A young Hadi, wearing the typical Keshida, standing behind male realtives, circa 1912.
In addition to ensuring that the Deer Palace was well stocked with fresh produce, Hadi soon became a messenger, delivering letters to and from the Military Headquarters in the Citadel in Baghdad. This gave him the opportunity to discover the city itself. Ni’mati, spared conscription like many of the Iranian household staff because he wasn’t an Ottoman subject, was often his companion on these errands too. Abdul Hussein’s steward Sattar, on the other hand, had fled north to hide among his relatives in the Kurdish mountains as soon as the forced conscriptions started. Two stable boys had also disappeared overnight without warning.
Usually dressed like his father in traditional attire, Hadi replaced his civilian clothes with a basic military uniform and carried a satchel for the post. He cut a pleasing figure in his new outfit, and was generally considered a charming young man. Raised and educated in the town, he was very attached to Kazimiya, and was known for his active involvement in community events. Every year he helped to organize the Ashura processions, and he was a talented horseman who enjoyed displaying his skills at both Ashura and the Eid holiday that marked the end of Ramadan, when he would parade through town on horseback, sporting a sword and shield.
For all his popularity, Hadi was humble by nature and earnest in his enthusiasm and concern for people. His honest round face appeared all the brighter for the dark fez he had begun to sport, again in the manner of his father. He had great respect for Abdul Hussein, but he was more impulsive than his father. He already had a keen eye for the ladies, but was skilful at concealing it most of the time.
Now a part of him wished that he could indulge his adolescent dreams by putting on a proper soldier’s uniform and fighting in a battle. But he was also aware of the harshness of the army, and the cruelty with which soldiers were often treated. He was unsettled by the way in which civilians were sometimes pushed around by low-ranking soldiers, who were simply replicating what their superiors did to them. And he was disgusted by the sense of entitlement many of the officers displayed, showing no respect for people’s property. Some of them even raided shops for personal profit. Most of all, he hated the Turks’ disdain for the Arabs. He couldn’t understand why this should be so, since the Turks and Arabs shared a religion and a king.
Many decades later, Hadi would remember his humble role during the Great War, which he felt had imbued in him both his curiosity and his resourcefulness, which allowed him to thrive amidst chaos.
Employed in the offices of the Commander-in-Chief of the 6th Army, Nur al-Din Beg, Hadi learned how to make himself virtually invisible in a room, all the better to observe proceedings and acquire knowledge. Besides the idiosyncrasies of the generals he encountered, particularly their asperity and ill humour, he was fascinated by the organization of the military. He learned to appreciate the importance of timekeeping and personal accountability. While general morale was low, as the citizens of Baghdad and Kazimiya continued to feel that the conflict in their region was of marginal interest to the Ottoman government, it was still a war, and lives were at risk.
As more family friends and acquaintances became aware of Hadi’s new position, he was increasingly entrusted with letters to pass on to Nur al-Din Beg’s office. Initially this caused him concern: the proprieties of rank meant he was in no position simply to place such letters directly into the hands of his superiors, and he worried about how best to deliver them without breaking with protocol. He was uncomfortably aware that a good many of them were requests for compensation, usually relating to goods taken by the army without payment. However, some contained military intelligence about battles being waged on the front to the south of Baghdad.
It was Hadi’s good fortune that the first time he dared to hand over a letter it contained useful intelligence for the Commander rather than a simple grievance. Encouraged, he handed over more; some proved useful for gauging the mood of the civilian population, while others offered detailed information about the tribes further south, the morale of the enemy troops and even the weather, including the hazards of sandstorms and dust clouds.
Hadi began to feel personally involved in the war effort, and studied the generals carefully whenever he got the opportunity. He observed the tensions between them and the ways in which they organized their staff, and was horrified when he saw soldiers being flogged for their misdemeanours, or when he was forced to be present at the execution of deserters.
Closer to home, Hadi’s maternal uncle, the poet and newspaper editor Abdul Hussein al-Uzri, was rounded up from his house in Kazimiya in the spring of 1915 on the orders of Nur al-Din. Uzri had been outspoken in his editorials, criticizing the Ottoman position and calling for self-determination and Arab independence. As a punishment, he was imprisoned in Kayseri, ancient Caesaria, in the Anatolian heartland. With him were several Baghdadi men of letters, including the notable Pere Anastate al-Karmali, a Jesuit scholar who has contributed substantially to Iraq’s literary heritage.
Although he was at the Citadel that day, Hadi only learned about what had happened when he came home in the evening to find the house filled with a cacophony of raised voices. He panicked, thinking at first that someone had died. His young cousins were huddled together, holding on to their mother, Abdul Hussein’s sister Amira, who was sobbing loudly. Hadi had never seen his aunt like this. He knew her as a tough woman who was cowed only by her mother Khadja; not even Uzri’s fiery temper could intimidate her.
The heavy shadow of terror fell over the household as the family fretted over the possibility that further retributions might come their way. In these times of war, even Abdul Hussein’s good relations with the authorities could not be counted on to protect them.
As the days passed, Amira cried less and shouted more, becoming short-tempered with everyone, especially the servants, who tried to stay out of her way. Hadi’s mother Jamila, on the other hand, simply lost her appetite. She would only drink tea and nibble on bread, like the fragile little bird she resembled. She slept very poorly, yet she made sure to be up early each morning to see Hadi before he left for work, anxious that it might be the last time she saw him if he was also taken away.
Hadi, however, equipped with his enthusiasm for tackling every challenge that came his way, continued to make himself indispensable at the Citadel. When he was not at work, he preferred to stay away from his father’s dawakhana, where the endless complaints about the authorities bored him. Instead, he wandered among the bazaars near Headquarters in Qishla. From the stallholders and café owners he gained an insight into the soul of the country: what people bought, what they wanted, what they required. He found that the mechanics of the market interested him, and his eyes were opened to the world of commerce. The war had depleted the bazaars, but even as a young man Hadi smelt the endless opportunities that might lie ahead.
He was chatting to a pomegranate-juice seller late one afternoon when the sky suddenly seemed to rip in two above them.
‘Ya Allah, what is it!’ yelled the juice seller, instinctively ducking. Other men nearby had pressed themselves into doorways, or against walls, their eyes wide with fear.
Looking up into the blue overhead, Hadi spotted a trail of white, then the sun glinting on the wings of a flying machine. His heart was beating furiously, but he could hardly contain his excitement when he realized what he was looking at: an aeroplane! He had heard his father talk of such things, and now he had seen one. He rushed home to tell his younger brothers, Abdul Rasul and Muhammad Ali. The future was coming to Baghdad.
New technology was not the only thing to arrive in the city. After a defeat at Shuyaba in the winter of 1915, the Turkish army reshuffled some of its military leaders in Baghdad. One of the newcomers was Field Marshal Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, on ‘loan’ from Germany to the Ottoman army. With a long history of military service, beginning as a Prussian officer before German unification, Goltz had contributed to the modernization of the Ottoman army in the 1890s. His arrival in Baghdad on 15 December 1915, in the company of thirty German officers, caused some consternation as