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

by Tamara Chalabi

  Some months before he was killed, after the December 2005 elections, Imad had helped me locate Gertrude Bell’s grave in Baghdad. I had found myself unexpectedly drawn to her story, and had read her letters from Baghdad. I couldn’t explain my interest in the life of a prudish Victorian adventuress turned colonial politician who died eighty-odd years ago in Baghdad. I could not imagine having an equivalent fascination with any contemporary figure who was part of the Coalition administration in Iraq.

  Locating Gertrude’s grave is not an easy mission. Her world, like Bibi’s, has been buried underground and in memories, almost as if it never existed. Two Iraqis, Muhammad and Ali, a Kurd and a Marsh Arab respectively, help me in my search. Neither has ever heard of her, despite the fact that her legacy is inextricably linked to Iraq, but they accept my word that she is an important figure. Muhammad, the more urbane of the two, is more taken with her story and therefore more concerned with finding her, for my sake at least.

  Our first stop is the British Cemetery. The memorials pay tribute to soldiers of all colours and creeds, but they are all men. The caretaker, Abu Ahmad, is adamant that ‘el Meees Bealll’ is definitely not there, but he will not let us see the cemetery records, which are stored in a large box by the entrance. He explains that his son is the official caretaker, and he is on a tour with the Iraqi national fencing team in Morocco, so we will have to wait.

  A week later, Imad mentions a forgotten Anglican cemetery in the centre of the city. When I visit it, the graves seem to be strewn around in no particular order. Men from as far apart as Madras and Illinois are laid to rest next to a small group of leftist Palestinian militiamen who sought refuge in Baghdad years earlier.

  When I find Gertrude’s grave it is a stark plot of earth. I think of the elegant memorial erected at the military cemetery for General Maude, and wonder why Gertrude was buried in this barren spot. The plants on her grave have withered and the ground is a dusty grey. Remembering her love for gardening, for flowers and trees, I feel compelled to honour her memory and restore her grave (which I maintain to this day) by planting flowers and trees and fixing the stone. Thinking about it now, the act of tending to Gertrude’s grave marks my first concerted effort to come as close as I can to Bibi’s world and to unlock all those memories.

  At the Anglican cemetery I meet Ali the caretaker, who tells me that he enjoyed a taste of international exposure when British journalists visited the cemetery in the days after the fall of Baghdad. He bemoans the fact that neither the British nor the Church pays any money for its upkeep, and explains that his job has passed down to him from his father, who worked in the cemetery from the 1940s. Eventually silence descends on us. There is not much to say.

  Muhammad and Ali, I suspect, cannot fathom why I have sought out the grave of a long-dead Englishwoman. Most likely they think I am mad. Ali, standing next to me by Miss Bell’s grave, asks me what I want with it, then jokingly adds: ‘Maybe she can give us the secret of Iraq from beyond the grave.’

  Maybe. I wonder how Miss Bell would have reacted to what has become of Iraq, the country she worked so hard to create.

  BOOK THREE

  A Dangerous Garden

  MAY 1993

  It’s a chilly spring afternoon in Providence, Rhode Island, as I rush to be on time for my History of Twentieth-Century Architecture class in Brown University’s List Art Center, designed by the renowned architect Philip Johnson. The course is taught by a popular German professor and his lectures draw large crowds. I have just finished writing my term paper and am anxious to hand it in.

  The subject of my paper has unexpectedly taken me on a journey into my heritage by way of Taliesin, Wisconsin. While leafing through a book on Frank Lloyd Wright, I came across drawings of a dramatic circular building. I read that it is a design for the Baghdad Opera House by Lloyd Wright.

  I learn that the opera house was to be one of Lloyd Wright’s most ambitious projects. He took his inspiration from stories of Edena, the ancient city that had once lain to the south of Baghdad and which legend claimed was the Garden of Eden. In designing his opera house he set about creating a modern Eden, infusing it with his interpretation of the local architecture and landscape, and drawing upon his readings of the Bible and the Thousand and One Nights. The building was to be situated on an island in the Tigris that he had spotted from an aeroplane, and was to be linked by bridges to each riverbank; its axis was to be directed towards Mecca, as all mosques are, alluding to its status as a shrine of culture. I discover that Lloyd Wright spoke highly of the many Iraqis he met, including the King, who gave permission to build on the island. While in the country he lectured the Iraqi Engineers Association on the need to avoid the twin pitfalls of modernity and capitalism, advising them instead to take their cue from the ancient inheritance of Iraq and to use this as the basis for the creation of a modern Mesopotamia.

  This seems too good to be true. I realize I have found my topic, but there is something else. Wright’s vision presents Iraq as a cultural landmark and places its heritage within a larger landscape, which affords me a sense of the country’s cultural importance that is at a remove from both my family’s memories and its present-day political conditions.

  I find much solace in my research. It is a route into Iraq’s cultural history that links to my Iraqi identity. It gives me great hope to know that this place, which projects so much negativity and pain today, once – and not so long ago – confidently embraced the modern world. I imagine that if this could happen in the past, it can certainly happen again in the future.

  Frank Lloyd Wright’s opera house was never built, because a violent coup d’état overthrew the regime that initiated the project.

  19

  Mountains and Floods

  Domestic Changes

  (1939–1941)

  ‘THE BUS IS LEAVING in ten minutes, everybody on board, on board everyone!’ shouted the clerk – much to Bibi’s irritation, as she had already taken her seat and was waiting impatiently to set out. Nearby, other streamlined stainless-steel Nairn buses – American-made, air-conditioned and as large as railway carriages – glistened in the burning sun. On this day in the late summer of 1939, nearly half of the seats on the bus were occupied by members of the Chalabi clan.

  Hadi, the new family patriarch, had decided to organize a summer holiday for everyone in the Lebanese mountains. This was a very welcome trip, as Abdul Hussein’s death in March had cloaked the house in a shroud of mourning, and the past few months had taken their toll on them all. In April King Ghazi had been killed in a car crash. Ghazi had been a friend of Hadi’s brother Ibrahim, who had been an officer in the army with him, and had visited the Deer Palace on a number of occasions. His infant son, Faisal II, succeeded him under the regency of Prince Abdul Ilah, the new King’s maternal uncle. Many people suspected the British of killing Ghazi because of his nationalist politics and overt hostility to them. Uncertainty stalked the streets of Baghdad once more.

  The family hoped to recuperate from their grief in Broumana, a picturesque mountain resort above Beirut. The Lebanese capital’s heavy humidity in the summer meant that many people retreated to the resort’s fresh climate. However, Bibi planned to go on frequent shopping trips to the city, where the fashions of Paris had been enthusiastically adopted and there was an abundance of talented seamstresses. Her love of clothes had only grown stronger with time.

  Bibi was also looking forward to the opportunity to show off her clothes. She saw that headwear was being shed by women in Beirut at a faster pace than in Baghdad, and abayas didn’t exist in this Levantine land. Although Bibi had never lacked propriety – her mother, Rumia, was a strict adherent not only of the abaya but of the hijab, and religion ran strong in her upbringing – she had long thought of the abaya as old-fashioned, an image she didn’t want to portray. She was heartened to see that some of her Iraqi sisters had begun to shed their abayas, and was determined to join them.

  If Hadi minded when she informed him of her d
ecision, he didn’t show it. However, Ni’mati, his childhood companion and loyal aide, considered Bibi’s behaviour scandalous. The day he first saw her go out without her abaya, he covered his head with his hands and lamented the downfall of ‘Little God’. He regarded Bibi’s decision as treacherous and ungodly, and it changed the way he thought of her forever. He was particularly appalled that she also allowed her daughters to go out without their abayas, believing that this would effectively kill off any marriage prospects they might have.

  So it was unencumbered by her abaya that Bibi settled into her seat for the eighteen-hour bus trip to Damascus. The bus left on time at 3 p.m., and at 9 o’clock the next morning the family disembarked in Damascus, where they were welcomed by friends. They planned to stay for a few days in the city before setting out along the twisting mountain roads to Beirut.

  When they finally arrived in Beirut, Bibi instantly fell in love with the sea; this was the first time she had seen the Lebanese coast, and the long corniche promenade near downtown Beirut soon became a favourite place for her. The mountainous Mediterranean landscape, with its aromatic pine trees and wildflowers, was very different to the terrain of Baghdad, and it appealed to her immensely.

  Beirut was certainly ahead of Baghdad in the sophistication of its restaurants, the range of its imported goods and the general openness of its people. The women dressed more fashionably, the shops had more variety, the cafés were frequented by both sexes. Bibi loved the Lebanese sense of hospitality; in Beirut, she felt as if she had come home. Accompanied by her two eldest daughters, Thamina and Raifa, she often went down the mountainside from their villa in Broumana to the city, to the shops and souks, where she took great delight in the myriads of materials, shoes, handbags and jewels.

  Thamina held up a swatch of silk as blue as a peacock’s feather for her mother to admire: ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ The shopkeeper pulled out more rolls of fabric, including the latest Italian imports and polkadot patterns, which Bibi loved. Looking at Thamina, she smiled and said, ‘It might not be too long before we have to start buying fabrics for you …’

  Najla, Rushdi and Thamina in Lebanon, 1939.

  Thamina blushed, aware that her mother was hinting about creating a trousseau for her now that she was sixteen and of marriageable age. Bibi did not see any benefit in encouraging her daughters to pursue their education beyond secondary school, and discouraged their father from sending them to the convent school in Baghdad. There had been several arguments on the subject between Hadi and Bibi, with Bibi always getting the upper hand. She viewed the girls as a heavy responsibility which she needed to be rid of as soon as possible. The most obvious method was marriage.

  Standing behind her mother and sister, fifteen-year-old Raifa rolled her eyes; she didn’t mind shopping, but as she watched them pore over the fabrics she felt left out, frustrated that her sister always commanded more attention. She would have preferred to have been back in the villa playing cards with Talal or taking a walk with her sister Najla. Najla rarely accompanied them to Beirut; she didn’t much care for clothes shopping, and when she did join them she would often row furiously with Bibi. Of the three girls she most resembled their grandmother Rumia, to whom she was very close, and even at thirteen she was critical of some of Bibi’s more modern ways.

  Bibi (fifth from left), surrounded by her daughters, daughter-in-law, sisters-in-law and other female relatives in the Sif garden in the early 1940s.

  In this respect, Najla was not dissimilar to Saeeda, who had accompanied the family on the trip and who certainly didn’t feel comfortable with the modernizing trends of Lebanon. She had spent most of her life in Kazimiya, and her references did not extend beyond the town, nor did she want them to. She cut an almost fairytale-like figure amongst the pale gold stone of the buildings in Lebanon, like an ancient crone with her black abaya trailing behind her. Hers was not a typical look in chic Broumana.

  Bibi complemented her shopping sprees with tea parties and luncheons in the summer homes that sprinkled the mountainside. She felt alive again. However, in spite of her many distractions, she could not ignore the talk of a sinister wave that was sweeping over Europe.

  Two days after the end of their holiday, the family learned that Europe was officially at war.

  Thamina had grown into a traditional beauty, and Bibi had already declined the proposal of a match with Munira’s good-for-nothing son. After the family’s return from Lebanon, several suitors came forward to ask for her hand in marriage. Islam permitted the marriage of first cousins, and such unions were extremely common, a tradition going back for centuries. Indeed, the majority of tribes and clans believed strongly in the advantages of ‘keeping it in the family’. Hadi was therefore under pressure to give his daughter’s hand to a relative.

  There were two contenders from Hadi’s side of the family, but Bibi flatly refused to consider either of them as a potential suitor for her daughter: one was too dim, the other was mean, neither would make Thamina happy. Nothing would shift her position. She and Hadi spent day after day arguing back and forth on the subject, followed by more days during which Hadi refused to speak to her at all. Finally, Bibi’s brother-in-law Muhammad Ali moved out of the shared family home in protest, but still she wouldn’t budge.

  During this battle over Thamina’s future, Bibi complained that her blood pressure was soaring. At her request she was attended morning and evening by her strident (and equally short) cousin Saleh Bassam, who was a newly qualified doctor, talking to him for hours on end while Hadi left her to her own devices.

  Not only Hadi boycotted her company, but the entire extended family on the Chalabi side. So offended were the suitors’ families that many of them turned against Bibi for life; some of them also developed a grudge against Hadi that would in time have political consequences. Bibi looked down on them all; they in turn considered her an awful snob, who clearly wore the trousers in ‘that house’, as they bitterly referred to Hadi’s home.

  In the spring of 1940 the Tigris and the Euphrates flooded severely, inflicting great damage in the region. The Euphrates broke its banks at the Sariya dam near Falluja, submerging entire villages and farms, sweeping away everything in its path and bringing the transport systems in Baghdad to a standstill. The orchards near the Chalabis’ home were flooded, and the rising waters crept nearer and nearer to the house. Hadi instructed the male members of the staff to remove all precious items from the ground floor, and they quickly set about rolling up his extensive collection of valuable Persian carpets and taking them upstairs to safety.

  While all around her were busily moving possessions, barricading the kitchen and making sure that essential supplies were brought upstairs, Bibi stood on the balcony watching the water approach. When Saeeda came to find her, she was smoking a cigarette furiously. Agitated, she turned to her and said: ‘We’re all going to drown. The whole house is going to be flooded. And there’s nowhere to hide. Look.’ She nodded down at her high heels. ‘How can I even run away, in these stupid shoes?’

  For Bibi, the flood had assumed biblical proportions: like the flood of Noah, it was a sign from God. Well versed in the biblical stories of the prophets, she recited the Surat Nuh, Noah’s Verse from the Quran:

  O my Lord! Forgive me,

  My parents, all who

  Enter my house in Faith

  And [all] believing in men

  And believing in women:

  And to the wrongdoers

  Grant Thou no increase

  But in perdition!

  The floodwater entered the house, and for many days everyone had to sleep on the first-floor balconies. Their food was very basic: boiled eggs and potatoes with chutney – not dissimilar to the popular street food sold in carts in the souks. The fountains outside oozed with filthy water; even the statue of the deer was not spared, although it still managed to look dignified with its legs half submerged.

  Bibi declared to Hadi, ‘This Sif Palace is cursed. Your mother died within months of
us moving here, your father soon followed her, and now there’s this flood. I’m not living here any more, ever.’ She immediately set about packing, and within a couple of days she and the rest of the family had moved to Kazimiya.

  The one person who refused to budge from the flooded building was Jamila’s aged former nanny, Dayyah Saadah, who stayed on the first floor ‘guarding the house’ as she put it, although she could barely move. Muhammad Ali, Hadi’s brother, came with his young nephews in a small rowing boat to deliver food to Dayyah Saadah and remove any precious items. Worries about looters were never far from anyone’s mind.

  Even after the waters had retreated and order was eventually restored, Bibi’s mind was firmly made up, and as usual nothing could persuade her to change it. After a brief residence in Kazimiya, she and her family moved into a large rented villa across the river from Kazimiya, on Taha Street in the Sunni neighbourhood of A’zamiya, where the shrine of a revered lawmaker, Abu Hanifa, stood. Once more, the deer statue followed them to their new residence, and it was already destined to move again, as Hadi had purchased a large plot of land across the road, where he planned to build a new home in time.

  Soon after the family’s move to A’zamiya, the mystery of Bibi’s refusal to agree to Thamina’s marriage was solved. One evening, she casually hinted to her husband that her cousin Saleh Bassam had asked for Thamina’s hand before anyone else had approached them about it. Bibi confessed that she had preliminarily agreed to the match, but told Hadi that she would naturally like to know his thoughts on the subject.