2
Stacking Rifles
Hadi and the War
(1914–1916)
BY EARLY NOVEMBER 1914, the frivolities of stone deer and spurious pots of gold were far from Abdul Hussein’s mind. Turkey had officially entered the Great War on Germany’s side.
The Germans had been consolidating their relationships with countries in the Middle East for several decades through a variety of measures, such as assisting in reforms within the Turkish military and helping to build railways. The ambitious Berlin–Baghdad railway project had been drawn up to give the Kaiser direct access to Mesopotamia’s oil fields. Given the strong German presence in the Ottoman Empire, there had been no real choice of sides for the Sultan to take once the war broke out.
A few days after this ominous development, the menfolk of the town convened in Abdul Hussein’s dawakhana in the late afternoon. The mood was bleak. They sat puffing away on their cigarettes, drinking istikan after istikan of tea nervously and noisily. Some slumped back in their chairs; others were hunched forward, chins propped glumly in their hands. Indeed, their heads looked so heavy that their various headdresses – fezes, yashmaks with i’gal cord which held the cloth on the head, charawiya caps – seemed to be falling off or else tilting sideways. All the assembled men, Abdul Hussein included, had but one thing on their minds: the lives of their sons.
The military had begun to enlist young Muslim men to serve at the front. During past military campaigns there had been a systematic procedure of conscription according to ages and professions, but this time the Turkish Sixth Army division, headquartered in Baghdad, had simply sent out sorties with instructions to bring back all able-looking men.
There were reports of boys as young as fifteen – a year younger than Abdul Hussein’s eldest son Hadi – being dragged screaming from their homes by roving patrols, even as their mothers pleaded with the soldiers. Men took to hiding, and locals helped each other to avoid conscription. At the sound of the first drumbeat in the town square, and the rallying cry of ‘Safarbarlik var, safarbarlik var’, many ran out of their shops and homes, some disguised in women’s abayas, some fleeing the city to seek refuge among the tribes. And so the army adopted a wilier and yet more pitiless strategy, arresting the next of kin in order to put pressure on dodgers and deserters. Some deserters were even hanged, pour encourager les autres.
Non-Muslims such as Christians and Jews were exempt from conscription as was traditional in the Ottoman Empire, where all wars were fought in the name of Islam. Instead, a hefty exemption tax of thirty Ottoman gold pounds was imposed on them. Military doctors and conscription officers profited by taking bribes and accepting favours from the effendis, the urban elite, to send their sons to local posts instead of to the front.
Abdul Hussein’s fears for Hadi were exacerbated by his worries over the wider political situation. The Ottoman Sultan had called on all his Muslim and Arab subjects to fight the British infidels who were attacking the realm. The pronouncement was clear: they should mobilize as Muslims in this war, a sentiment that resonated deeply in all of them. Yet this feeling was clouded by disquiet. Did the state really represent them any more?
For all his disappointment at the slow pace of reform, Abdul Hussein had a very deep attachment to his Ottoman world, yet much about Turkey’s involvement in the war seemed illogical to him. As the men in the dawakhana weighed the war in the balance, tempers became increasingly frayed and voices were raised. He endeavoured to be the voice of reason.
His brother-in-law Abdul Hussein al-Uzri was among those to fan the flames by dismissing the war as a European conflict that was irrelevant to their lives in Mesopotamia. Married to Abdul Hussein’s sister Amira, Uzri was a poet and the editor of a local newspaper, al-Misbah, in which he freely aired his views. His comments provoked a furious response from Abdul Ghani, Abdul Hussein’s younger brother, who argued that war in Europe concerned them greatly; that the Germans needed the Sultan to be on their side in order to buffer the Ottoman lands from the encroachment of the British and Russians. Moreover, he said, it was their basic religious duty to fight el-Ingiliz, the English, who were coming to occupy their land. He turned to Abdul Hussein for support.
Abdul Hussein chose his words carefully. ‘If they are attacking Islam we must defend our faith – after all, our Sultan is the head of the Caliphate – but we must be clearer on the premise of war.’
‘I say we must fight, we must defend our faith! They will attack our land, they will control our holy sites,’ Abdul Ghani insisted.
‘What a fool you are, Chalabi!’ Uzri countered. ‘They’re not interested in our holy sites; they want to protect the oil fields in the south, in Persia; that’s what they want – they don’t care about our Imams. This war is not our war; it doesn’t serve anything! Istanbul doesn’t care about us, the Ottomans simply want to sacrifice us for their vanity,’ he shouted excitedly, throwing his fez on the ground with force.
Abdul Ghani folded his arms stubbornly. ‘I disagree. This is about our faith, and we have to defend ourselves. What do we have if not our religion?’
Abdul Hussein watched in dismay as the dispute grew more heated. Several of his guests were of the view that the Ottomans were ill-prepared for war, whatever God’s will for the outcome might be. One man glumly volunteered that the British war machine would crush any Ottoman opposition. Another spoke in favour of adopting Iranian papers, as Iranians were exempt from conscription. Finally, one asked Abdul Hussein to tell them his opinion.
Abdul Hussein reflected for a moment before replying. Should he tell them what he really thought? That this was the beginning of the end? He cleared his throat. ‘Those new men in Istanbul have changed things so dramatically,’ he said. ‘They want to be Turkish now, not Ottoman or Muslim. We’re an afterthought for them.’ He was referring to the fact that the Ottoman Empire had always been a multi-ethnic Muslim territory even though its rulers were Turkish, but now the Young Turks were placing their own nationality centre stage. He shook his head. ‘This is a bad war, and I don’t know why the Sultan has agreed to be part of it. But he is our Caliph and he has declared jihad, holy war.’
When Basra fell to the British a month later, the Sultan called for jihad across the Empire. All of Baghdad’s mosques rallied men to join the fight, and Kazimiya’s men were roused to action by the fiery Friday prayer speeches of the mullahs at the shrine.
Hadi was only sixteen years old. After many sleepless nights, his father, desperate to save him from conscription, used his influence to secure him a post under a Turkish general who had taken up residence with his retinue in the Deer Palace. Abdul Hussein’s brother-in-law Agha Muhammad Nawab had died of old age in the summer, and Munira, now widowed, had wasted no time in moving to the Nawab’s other house in Kazimiya to be nearer to her mother and family. She had inherited property as well as a considerable fortune from her late husband, and the move also meant she could be closer to her farms. Curiously, Munira seemed much happier than when Abdul Hussein had visited her for that miserable lunch a year ago. These days she listened attentively to what he had to say, and took a real interest when he spoke of his concerns for Hadi’s safety and the problems with the education of his other children in these difficult times. Their sister Burhan no longer seemed to cast a shade over their conversations.
One evening Abdul Hussein returned home with the news that his son was to report for duty at the Deer Palace the following morning. Despite his initial disappointment at the lowly and loosely defined post assigned to him, Hadi approached his job with enthusiasm. Every day he rode out very early in the morning, often accompanied by Ni’mati, who was as sinewy and dark as Hadi was robust and fair, to collect fresh fruits and vegetables from his father’s lands for the officers. Knowing his father’s fondness for gaymar, Hadi purchased this for the men’s breakfast from a woman who lived in one of the reed huts by the riverfront further up from Kazimiya. The woman kept buffalo, and a