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

by Tamara Chalabi

  For a few minutes, Hadi’s face was so red with rage that Bibi cowered behind a chair just as Rushdi had done years before. She was sure that he would strike her, even though he had never before raised his hand to her. ‘So that’s what it is – it’s all about your family and your pride!’ Hadi blustered when he could finally speak. ‘You want to marry Thamina to your uncle’s son, the same uncle who cheated your mother out of your father’s inheritance?’

  Bibi dismissed the matter of the lost inheritance as irrelevant – it was so long ago – and said that she knew Saleh Bassam, that he was desperate to marry Thamina and that he would do his best to make her happy. What was more, he would never dare to disobey Bibi, and the match would mean Thamina could continue to live near them.

  For all her defiance, Bibi knew she had pushed matters to the absolute limit. When Hadi summoned Thamina to ask for her opinion, she deferred to him, saying, ‘Father, you know best,’ tears of embarrassment shining in her eyes. However, she knew that her father would never overcome Bibi’s will, and was secretly relieved that her fate had been sealed. She welcomed her mother’s choice, and was excited to be getting married.

  In January 1940 Rustum Haidar, the Minister of Finance, who had been a loyal ally of King Faisal I, was shot in his office by a pro-Nazi policeman who later confessed that he had been in a rage with Rustum for having refused him a promotion.

  Rustum Haidar had been by far the most cosmopolitan politician in Iraq. Although Lebanese by birth, like King Faisal he had adopted Iraq as his home country and had become devoted to it. Besides being a pillar of the Shi’a community and an old family friend of the Chalabis, he had been a colleague of Hadi’s for some months. Hadi’s position as one of the largest suppliers of wheat and barley to Weir & Co., which supplied the British Army, meant that he played a key role in the management of Iraq’s agriculture. In 1939 he had been invited to be the only person without a Cabinet post to join the Iraqi Central Supply Committee, a government agency that had been established to ensure the supply of food and goods for the population. The committee was headed by Rustum.

  As soon as Hadi heard the news of the shooting, he rushed to the hospital where Rustum lay critically wounded. While the doctors tried to save Rustum, news of the attack spread rapidly through Baghdad, with many Shi’a convinced that the attack could not have been planned and carried out by one man, but that it signified a more sinister plot against the Shi’a as a whole.

  The news was also received very badly by the Chalabi household, adding to the despondent mood created by the ominous reports of the war. Rushdi and Hassan were outraged, while Bibi worried that retaliation attacks would follow, and prayed for her family’s safety.

  When Rustum died four days later, the stability of the country hung by a thread. The Prime Minister, Nuri Pasha al-Said, drew upon all his reserves of political cunning and goodwill to prevent a revolt from breaking out. Having consulted with the Prime Minister, Hadi exerted his influence over the Shi’a mullahs in Kazimiya in an attempt to calm the situation. Although their sway over the town had been undermined in recent years owing to the growing appeal of Communism, he hoped they could help contain the anger felt on the streets.

  Filled with anger and frustration, Hadi could not sit still. He sent messages to the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala and contacted community leaders, then turned his attention to organizing several memorial services for Rustum.

  Hadi (far right) accompanying Nuri Said (second from left) and his entourage in the courtyard of the Kazimiya shrine in the 1940s.

  Rustum’s funeral was very well attended, and there was a real risk that the crowd would erupt into violence at any moment. The Shi’a community were by now convinced that his assassination had been carried out by Arab nationalists who objected to their monopoly on politics being broken by the Shi’a, who had started to acquire more positions of power in the late thirties and early forties.

  Not long after Rustum Haidar’s assassination, the growing nationalist element in government meant that Nuri’s position as Prime Minister became untenable. Unlike the pro-Axis elements in government, Nuri and his supporters believed strongly that Iraq’s interests were best served by working alongside Britain. The country was already on the path of progress and development, and a leader in the region; given what had been achieved in the past couple of decades, they believed that they had as much to benefit from Britain as she had to benefit from them. However, Nuri now found himself in a minority, and he resigned from his post as Prime Minister.

  As her own mother had done before her, Bibi dedicated herself to preparing her daughter’s trousseau. She took Thamina for fittings at the atelier of Madame Tokatelian, an Armenian seamstress who created a stunning wedding dress in silver and white lamé, as well as some other outfits for her.

  Bibi also chose some suits for Thamina from the two modern department stores that had opened in central Baghdad, near Rashid Street. One of these was Orosdi Back, which already had branches in Istanbul, Cairo and Beirut; the other was Hassou Ikhwan. Both offered a shopping experience far removed from the vibrant, chaotic, old-fashioned souks, and Bibi relished the joys of ready-to-wear.

  Thamina’s wedding took place at the family home. There was a grand dinner party, which was boycotted by the relatives of the rejected family suitors. A Hungarian dancing troupe entertained the guests. At the end of the evening, Hadi turned to his wife and said, ‘You’ve committed a jarima – a crime – do you hear? There were so many others she could have married. A crime, I say; do you understand what that makes you?’ Bibi refused to answer. That evening, she reflected, Thamina hadn’t looked like a victim, radiant in her dress, laughing and smiling with her new husband.

  To Bibi’s immense satisfaction, her plan succeeded, and Thamina remained in her daily orbit in A’zamiya. Within a few months she was pregnant. She was so embarrassed to show her condition in front of her father, betraying as it did her conjugal relationship with her husband, that whenever she saw Hadi she would hide her bump with a cushion.

  A wedding portrait of Thamina and Saleh Bassam, 1941.

  20

  Blood and Salons

  Mounting Tensions

  (1941)

  ALTHOUGH IT WAS still being fought many miles away from Iraq, the war had started to divide the country. The Regent, Abdul Ilah, was committed to supporting the Allies, but the atmosphere had almost reached boiling point in Baghdad, where students staged anti-British protest marches, while the local press vented its nationalist frustrations on front pages, and pamphlets of every type littered the streets of the capital. It was unclear where the effects of the German propaganda machine ended and those of home-grown anti-British sentiment took over. But it certainly seemed to many that the German campaign spoke to them more strongly than any British claims to loyalty did, despite Britain’s pervasive presence in the country.

  The pro-Axis politician Rashid ’Ali Gailani had taken over as Prime Minister from Nuri Pasha al-Said in a national coalition government. Joining forces with a group of Arab nationalist officers who called themselves the ‘Golden Square’, he objected strongly to Iraq’s providing any further help to Britain’s war effort, although it was bound to do so under the terms of the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. Officially he and his supporters claimed to want neutrality, while secretly they used Iraq’s Ambassador to Ankara to appeal to the Germans and Italians for arms.

  In April 1941, under the orders of the Golden Square, the Iraqi Army seized Baghdad, while Rashid ’Ali and his followers took over Parliament. The Prince Regent, Abdul Ilah, fled the country to the safety of Transjordan, where he was soon joined by several politicians who were opposed to Rashid ’Ali, including Nuri Pasha al-Said. In Baghdad, Parliament was pressured into voting in favour of the Regent’s cousin taking over the throne. It was a coup.

  Hadi did not escape Rashid ’Ali’s ire. He was accused of funding the tribes in the south to rebel against the new government. It transpired that many of these rumours ori
ginated with Hadi’s own cousin, Salim, the son of Abdul Ghani, whose argument with Abdul Hussein seventeen years earlier had precipitated the move to the Deer Palace. Salim was a Communist who hated the monarchy. Hadi had tried to maintain good relations with him over the years, and was dismayed to hear that his younger cousin had slandered him in this way.

  Salim was a well-read intellectual who contributed frequently to Communist publications. His activism had often him landed in prison, as the Iraqi Communist Party had been banned by the government in 1935. His political purism was so extreme that he often neglected his family in favour of what he regarded as the greater cause. Bibi was highly critical of Salim, and thought he should behave much more responsibly towards his family. Hadi, on the other hand, tried whenever he could to help Salim out, and had often used his connections to get him released from prison. When challenged by Bibi, Hadi justified his forgiving attitude on the basis that his cousin had lost his way in life, and that it was pointless to punish him any further.

  However, as far as Salim was concerned, his older cousin personified everything that the class struggle was about. He disapproved of all that Hadi did and all that he stood for. Bibi quietly suspected that his opinions were as much the result of jealousy of her husband’s success as of ideological beliefs.

  As the fractures deepened between branches of the Chalabi family, the level of tension and terror escalated in Baghdad, with Radio Berlin blaring out of every café in town. Rumours spread of the growing influence of the pro-Hitler, ultra-nationalist Palestinian Mufti Amin Husseini, who was in Baghdad rallying anti-British sentiment. Alarmed by the situation, the British decided to test Rashid ’Ali Gailani’s allegiance by asking for permission to land their planes in Iraq under the terms of the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. At the same time they withheld their recognition of the new government, which they were certain was backed by military force.

  Rashid ’Ali and the Golden Square confirmed these suspicions by demanding several preconditions before the British planes could land. Almost overnight Iraq was transformed into Axis territory, and British troops landed at Basra once more, as they had done in 1914.

  In retaliation, to the dismay of the civilian politicians, Iraqi forces surrounded the British airbase at Habbaniya, north of Baghdad. Interpreting this as an act of war, on 18 May 1941 British forces launched an attack on the 9,000-strong Iraqi Army at Rashid Camp, south of Habbaniya. Britain could not risk losing her important supply of Iraqi oil to Germany.

  Hitler’s interest in Iraq was, however, only fleeting; he viewed it primarily as a means of harming British interests. According to his plans, Iraq would act as a base from which to launch aerial attacks on Russia. To that end, he initially paid lip service to the demands of Rashid ’Ali and his supporters, describing them as his natural allies against the British.

  Baghdad felt the heat of the gathering confrontation as the fire-flares of the Royal Air Force lit the sky to the north, while pamphlets continued to be dropped onto the city itself and news began to circulate that a division of the Luftwaffe had been stationed at Mosul.

  Bibi was terrified by the sight of British Wellington bombers flying overhead on their way to raid Habbaniya. Until that point the war had been fought in distant lands, and she and the family had seen it only on newsreels at the cinema. Now, the sound of the planes’ engines overhead woke everyone early in the mornings. The fighting felt very close, and Bibi was dismayed when she spotted an old man jumping with joy down in the street one day, shouting, ‘King George is dead, King George is dead! The war is over!’ She was sure he was repeating something he had heard on the radio.

  As the situation continued to escalate, Rashid ’Ali’s followers lobbied the Germans heavily for support. Several German planes bombed Habbaniya, and Major Axel von Blomberg of the German High Command was sent to liaise with Rashid ’Ali, but was mistakenly shot down by an Iraqi soldier.

  The Germans soon abandoned their campaign. Within a few days, Rashid ’Ali and the Golden Square were defeated by the British, and the Iraqi forces surrendered. Rashid ’Ali fled to Iran, before continuing to Berlin. The Prince Regent, Abdul Ilah, and his supporters made plans to return to Baghdad, while the British military surrounded the city; they did not enter it, as they did not want to seem like an occupying force.

  In spite of the nationalist leanings of many of her acquaintances, Bibi was vehemently opposed to Hitler. She knew that he had started this war, and for that she would never forgive him. She had also learned about some of his crimes in Europe from her Jewish friends, the Munashis, Sha’shous and Lawis, who had told her of persecution and of the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938.

  She hated the pro-Axis politicians, and covered her ears whenever she heard Yunis Bahri’s voice blaring out of the radio. It seemed to her that these days Iraq was possessed by violence. The language on the streets had changed, becoming harsher and coarser, and the atmosphere rippled with tension. One afternoon towards the end of May 1941, while riding in a carriage on her way back home from Baghdad, she was incensed when she heard men outside a café cheering news of German planes bombing London. She was even more outraged when she overheard Ghaffuri, the driver who had replaced Karim, agreeing with Ali Akbar that Hitler was going to win the war.

  Early one evening a man knocked at the door of the Chalabi house. He was thin, with neat greying hair, and was dressed simply in a white shirt and navy trousers. He introduced himself as Nabil, and said he needed to see the master of the house urgently; he had a message from his boss, Mr Lawi, a Jewish friend of Hadi’s from Samau’al Street.

  Ni’mati noticed that the man was sweating despite the cool of the evening, and wondered why he was so nervous. He was slightly put out by the request, as Hadi was taking a siesta, and Ni’mati never liked to wake him up. Nevertheless, he proceeded to Hadi’s room, knocked gently and softly called, ‘Effendi, there’s a man here to see you. She says it’s very important, from Mr Lawi.’ Ni’mati always switched genders around. Although he had lived in Iraq for most of his life, he never fully mastered Arabic.

  Hadi jumped out of bed at once, and asked Ni’mati to get the visitor some tea. When he joined Nabil downstairs, their conversation was direct and to the point. Nabil’s boss, Mr Lawi, was asking Hadi for help. Given the current tensions, he and the heads of several other families felt unsafe in their neighbourhood, and wanted Hadi to find a place where they could lie low until things calmed down. Rumours were rife that the Baghdadi Jews had rejoiced at the attack on the Iraqi force at Habbaniya, and that British-trained Jewish secret agents had been recruited in Palestine to help the British fight the Iraqi Army. The news had not yet spread of Rashid ’Ali’s flight, and many of his proclamations were still heard in the streets.

  ‘Please tell Mr Lawi that this is his house and anyone he brings with him is welcome,’ Hadi assured Nabil. ‘Please hurry and tell him I’m waiting for him to come as soon as possible.’ He immediately started to instruct his staff to bring out mattresses and clear out rooms on the first floor in preparation for their guests.

  Bibi was woken from her siesta by the commotion. When Hadi announced that Mr Lawi and several families were coming to stay with them because they felt unsafe in their own homes, she readily agreed. She was aware that accommodating these visitors presented a considerable risk to the household, especially as Hadi was known to be on good terms with the monarchy and had not been friendly with Rashid ’Ali and his followers. But she also knew that Hadi could not turn them away.

  Gurji Lawi and his family were the first to arrive, followed by Munashi Sha’shou and his family, Salman Zilkha and his wife, and others. Mrs Zilkha was so shy that she found it hard to join in at mealtimes, so a small gas burner was bought for her use. Everything possible was done to cater for the guests’ kosher diet, although no one wanted to attract attention to the house by going to the Jewish market in Soug Hanoun in old Baghdad.

  After a week the families returned to their own homes. Events were soon t
o force them to seek refuge on a more permanent basis.

  The Prince Regent returned to Baghdad by way of Habbaniya on 1 June. Crowds flocked onto the streets to welcome him back, among them members of the Baghdadi Jewish community, who were dressed in their best clothes because the occasion coincided with the feast of the Pentecost, which they celebrated by paying their respects at the tomb of Joshua, in western Baghdad.

  As the Jews celebrated Prince Abdul Ilah’s return, they were brutally attacked by a mob of angry, defeated and disbanded soldiers and hooligans. One man was killed, and sixteen were hurt. The police took them to the hospital, where the staff were harassed to hand them over to the mob outside. The chief doctor refused.

  Further incidents followed in the Jewish neighbourhoods of Baghdad. Soldiers and townsfolk went on the rampage, breaking into Jewish homes, killing and looting, while the police stood by and did nothing. In one incident a bus carrying Jewish passengers was stopped by soldiers, and the travellers were pulled out and murdered. Cases of rape were also reported. Shops were broken into on Rashid and Ghazi Streets, the main commercial streets of Baghdad, and the loot that wasn’t taken was strewn on the road.

  Rashid Street in the 1940s.

  The rampage continued the next day, with crimes being committed by soldiers, police and bands of youths who belonged to pro-Nazi movements. Furniture was dragged out of homes in the Sinak area, while in other districts the police demanded protection money from Jewish families. In many respects the behaviour of the mob echoed that of the rabble who had swarmed onto the streets following the Ottoman retreat of 1917, taking advantage of the chaos in order to pillage and rob, rather than expressing their discontent with the government through more articulate means.