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

by Tamara Chalabi

  My father’s pioneering efforts in the spheres of banking and economic development had yielded impressive results. He brought world-class banking technology to Jordan, and through his entrepreneurial zeal helped to connect it to financial centres around the world. Under his leadership Petra Bank, which he had he founded, looked destined to become the top banking institution in the nation. His unusual style of conducting business – development banking, and supporting new projects and ventures beneficial to the country – won him a lot of friends and allies in the region. But it also earned him the ire of the established economic elite in Amman, who felt threatened by his success.

  My father, who actively supported the opposition to Saddam Hussein, believed that Saddam’s regime rested on three pillars. The first was terror and intimidation inside Iraq; he could do little about that. The second was his international support, which again it would be a mammoth task to tackle. The third was money. He decided to target the last, by undermining Saddam’s creditworthiness among the international banking community. Specifically he focused on exposing the Iraqi regime’s links to an Italian bank, Banco Nazionale del Lavoro, whose branch in Atlanta, Georgia, was lending illegally to the regime. My father’s activities became known to Saddam in early 1989 when, following the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq found itself with serious financial issues to resolve.

  Jordan had become increasingly dependent on Saddam’s money and on Iraqi oil, and Saddam asked his ally King Hussein to put a stop to my father’s activities. One way to achieve this would be to strip him of his chairmanship of Petra Bank, even though it was a private enterprise. On 2 August 1989 the Jordanian government passed an extra-judicial martial law under which Petra Bank was seized for the purpose of merging it with another local bank. The board of directors, including my father, were dismissed, and armed tanks surrounded the bank headquarters in Amman.

  My father could not believe what had happened. He had many friends in various circles in Jordan, including politicians and members of the security services. A day after the raid on the bank some of these friends made him aware that Saddam was sending a team of his security forces to interrogate him and take him back to Baghdad. His arrest had already been approved by the Jordanian Prime Minister, General Zaid Shakir.

  The rumours were soon confirmed. One of my father’s friends, Abdul Hay Majali, the brother of the director of Jordan’s security services, took my father to the house of another of his brothers, Abdul Wahab al-Majali, an eminent politician and the former Deputy Chairman of Petra Bank. When they arrived, my father was told that the Prime Minster would be joining them. He angrily said that he didn’t want to meet him after what he had done in ordering the raid on the bank, but another of the brothers reproached him, telling him that bankers shouldn’t talk like that. My father replied that he was no longer a banker after Shakir’s actions. At that point the Prime Minister strode through the door. My father left the room and returned home.

  The next day, several important people in the Jordanian government called to check whether he had been arrested, as they were aware of the orders that had been issued by the Prime Minister. This, combined with information about the Iraqi security team’s presence in Amman, persuaded my father that it was time for him to get out of the country as soon as possible.

  While these events were taking place, my mother, my siblings and I were on our summer holiday in London, waiting for my father to join us. We received his news by telephone, but none of us was able to grasp the magnitude of what had happened. We were convinced that a mistake had been made and that the King would surely fix it, given the good relations we had with the Jordanian royal family. Until my father arrived in London several weeks later, we heard little from him. Within a matter of days it became clear that we would not be returning to Jordan. Our entire lives were left behind in the country – our friends, our home, our personal belongings. We lost them all.

  No charges were laid against my father until three years after the bank’s seizure. When the military prosecutor reported to the Prime Minister that there was no basis for any charges, he was told to come up with something, then he was fired. Another prosecutor was brought in, and charges of misconduct and criminal negligence were levelled against my father. The same charges were made against his co-defendants, the employees of the bank. Every one of them was acquitted on all counts. With the exceptions of my father and my uncle Rushdi (who did not reside in Jordan), none of the other board members was ever charged with misconduct. Indeed, subsequently several of them and of the bank’s key clients were granted government positions: Abdul Karim Kabariti, Samir Kawar and Laith Shubeilat became the Jordanian Prime Minister, a Cabinet Minister and a Member of Parliament respectively. My father was tried in absentia, and was prohibited from retaining counsel at the trial. Furthermore, he was not allowed to appeal against the charges in a higher court.

  Before the sentences were passed in September 1992, my father met King Hussein for an hour in London, with the intercession of Jalal Talabani (the current President of Iraq). Jalal Talabani forcefully put his case to the King, who had little to say. Several more meetings followed with the King throughout the nineties until his death in early 1999, and he expressed a wish to solve the Petra Bank case. His deputies were at a loss as to how to do this, because over the years the bank’s assets had been looted by influential people who had picked up shares and acquired real estate at cut-rate prices. The liquidation committee is still in operation today, over twenty years later, living off the assets of the bank.

  The conspiracy against my father was rooted in a convergence between the Iraqi regime’s political interests and the economic interests of the established Palestinian–Jordanian business elite. It had led to the subversion of Jordanian institutions and the exploitation of regulation, legislation and even the judiciary in order to undo the Petra Bank experiment and then lay the blame for its collapse on the very person who had lost the most from it, namely my father. The result was to tarnish his reputation, obliterate his wealth and cast him as an outlaw for years to come.

  Far from confirming that the bank had been in deficit as they had alleged, the martial authorities authorized large transactions after the takeover on 2 August 1989. They later brought the international firm of auditors Arthur Andersen in to audit the bank. Arthur Andersen did not question the martial law committee’s post-takeover transactions, nor the fact that the shareholders of the bank did not authorize their audit. Despite the fact that their report clearly stated that it was to be used for information purposes only, the authorities violated this request and published it, a flagrant abuse that has never been addressed.

  My aunt Raifa told me that Bibi came to her in a dream a few months after her death and told her, ‘Darling, I can’t sleep. You’re father’s sleeping so comfortably next to me, but I keep tossing and turning, left and right.’

  For nearly eight months after Bibi died, I kept dreaming of her. I was as upset as the rest of the family by the Najaf conundrum. Her fate, to be deprived of the final resting place she had longed for, sealed for me a great injustice and drove home my family’s long exile. In my dreams I remember searching for signs of Bibi’s disapproval as she talked to me about her mother’s cooking, about a new dress she had bought me, about Hadi’s gifts to her, about nothing in particular.

  42

  A Question of Identity

  In Search of a Way to Be

  (1990–2009)

  EVEN BEFORE MY father decided to focus his efforts on building a unified opposition to Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1991, the desire to make sense of what had happened to my family and to understand my own inheritance compelled me towards Iraq’s history, which was unfamiliar to me, and to Saddam’s terrible human rights abuses. At boarding school in Oxford I had aspirations to become an architect; I decided to write about the Gothic arch and its influence on Islamic architecture for my senior term paper. However, my architectural ambitions were soon abandoned, and I ended up writing on the Kurds of
Iraq. The romance of the mountains may have had something to do with the fascination they held for me. Certainly their distinct foreignness appealed to my imagination, evoking a land full of different peoples and languages.

  A few weeks after choosing my new assignment the news broke of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990. My first thought was that the invasion marked the anniversary of Petra Bank’s takeover and my family’s uprooting. From that day onwards, my relationship to Iraq became defined in terms of my opposition to the regime and a quest for an Iraq that was everything Saddam’s tortured country was not. I became even more influenced by my father’s stance when he committed himself full-time to opposition to Saddam’s regime.

  The invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War offered the world a fleeting glimpse of what Saddam’s Iraq was really like, but it was the images of fleeing Kurdish refugees trapped in the mountains on the Turkish border that forced the international community to respond, enforcing a no-fly zone above the 32nd parallel. Iraq’s sovereignty appeared to be eroding. Like many Iraqis I rejoiced when it seemed that the end might soon be approaching for the regime following news reports that the US military were near Baghdad, and like them I was devastated when Saddam survived, suppressing the uprising and killing tens of thousands.

  I was on my summer holiday, about to start university in the United States, when the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the umbrella group of the Iraqi opposition, first met in Vienna in June 1992; to a large extent, it convened owing to my father’s relentless efforts. As the Congress was in need of volunteers I asked to take part, and was ecstatic to be participating in such an event, to be involved in a collective effort to reclaim the Iraq I had only dreamed about. The assembly of Kurds and Arabs, Communists and Islamicists suggested once more to me a rich land full of diversity and possibility. A follow-up conference was convened in November 1992 on Iraqi soil, in the Kurdish town of Salahuddin under the no-fly zone, beyond Saddam’s grasp. The university term meant that I couldn’t go, despite my persistent lobbying to do so.

  My father knew that he could not effectively oppose Saddam from an office in London, so after the INC’s formation in 1992 he made his base in Iraqi Kurdistan, working closely with the Kurdish parties there. Communications were not as developed then as they are today, and I remember our anxiety whenever we were unable to reach him by telephone, or if a few days passed without any news. Despite the no-fly zone, he was not far from Saddam’s forces, and the fear of something happening to him haunted us constantly. When the two main Kurdish factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, both of which were founding members of the INC, started fighting each other in 1994, my father took upon himself the task of mediating, often going to the battleground to implement ceasefires.

  I finally got my wish to visit Iraq in the winter of 1994. Flying from Istanbul to Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey, I nervously considered the fact that I would soon be arriving in Iraq. For days I had been building up this moment in my head, wondering how I would feel when I finally stepped onto Iraqi soil.

  Following a three-hour car journey, the party I was travelling with finally arrived at the Iraqi border. A Turkish guard took our passports, slowly leafing through each one. After what seemed an eternity, a man came out of the guards’ hut and explained in broken Arabic that I wasn’t allowed to cross into Iraq because of new restrictions on journalists and foreigners. ‘But I’m not a foreigner,’ I explained. ‘I’m going to see my father.’ The man apologised, but said he couldn’t see how I had any connection to Iraq: my passport was Lebanese, and I had been born in Beirut. He advised me to go to Ankara and obtain special permission from the Foreign Ministry.

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. The border supervisor whose name my father had given me in case of any problems was not there, and there seemed to be no way to resolve the impasse. I knew that Abu Muhammad, my father’s contact, who I had never met before, was waiting for me on the other side of the border, but we were separated by stretches of no-man’s land on either side of a river, and the border was guarded by Turkish soldiers. All I had was a verbal description of Abu Muhammad to help me identify him. I felt that some sinister force was preventing me from fulfilling my destiny.

  I am not sure what seized me at that moment. Perhaps it was a lack of sleep, or the dramatic landscape – an expansive open sky with infinite space in every direction – that made me react in the way I did. My passport was still with the officer inside the hut, who must have assumed that I was trying to make arrangements to return to Ankara. I spoke to a friend in the group, and agreed that we would stage a goodbye; then the rest of the party would drive across the border, and would meet me on the other side. I simply had to get across on my own.

  Ahead, all I could see were rifles and military helmets. I was hardly inconspicuous in my green jeans and colourful jumper, but I took a deep breath and started walking. I must have walked for half an hour, crossing the metal bridge under the curious gaze of a few young Turkish soldiers who thankfully did nothing, before I reached the Iraqi–Kurdish border, where there was a lot of commotion. I told myself that I just had to find Abu Muhammad among the crowd, and then everything would be fine. There were hardly any women in the throng, I realized; I must certainly have stood out.

  As I searched the people around me, I spotted a wiry man with his head cocked to one side. He came towards me and said: ‘Tamara? I’m Abu Muhammad.’

  I beamed at him; I was exhausted, but I had made it to Iraq. I had crossed the border illegally. My passport was still at the border control. The adrenaline that had pushed me into crossing was gone, and I suddenly felt depleted. The mountains overwhelmed me.

  On the long drive to Salahuddin, Abu Muhammad and I quickly established a rapport that remains to this day. He struck me as the very essence of what I had imagined Iraq to be, a collage of disparate elements. Although he was an Iraqi Turkmen whose first language was Turkish, he also spoke Persian, Kurdish and Arabic, badly but with great poetic flair. Like Ni’mati, he mixed genders and switched verbs around when he talked. Anyone who had heard him address me would have been sure he was speaking to a man. He asked me why I spoke Iraqi like an Armenian, which I thought was rich coming from him. As the car drove into the Zagros mountains I was very struck by their majesty and their colour, a dramatic combination of purples and greys running up towards the sky. Only after some time did I realize that the irregularly-shaped stones that covered the mountainsides were in fact rough headstones. Was this a type of grave particular to this region, I asked myself. Or were these makeshift graves for fallen victims? They were all identical, and I wondered how anyone could ever find their loved ones.

  I was in northern Iraq for two weeks. I stayed with my father, who I had not seen for nearly a year, in his rented house in the former summer resort of Salahuddin, near Arbil. He was in charge of the INC, working with the Kurds, recruiting people – many of whom had fled to the no-fly zone – collecting information and running an anti-regime television and radio station broadcasting to the rest of Iraq. I was thrilled to see him. He was in good spirits, and his efforts and those of the people around him inspired me. I could see the risks they were taking, and security was a prime concern at all times, although they attempted to lead as normal lives as possible. Nevertheless, the limitations were many. The threat of Saddam was ever-present, looming from the south near Mosul, and among the people I met were Iraqis who had escaped from Baghdad, many of whom had undergone severe physical and psychological trauma.

  I was finishing my undergraduate thesis, and needed to research Iraqi schoolbooks and propaganda pamphlets. But at the same time I was surprised by everything around me. The people and the landscape were all so foreign to me that I made a point of writing down everything I saw. I filled my diary with ideas for the future, mostly concerned with healing the pain I saw.

  When it was time to leave, I had to hide in the car as we crossed the border, because I had never officially
left Turkey. My passport had been picked up after I had crossed into Iraq by someone who told the border guards that I had forgotten it and had gone back to Ankara.

  As the struggle against Saddam’s regime continued, my father spent most of his time in northern Iraq with the INC. In 1996 there was a huge setback when Saddam’s forces entered the northern city of Arbil. Over a hundred people working for the INC were killed, while many others were left stranded, either in hiding or fleeing towards the Turkish border. Many of these, including Abu Muhammad, were granted asylum in the United States with my father’s help.

  The pressure on Saddam had to come from a different direction now. For the next two years my father devoted all his energies to drafting a law committing the USA to support a democratic Iraq, and lobbying Congress in Washington to adopt this law. Both houses passed the Iraq Liberation Act (ILA) with large majorities, and it was enacted into law by President Clinton on 31 October 1998. The Liberation Act stipulated that the United States would support the efforts of Iraqi opposition groups to remove Saddam’s regime, and promote the emergence of a democratic system. This support would take a variety of forms: logistical, broadcasting, humanitarian and military. It was a great achievement for the Iraqi opposition to have the USA pass such an unprecedented law. Although it was not explicitly stated, it was assumed that Saddam would be toppled by a popular uprising. The possibility of the US engaging in a war with Iraq was not even contemplated in Washington.

  In the event, only a fraction of the clauses in the Iraq Liberation Act were ever implemented as inter-agency squabbling between the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA undermined the Iraqi opposition – an unfortunate outcome that was to endure to Iraq’s detriment even after Saddam’s removal in 2003.