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

by Tamara Chalabi

  Bibi set about writing letters daily to the Imam, begging him to prove her husband’s innocence and secure his release. She folded her letters into neat squares, which she put in small reed containers along with lit candles to light their way. Then, at twilight, she would walk down through the garden to the riverbank and launch her little craft, certain that the river would deliver her missives to the Master of Time, as the twelfth Imam was called, and that he would heed her prayers.

  She did this every evening that Hadi was in prison, her prayers floating alongside other reed boats dispatched by the poor and desperate. Often on a calm night, several of these fragile vessels could be seen flickering and floating on the moonlit Tigris, carrying impassioned pleas to the saint.

  Bibi interpreted every event, large or small, through the prism of her husband’s imprisonment. Allowing superstition to get the better of her, she even blamed what had happened on the shiny red Dodge that Hadi had recently bought; it was the car in which he had been driven away. One evening she said to Saeeda, ‘That wicked red car brought us unwanted attention and bad luck. From this day onwards no one in my family will own a red car ever again!’ Familiar with Bibi’s stubborn nature, Saeeda nodded, confident that her edict would hold true for generations to come.

  Even by Saeeda’s standards, Bibi’s superstitious beliefs knew no bounds in relation to her husband’s predicament. Every morning she examined her dreams for hidden messages. Once, when her seven-year-old son Jawad was singing a song from a Tarzan film he had seen at the Khayam cinema, she slapped him when he reached the point at which Tarzan fell off the tree; she interpreted the little boy’s hollering as symbolizing Hadi’s death.

  Bibi asked Abdul Hussein to speak to his friends at court, to the King, to anyone who could influence the proceedings. He calmly ignored her more extreme behaviour and set about rationally investigating why his son had been targeted. It soon became clear to him that Hadi was the victim of a political set-up. Several eyewitness testimonies were produced by Gailani’s men asserting that Hadi was at the site of the protest, inciting the townspeople to violence. This was the incriminating evidence that needed to be disproved.

  When a date was set for the case to go to court, Abdul Hussein appointed a team of lawyers to defend Hadi, led by the distinguished Jamil Baban, an Iraqi Kurd. One of the most difficult hurdles for Abdul Hussein to overcome was that of friendship. His good friend Nuri al-Said, who had been a close associate of King Faisal, was Foreign Minister in the present government, which had accused Hadi of treason. Abdul Hussein tried to steer a diplomatic course, campaigning on behalf of his son without damaging his relationships with such important allies.

  Hadi’s lawyer, Mr Baban, requested that his case be dealt with through the judicial system, which would make it less likely that the Deputy Prosecutor General could simply rubber-stamp a verdict in accordance with the government’s wishes, as witnesses had to be called in, and British judges assisted the Iraqi judges in both the Primary Court and the Court of Appeals. After many days of the trial, which had been enthusiastically followed by the press, several witnesses who had initially testified that Hadi was at the gravesite inciting protesters retracted their testimonies, admitting they were false.

  The case against Hadi was dismissed in both courts, and the papers published the final verdict: Hadi was innocent; he was free to go home. The threat of a death sentence no longer hovered over him.

  The three months of Hadi’s imprisonment had taken their toll in one way or another on all the inhabitants of the Deer Palace.

  Jawad habitually took to overeating whenever he was upset. If he was ignored by his parents, told off by one of the servants, or had a row with one of his siblings, he would comfort himself by hiding in his bedroom, munching on whatever he could smuggle from the pantry. The chaos of the kitchens when they had been churning out six dishes a day for an army of prisoners had meant that he and Thamina could sneak in past the cooks to steal the delicious aromatic burned rice crusts. Now both were rather plump.

  His father’s imprisonment had forced Hassan to open his ears to the political chatter he picked up from school, from the household staff and from the newspapers. He became increasingly aware of the frustrations of various groups, especially the tribes, who complained that they were being denied political power. It was suggested by some that the old Ottoman system, in which authority had been blatantly monopolized by the Sunni elite, was back in place. A new generation of young, educated and impatient Shi’a men was emerging in the urban centres, voicing criticism of the authorities in far more eloquent terms than its predecessors ever had. This developing tug of war was still in its early stages, but relations between the government and the leading ulama of Najaf were tense, to say the least. For its part, the government argued that any criticism of its workings undermined the state.

  Both Rushdi and Hassan noted with great unease how their school had become more militant and overtly nationalistic in its teachings, as had other schools. During morning assemblies, the boys winced as the school anthem kept changing, with more aggressive language being added to its verses. Their history textbooks were full of alienating references to those who weren’t Arab Sunni, and all students were encouraged to undergo military training. They knew these developments to be the work of Sati al-Husri, the all-powerful Director of Education who had been the bane of their grandfather’s years in the Ministry of Education. It was an uncomfortable atmosphere that, they felt, pushed each person towards his basic sectarian or religious identity.

  The day in July 1935 when Hadi finally came home was like a carnival at the Deer Palace. The gardens, the dawakhana, even the road where the tramway passed were packed with well-wishers. As she looked down towards the river at dusk that evening, Bibi whispered her gratitude to the Imam. The Master of Time had obviously received her letters.

  Before his imprisonment, Hadi had been a somewhat distant presence whom his children revered from afar, rather than a father who was present among them, dictating their everyday discipline and routine. Their grandfather was a more familiar figure to them domestically, but it was really Bibi, their mother, who governed their world. While she kept herself at one remove from them, with the exception of her beloved Rushdi, Bibi showed her love and affection for her children through deeds rather than words. New clothes would appear for them when least expected, and there would be surprise outings that she didn’t participate in, but which she had nevertheless arranged through the labyrinth of relationships that made up her world – with her mother, her relatives, the household staff or people who worked with her husband and father-in-law.

  The children had been taken aback by the way in which Bibi had dedicated herself to their father’s release, as previously they had given little thought to their parents’ relationship with each other. It clearly didn’t resemble their grandparents’ marriage: every day, Abdul Hussein seemed to make Jamila cry. Their parents’ relationship was different; Hadi and Bibi were not demonstratively affectionate towards each other, and outwardly Bibi adopted a more dismissive attitude towards Hadi than he did towards her. She answered him back, did what she wanted within the house and was generally critical of him.

  However, she always made sure that she was wearing her high heels when he came home at night. She had trained her children and the staff to warn her of his arrival, and had told Hadi’s driver Karim to honk the car horn, or horin as he called it, a few moments before approaching the house in order to give her time to rush and put her heels on if she wasn’t already wearing them. Even though they had been married for nearly twenty years, she was still petrified that her husband might see how short she was. She was equally concerned about him knowing that she now had quite a bit of grey hair; this was clearly hereditary – she had started to go grey in her early twenties. Therefore she always scheduled her elaborate henna dying sessions in the late mornings, when her husband had to work.

  For all that she cared passionately about Hadi’s opinion of her appe
arance, Bibi never held back when she felt slighted by him. Then she let her displeasure be known to all.

  One morning, just as they were settling down to breakfast, the children were disturbed by the sounds of shouting. Thamina and her younger sister Najla rushed to the doorway that faced onto the courtyard, from where they could glimpse their mother yelling from her bedroom on the first floor.

  ‘Party – I’ll give you an all-night party!’ Bibi was screaming.

  ‘Khatuna, I swear it was just a musical party! At the Sheikh Jamil farm. Just men. Honestly!’ Hadi’s voice echoed up from the courtyard.

  Thamina looked at Najla in amazement: they had never heard their father call their mother ‘darling’ before.

  Suddenly Bibi hurled something down at Hadi. The girls watched in disbelief as two shirts and a pair of underpants billowed out like parachutes, before drifting down to where he stood. His face contorted with fury, he ran out of the courtyard and stomped up the stairs. A moment later, it was raining clothes in the courtyard as Hadi hurled Bibi’s dresses out of the window, while she continued to toss his suits and ties onto the flagstones below.

  Thamina sighed and bit deeply into her bread and honey. Life at the Deer Palace was back to normal once more.

  Even after his release, the fight was still far from over for Hadi. He wanted to ensure that his friend Sadiq Istrabadi was released as he had been. Although he had been found guilty, there was no proof that Sadiq Istrabadi had committed treason, and his sentence had already been reduced from death to life imprisonment on appeal. It took several more months of persistent legal action by Hadi before his friend and the other men arrested with them were finally released. The collapse of the case was like a slap in the face for the government, particularly for the Minister of the Interior, Rashid ’Ali Gailani.

  Hadi’s imprisonment led to both father and son attempting to distance themselves from the Cabinet. From that time on, Abdul Hussein confined his involvement in affairs of state to his role as Senator. Hadi turned his full attention to his business enterprises. He became a shareholder in the first cement company in Iraq, collaborating with established industrialists such as Nuri Fattah Pasha and Muhammad Hadid. Later he moved into cotton and natural oils. In the spring of 1936 he became the first President of the newly created Iraqi stock exchange.

  Although Abdul Hussein and Hadi successfully redirected their energies, the political climate remained uncertain. In October 1936, when Hassan was in his final year at the Karkh Middle School, he was sitting outside during a lunch break when he felt something fall lightly on his head. A friend explained to him that military planes were flying overhead, dropping leaflets demanding the resignation of the Hashemi government. Supported by the opposition National Democratic Party, the popular Iraqi Kurdish army general Bakr Sidqi had led a successful military coup d’état. Sidqi had made his name several years earlier when he had led attacks against Assyrians near Mosul who had been demanding self-rule, killing 4,000 of them.

  The first of its kind in the Arab world, Sidqi’s coup established a disturbing precedent in Iraq, by resorting to military action to influence political events. Many suspected King Ghazi’s complicity in the coup, owing to his frustration with politicians who were forever trying to curb his wild behaviour.

  Under Sidqi’s leadership now, Baghdad was bombarded by the army. Sidqi also ordered the murder of one of Faisal’s old hands, Jaafar Pasha al-Askari, a popular figure and a dear friend of Abdul Hussein’s, for attempting to defuse the situation.

  16

  Carefree

  Growing Up in the Golden Age

  (1936–1938)

  LIVING HALFWAY BETWEEN Baghdad and Kazimiya, the children of the Deer Palace veered increasingly towards the capital as they grew older. In Baghdad, the marketplaces and alleyways teemed with possibilities, while Kazimiya was linked to domesticity and the past for them, rather than adventure and the future. Their middle and secondary schools were in Baghdad, as was their father’s office. They also went there for trips to the shops, the doctor, the cinema and their friends.

  On Fridays, the children often visited their grandmother Rumia in Kazimiya, whose world had remained unchanged. She doted on them, cooked them their favourite dishes and told them wonderful stories of her youth, when she had travelled in her takhtarawan – her wooden palanquin – across the desert to Iran. She transported them to other worlds with her tales of magicians, monkeys and the jungles of India. When the children were little, they were mesmerized by her words; as they grew older, they longed to see for themselves the sights she described.

  The homely routines of Kazimiya manifested themselves in the Deer Palace through the presence of many of its staff, who came from the town; its cuisine, with its Persian influence – the cooks having been carefully tutored in Rumia’s elaborate recipes; and the menacing great-aunts, who arrived for breakfast every few weeks with their news and their lists of demands for their brother Abdul Hussein.

  Rumia, seated, surrounded by her grandchildren: from left to right, Jawad, Thamina, Hassan, Najla and Raifa.

  Few questioned the level of familiarity in Kazimiya, which even included the telephone operator, who knew everyone’s secrets by listening to their conversations. When Rumia picked up the phone, she never asked for ‘706’, the Deer Palace number; instead she simply asked the operator to ‘Give me my daughter’s house’, which he duly did, knowing exactly who Rumia was by the sound of her voice.

  The children appreciated how the world created within the grounds of the Deer Palace was a magnet to many. It was easy for visitors to get there by tram or boat, and ever since they had been very little, they had been used to the important guests who would call on their grandfather and their parents.

  Like their grandfather, they enjoyed taking trips on the Tigris in the little round guffa craft expertly steered by boatmen, who came to know the children’s schedule, and would often call by on late summer afternoons on the off-chance that they wanted to go out on the water. With time, the family acquired a motorboat, and the services of the guffa boatmen were no longer required, as the children went out in the boat with Ni’mati.

  By far the most exciting time of the year for the young residents of the Deer Palace was the Eid festival that followed the month of Ramadan. Eagerly awaited, Eid was a time of celebration – of visits to friends and relatives, new clothes and other gifts.

  In 1936, following Hadi’s appointment as President of the new stock exchange, Eid promised to be an even more lavish occasion than usual. Bibi’s patience had worn very thin towards the end of Ramadan, as Thamina, Raifa and Najla had nagged her continually about the exact date of Eid in September, which was determined by the appearance of the new moon, marking the end of the religious month. As usual, a few days before Ramadan came to an end the religious authorities indicated the date, much to Bibi’s relief.

  The preparations started promptly, with Ni’mati taking Rushdi, Hassan and Jawad to the cobbler in Baghdad to get them fitted for new shoes, followed by a visit to Baqir Tehrani, where they each chose a new suit and a new sidara. Thamina, Raifa and Najla went with their mother and Aunt Shamsa to pick out material that a seamstress in Kazimiya would make into new dresses. They chose their shoes from Khalil Hamadani, a well-known shop in Baghdad that imported European shoes, considered the best in quality.

  The first day of Eid at the Deer Palace was always busy with well-wishers, many of whom were Hadi’s employees who had come from his various estates to collect their ’idiyah, or Eid tip. ’Idiyahs were usually distributed to servants and workers, as well as children and the poor. Some of Hadi’s employees who had received their ’idiyahs early in the morning gathered in the courtyard in front of the Deer Palace, chatting and joking. The atmosphere was light-hearted and celebratory.

  The children were woken by the sound of music coming from outside. Leaving one-year-old Hazem and three-year-old Talal to be tended by their nanny, the older boys and girls hurriedly jumped out of bed and
dressed in their new clothes, shoes and hats, then ran downstairs to watch the band that had entered the courtyard.

  Composed of professional Jewish drummers, trumpeters and oboists, the band toured the houses of prominent citizens at Eid, earning a good day’s pay. The children made it downstairs just as the musicians struck up a chopi, inspiring some of the visitors to join hands in a folk dance. Thamina, Raifa, Najla and Jawad clapped along, laughing with delight.

  Rushdi.

  Always beautifully turned out (he even insisted on wearing perfectly ironed pyjamas at bedtime), Rushdi leaned nonchalantly against a wall; he would soon be turning eighteen, and was about to enter his final year at school. These proceedings were really a bit beneath him. He turned to Hassan and said airily, ‘Do you know, this might be the last Eid I celebrate with you lot here at home for a couple of years, if I go abroad for my studies.’ Hassan simply nodded and tapped his foot in time to the rhythm. Unlike Rushdi, he loved all types of music, and he wasn’t too proud to take pleasure where he found it.

  Once the band had left and the crowd dispersed, Rushdi and Hassan joined their siblings indoors, where they all greeted their grandparents, parents and older aunts and uncles. Standing in line, each child was given an ’idiyah by their grandfather Abdul Hussein. This gift marked the absolute high point of their day, and made the younger ones feel very rich indeed. Then, with the exception of Talal and Hazem – and Rushdi, who considered himself too old for such childish amusements – the children went with Ni’mati by tram to the large playground in Baghdad.