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

by Tamara Chalabi

  Bibi wasn’t convinced: ‘You of all people should have known better when it comes to the actions of angry tribal fathers and brothers towards their womenfolk,’ she argued.

  Although no longer as involved with the tribes as he had been when he had first started to acquire the stretches of empty miri, state-owned land, Hadi still had links with grain-growers that obliged him to travel the length and breadth of the country. Yet his attachment to Kazimiya never diminished as his national reputation grew. He always lent an ear to the people’s concerns there, even when his commercial activities were met with criticism by some – especially the growing number of communists in the town.

  The Deer Palace was in some ways a world of its own, but it was not immune to the harsh realities that many people faced in Iraq. The variety of visitors who came to the house, and the colourful mixture of its staff, who were from all corners of Iraq as well as from Iran, meant that the Deer Palace was in many respects a microcosm of the entire country, with all its good and all its bad, embracing the diversity of Iraq’s many regions and attitudes.

  Although she was generally content within the confines of the Deer Palace, where she enjoyed a measure of independence, Bibi longed to experience more of the world. She found herself becoming tearful when, in 1933, she went to her first musical concert with her sister-in-law Shamsa. She couldn’t help remembering how, nearly four years earlier, Abdul Rasul had encouraged her to go to a public performance. She felt he would be proud to see her now, although he would have laughed to know that she was pregnant again.

  When Bibi had heard that the Egyptian diva Umm Kalthoum was coming to Baghdad to give her first concert in Iraq, she was adamant that she wanted to go. She had immediately sent a message to Abdul Hussein at the Ministry of Education informing him of her wish, as she knew he was often given tickets for such events.

  Having secured the tickets and her father-in-law’s approval, Bibi and Shamsa went to the performance at the Hilal theatre. Decked out in their abayas, which Bibi found increasingly irritating, although on this occasion she was grateful that it concealed her rounded belly, the two women sat in the box reserved for Ministers and their families. As she looked around the auditorium, Bibi could see that nearly all of Iraq’s leading figures were there, and realized that she had unwittingly placed herself in the social limelight.

  She later learned that she had boosted her father-in-law’s standing, as the fact that Abdul Hussein was willing to let his daughter-in-law attend such an event was seen as evidence that he had a progressive attitude. Although Jamila entertained guests within the confines of the Deer Palace, she was entirely absent from any public function (especially after Abdul Rasul’s death), as were the wives of many politicians. Like most couples, Hadi and Bibi didn’t go out together in public, as most socializing was still done inside the home in the separate quarters of the men and women, the dawakhana and the andaroun.

  Encouraged by her experience, Bibi went to more concerts and relished her newfound sense of freedom. But in the summer of 1933 her pursuit of music received a setback when the country was plunged into mourning following King Faisal’s death during a holiday in Switzerland, where he had been undergoing treatment for his weak heart.

  The King’s death at the age of only fifty came as a shock to the entire country. His body was flown back to Baghdad, where the wailing and weeping of women in the streets during his funeral procession was deafening. By the sheer force of his personality Faisal had held together the many disparate factors that contributed to the Iraqi equation. In a memo he wrote to the Cabinet some months before his death, he revealed his disappointment with the slow pace at which Iraq was becoming one nation. He was well aware of the social injustices and the discrepancies between the ruling party and the rest of the population, as well as the frustrated aspirations of the Kurdish people and the sectarian and ethnic issues that continued to besiege Iraq.

  Faisal’s death represented a huge loss. He had managed to find a workable balance with the British that had allowed for the progress and development of the country as a whole, despite the burdensome Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930, which was intended to pave the way for Iraq’s independence but which allowed Britain to maintain military bases in the country and obliged Iraq to provide support in the event of war. Under his reign, modernity had been embraced with enthusiasm, but at a pace that was in keeping with the nature of Iraqi society, rather than imposed upon it from above. Faisal’s campaign for Iraq’s independence had promised to secure a steady transition towards complete political self-rule.

  Faisal’s son, Crown Prince Ghazi, succeeded him. Far more nationalistic than his father, he was close to the army, but lacked Faisal’s deft political and diplomatic skills. He was also more outwardly hostile to the British, although he was fond of commodities associated with them such as whisky and fast cars. Perhaps it was partly owing to his youth, but his weak handling of government affairs eventually led to a very public eruption of clashes between prominent personalities.

  Greatly saddened by Faisal’s death, Abdul Hussein served his last term as Minister in 1933, having belonged to nine different Cabinets, but he remained a Member of Parliament. In addition to his own work as an MP, Hadi’s export business often kept him away from home, but he remained keenly aware of his obligations in Kazimiya and at the Deer Palace. When Ni’mati’s wife Fahima died of cancer that year, he tried to comfort his childhood friend as best he could.

  ‘Why Fahima?’ Ni’mati covered his face with his hands. ‘Why my everything? Isn’t the King enough?’

  Hadi laid his hand on Ni’mati’s shoulder. ‘My home is your home; you and your family are always a part of this household.’

  15

  Prison

  Uninvited Guests at a Feast

  (1935–1936)

  IT WAS A Saturday in April 1935, and a religious holiday, the feast of Ghadir. Abdul Hussein’s sisters Munira, Amira and Shaouna had come to the Deer Palace for their usual monthly breakfast visit, and that morning the whole family gathered together as the women shared the gossip they had brought with them from Kazimiya. Their voices and laughter mingled with the sound of trickling water from the little fountain that decorated the back terrace.

  The family always unwittingly followed the same seating pattern for these visits. Jamila sat in her favourite place on a carpet-covered mattress with her ornate Russian silver samovar at her side. A gift from her husband, the samovar was one of her most prized possessions, and she loved serving tea from it. Near the samovar was a large basket filled with freshly baked bread from the kitchen, home-made marmalade, white cheese and fresh milk from Hadi’s cows. Abdul Hussein, in his dressing gown, reclined in his safari chair at a right angle to Jamila. His three sisters were seated opposite him on the mattress that the servants set up whenever they arrived. Across from Jamila were the benches where Bibi sat with her sister-in-law Shamsa and Hadi, who had taken the day off work to celebrate with his family. That morning Bibi bounced her baby son Talal on her lap. She was pregnant for the eighth time.

  Most of her older children were playing on the terrace. Raifa was tugging at her older sister Thamina’s dark plaits, trying to persuade her to run around the garden with her. She wanted to climb the trees and shake fruit to the ground, much to the gardeners’ annoyance. Their younger sister Najla was shaking her curly head of hair, refusing to eat her breakfast, irritating Bibi with her stubbornness, while Hassan concentrated intently on his great-aunts’ conversation.

  Abdul Hussein’s sisters seemed like entertaining caricatures to Hassan and his siblings; nearly everything about their great-aunts was parochial and archaic. Hassan in particular took great delight in memorizing Munira’s conversation in order to mimic it later. She spoke in long, slow sentences peppered with old-fashioned words, and the girls would squeal with laughter when Hassan put on a falsetto voice, imitating her.

  Thamina standing near the deer statue in the early 1930s.

  For all that she had an
amusing way of speaking, Munira appeared to be the most worldly of the great-aunts; the children knew that she ran her lands herself, and they were secretly envious of the way she spoilt her son from her second marriage. Hassan suspected that she might have her eye on Thamina for the boy, but that Bibi was determined she would never get her way. Bibi was not impressed by Munira’s mollycoddled son, and felt that to have a good-for-nothing husband was worse than not having one at all. Besides, Thamina was still only twelve years old, although she was already turning into a beauty with her pale skin and heart-shaped face. Abdul Hussein had once remarked that she reminded him a little of his sister Burhan.

  Munira and Amira were sharing a particularly tasty titbit of gossip when a raucous outburst suddenly shattered the calm. They could hear men outside the front door shouting, ‘Where’s Abdul Hadi Chalabi? Let him come out now!’

  Hadi quickly rose to his feet to see what the matter was, followed by his father and Bibi. After a moment, Hassan and Thamina went after them. As they reached the front door they heard their mother yelling at some policemen, ‘Where are you taking him? Have you gone mad? Bring him back!’

  Bibi was beside herself. Ignoring her, the officers escorted Hadi to his car, where one of them took his keys from him and pushed him into the back seat. Hadi glanced back at his pregnant wife as they drove away, the gravel spitting under the tyres.

  Ushering Bibi back into the house, Abdul Hussein tried to calm her down, then rushed off to get dressed. Thamina started to cry, asking her mother again and again to tell her what was happening, and where the men were taking her father.

  Outside, Karim the driver, Ali Akbar the generator man and Zein al-Abidin the gardener were standing by the pool, shaking their heads and discussing what they had seen. Hassan made his way over to them to ask if they knew what had happened. He was joined by his elder brother Rushdi, who had come running down from his bedroom.

  The men all started to speak at once, telling the boys that earlier in the morning there had been a bloody incident by the old cemetery at Mughaysil in north Kazimiya. Thirteen people had been killed and eighty injured.

  ‘There were four dead policemen among them,’ Ali Akbar observed darkly.

  Noticing Hassan’s confused expression, Karim explained, ‘A funeral was going to take place in the new cemetery by the river. But when the funeral party arrived, they found the ground was flooded. As they couldn’t perform the burial there, they decided to bury the body in the old cemetery. But by then they were very angry and upset. And when they arrived at the old cemetery …’

  ‘… which is still religious waqf land,’ interjected Zein al-Abidin.

  ‘… they found that the foundations had already been built for the new central post office, despite all the protests made against the plan,’ Karim continued. He said that the men’s tempers had become heated, and several of them had started throwing rocks at the building works, before attempting to burn them down.

  Ali Akbar said a police car had arrived at the scene, and the officers had tried to calm the situation down, promising to investigate the matter. However, no sooner had they left than two armoured police cars had arrived and more than a dozen armed police surrounded the area. News of the incident had trickled down to the main square, where people had been milling about, enjoying their day off, and many of them had decided to head over to the old cemetery to find out what was happening.

  ‘And then order broke down completely,’ Ali Akbar concluded.

  Rushdi couldn’t understand what this business had to do with his father. Both boys went back into the house and found Abdul Hussein, who was now dressed and talking quickly to the women on the terrace.

  Listening to him, Rushdi gathered that on the instructions of the Minister of the Interior, Rashid ’Ali Gailani, the police had arrested his father on suspicion of inciting the incident at the cemetery, and that now he was being accused of treason, the punishment for which was death.

  Rushdi felt sick. He knew that his father had appealed to the Qa’immaqam of Kazimiya several times on behalf of the citizens who wanted to stop the building project, but he couldn’t understand how that could have led to an accusation of treason. Even if some of his father’s supporters had been among the protesters at the cemetery, how did that imply that he was conspiring against the government?

  Rushdi and Hassan were too young to know that there were more fundamental political factors at play. MPs were elected on an individual basis within their districts, but with known political affiliations; once in Parliament they took the side of one of the existing political parties. Hadi belonged to the Jamil al-Madfa’i division, which was in opposition to the ruling Yassin al-Hashemi group. Ideologically speaking, there was little difference between the two factions; their rivalry was all about power. The Hashemi division MPs derived their support from the tribes as well as the army, whereas the Madfa’i camp had more of an urban basis. Madfa’i himself was a respected statesman who was known for his moderation, whereas some of his rivals were not averse to the army’s political involvement in their campaigns.

  Hadi’s early political career had not been entirely independent of that of Abdul Hussein. Duty and family loyalty transcended personal beliefs, and as his father’s son, Hadi had faced as many challenges as benefits from the connection. Abdul Hussein’s reputation was still not particularly good among the Shi’a clerics, because he did not pay them the homage they thought their due, or cultivate them with flattery and money. He had, moreover, broken ranks with them when he had decided to join Faisal’s government over a decade earlier.

  Hadi, however, was blessed with a different temperament, and had an ability to communicate with the Shi’a clerics that his father lacked. Possessing humility and a down-to-earth attitude, he had succeeded in building good relations with the ulama of Najaf in particular. He put his Shi’a connections to good use when conflicts arose between the government and the clerics, who continued to hold important sway over the local population. The clerics in turn knew that Abdul Hadi was the man to go to when they needed support in publishing their religious works, and they often acknowledged him in their books, praising his philanthropy.

  However, Hadi’s commercial success and his consequent wealth had become matters of concern for several politicians. Most MPs were Sunni, as the reins of power continued to be held by the Sunni elite, with the blessing of the British. Although the political landscape was slowly shifting as more Shi’a men became educated and joined the economic and political system, Hadi was still viewed as an outsider by many in Parliament. Worse, he was an outsider who had influential contacts and considerable resources of his own.

  For all that his wealth and influence might have won him enemies, his detention came as a complete surprise to the majority of people who knew him; such arbitrary arrests were highly unusual, and many concluded that Hadi had been seized for sectarian reasons, rather than because of any legal violation he might have committed.

  He had barely been driven away from the Deer Palace before the news spread through the area. Scores of men came to the house. Social duty demanded that they all be welcomed in the dawakhana with tea and conversation, regardless of the inconvenience at such a difficult time. They had, after all, come to show their support.

  It soon became clear that several other men had been arrested as well as Hadi, including his close friend the Mayor of Kazimiya, Sadiq Istrabadi. Over the next couple of days Abdul Hussein learned that Hadi had been driven to the Qaimaqam’s office in Kazimiya, and taken from there in an armoured car with the other men to the prison next to Bab al-Mua’dham in Baghdad’s old city, near the Foreign Ministry.

  The entire group was housed in the same wing. Their conditions were not overly harsh. They had to dress in pyjama-like suits, but they were permitted to sit outside in the courtyard, and in due course they were even allowed to receive home-cooked food.

  Initially forbidden from receiving visitors, after a month Hadi was allowed to have contact with h
is family, and once a week the children went to visit him in jail. He was always very happy to see them, and put on a brave face despite the seriousness of the charges that had been levelled against him. He assured them that he was fine, asked them about their schools and their everyday lives, and told them to take care of their mother, to comfort her and be good to her, especially as she was expecting a baby.

  It took the children some time to absorb the transformation in Bibi herself: all her love and concern for her husband had risen to the surface, and the entire household changed pace under her direction. Although she still couldn’t cook, and never intended to learn, she orchestrated a campaign to send enough food each day for fifty people to Hadi and the other inmates in his wing.

  Bibi mobilized the household towards one purpose: getting Hadi released and the charges against him dropped. ‘They’re ludicrous!’ she exclaimed to Abdul Hussein. ‘Why would he ever want to overthrow the government anyway? Whatever he had to do with that cemetery business, it was just politics – not treason.’ She focused her secular lobbying efforts on her father-in-law, imploring him to overturn every stone in the government in order to get her husband released.

  She also started going to the shrine in Kazimiya daily, imploring the two saints to help free Hadi. She prayed particularly to her favourite, Musa al-Kazim, holding on to the brass railings that covered his tomb, knotting her prayers into the strips of material that she tied onto the railings as she pleaded for Hadi to come home.

  In her determination, Bibi reverted to the ways of her mother’s household, and invoked all manner of otherworldly means to help her cause. She was particularly grateful to have the companionship of Saeeda once again. After an unhappy marriage Saeeda had recently returned to the Deer Palace, and Bibi listened carefully as she explained that the twelfth Imam, whose shrine was in Samarra, would fulfil the wishes of all those who prayed to him.