdul Hussein to tell them his opinion.

  Abdul Hussein reflected for a moment before replying. Should he tell them what he really thought? That this was the beginning of the end? He cleared his throat. ‘Those new men in Istanbul have changed things so dramatically,’ he said. ‘They want to be Turkish now, not Ottoman or Muslim. We’re an afterthought for them.’ He was referring to the fact that the Ottoman Empire had always been a multi-ethnic Muslim territory even though its rulers were Turkish, but now the Young Turks were placing their own nationality centre stage. He shook his head. ‘This is a bad war, and I don’t know why the Sultan has agreed to be part of it. But he is our Caliph and he has declared jihad, holy war.’

  When Basra fell to the British a month later, the Sultan called for jihad across the Empire. All of Baghdad’s mosques rallied men to join the fight, and Kazimiya’s men were roused to action by the fiery Friday prayer speeches of the mullahs at the shrine.

  Hadi was only sixteen years old. After many sleepless nights, his father, desperate to save him from conscription, used his influence to secure him a post under a Turkish general who had taken up residence with his retinue in the Deer Palace. Abdul Hussein’s brother-in-law Agha Muhammad Nawab had died of old age in the summer, and Munira, now widowed, had wasted no time in moving to the Nawab’s other house in Kazimiya to be nearer to her mother and family. She had inherited property as well as a considerable fortune from her late husband, and the move also meant she could be closer to her farms. Curiously, Munira seemed much happier than when Abdul Hussein had visited her for that miserable lunch a year ago. These days she listened attentively to what he had to say, and took a real interest when he spoke of his concerns for Hadi’s safety and the problems with the education of his other children in these difficult times. Their sister Burhan no longer seemed to cast a shade over their conversations.

  One evening Abdul Hussein returned home with the news that his son was to report for duty at the Deer Palace the following morning. Despite his initial disappointment at the lowly and loosely defined post assigned to him, Hadi approached his job with enthusiasm. Every day he rode out very early in the morning, often accompanied by Ni’mati, who was as sinewy and dark as Hadi was robust and fair, to collect fresh fruits and vegetables from his father’s lands for the officers. Knowing his father’s fondness for gaymar, Hadi purchased this for the men’s breakfast from a woman who lived in one of the reed huts by the riverfront further up from Kazimiya. The woman kept buffalo, and a few clay pots would arrive daily, filled with their lightweight, fluffy, extra-white cream, which was devoured by the officers.

  A young Hadi, wearing the typical Keshida, standing behind male realtives, circa 1912.

  In addition to ensuring that the Deer Palace was well stocked with fresh produce, Hadi soon became a messenger, delivering letters to and from the Military Headquarters in the Citadel in Baghdad. This gave him the opportunity to discover the city itself. Ni’mati, spared conscription like many of the Iranian household staff because he wasn’t an Ottoman subject, was often his companion on these errands too. Abdul Hussein’s steward Sattar, on the other hand, had fled north to hide among his relatives in the Kurdish mountains as soon as the forced conscriptions started. Two stable boys had also disappeared overnight without warning.

  Usually dressed like his father in traditional attire, Hadi replaced his civilian clothes with a basic military uniform and carried a satchel for the post. He cut a pleasing figure in his new outfit, and was generally considered a charming young man. Raised and educated in the town, he was very attached to Kazimiya, and was known for his active involvement in community events. Every year he helped to organize the Ashura processions, and he was a talented horseman who enjoyed displaying his skills at both Ashura and the Eid holiday that marked the end of Ramadan, when he would parade through town on horseback, sporting a sword and shield.

  For all his popularity, Hadi was humble by nature and earnest in his enthusiasm and concern for people. His honest round face appeared all the brighter for the dark fez he had begun to sport, again in the manner of his father. He had great respect for Abdul Hussein, but he was more impulsive than his father. He already had a keen eye for the ladies, but was skilful at concealing it most of the time.

  Now a part of him wished that he could indulge his adolescent dreams by putting on a proper soldier’s uniform and fighting in a battle. But he was also aware of the harshness of the army, and the cruelty with which soldiers were often treated. He was unsettled by the way in which civilians were sometimes pushed around by low-ranking soldiers, who were simply replicating what their superiors did to them. And he was disgusted by the sense of entitlement many of the officers displayed, showing no respect for people’s property. Some of them even raided shops for personal profit. Most of all, he hated the Turks’ disdain for the Arabs. He couldn’t understand why this should be so, since the Turks and Arabs shared a religion and a king.

  Many decades later, Hadi would remember his humble role during the Great War, which he felt had imbued in him both his curiosity and his resourcefulness, which allowed him to thrive amidst chaos.
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br />   Employed in the offices of the Commander-in-Chief of the 6th Army, Nur al-Din Beg, Hadi learned how to make himself virtually invisible in a room, all the better to observe proceedings and acquire knowledge. Besides the idiosyncrasies of the generals he encountered, particularly their asperity and ill humour, he was fascinated by the organization of the military. He learned to appreciate the importance of timekeeping and personal accountability. While general morale was low, as the citizens of Baghdad and Kazimiya continued to feel that the conflict in their region was of marginal interest to the Ottoman government, it was still a war, and lives were at risk.

  As more family friends and acquaintances became aware of Hadi’s new position, he was increasingly entrusted with letters to pass on to Nur al-Din Beg’s office. Initially this caused him concern: the proprieties of rank meant he was in no position simply to place such letters directly into the hands of his superiors, and he worried about how best to deliver them without breaking with protocol. He was uncomfortably aware that a good many of them were requests for compensation, usually relating to goods taken by the army without payment. However, some contained military intelligence about battles being waged on the front to the south of Baghdad.

  It was Hadi’s good fortune that the first time he dared to hand over a letter it contained useful intelligence for the Commander rather than a simple grievance. Encouraged, he handed over more; some proved useful for gauging the mood of the civilian population, while others offered detailed information about the tribes further south, the morale of the enemy troops and even the weather, including the hazards of sandstorms and dust clouds.