Within the Ottoman army, officers had sometimes made profits on the goods they confiscated. The war had created the perfect conditions for bureaucratic corruption and the abuse of power; it was in effect official looting – of market goods, animals, crops, everything and anything the army and its associates could lay their hands on.
In Baghdad, food shortages had been made worse by the onslaught of a cholera epidemic, as well as river floods which had forced many out of their homes in 1916. Those in Kazimiya, such as Abdul Hussein and his family, had been luckier, as the lie of the land was higher and more protected from the rising waters of the Tigris. The town received many refugees following the floods in Baghdad.
Although there was a sense of relief that the war was over, this alone could not subdue the shock caused by the collapse of the Ottoman administration and the subsequent British occupation. The war had brought with it many aspects of modernity that had rattled the population, most notably the mass mobilization of civilians and military. It had also brought profound loss, and now an important layer of their identity was being stripped from the inhabitants of the Baghdad Province. They had, after all, been Ottomans for centuries.
For Hadi, the biggest shock came days after the fall of Baghdad, when he saw British soldiers on the upper deck of a tramcar approaching Kazimiya, sitting casually on the same benches that had been occupied only days earlier by Ottoman soldiers. Having worked for the past couple of years in close proximity to the Ottoman Military Headquarters and its staff, Hadi could not but feel some attachment and loyalty to his erstwhile colleagues.
Not long afterwards, while walking along the path to the Citadel, he was unsettled by the sight of thousands of Ottoman soldiers who were being detained in a large camp by the British. It seemed only yesterday that the opposite had been the case; he remembered the public celebrations following the siege of Kut, which had lasted for 140 days from December 1915 to April 1916. Then, 13,000 British and Indian prisoners of war had been paraded on foot through Baghdad on their way to detention centres in Anatolia.
Hadi wondered what this British army had in store for Baghdad. He already felt a stranger in his city. Everything that he had taken for granted as a Muslim living in an Ottoman Muslim province was collapsing around him.
As an older man with a longer memory of his Ottoman heritage, Hadi’s father had an even stronger reaction to the recent developments. For Abdul Hussein this went much deeper than mere politics – the Ottoman Empire had defined who he and his family were for several centuries. The Sultan had always existed in his memory and imagination, whatever the shortcomings of his rule in Mesopotamia. The situation had been unbearable for the population during the war, but even so he had never desired this outcome. Like many others, Hadi and Abdul Hussein had to grapple with the implications of the Ottoman defeat.
After securing Baghdad, Maude moved north towards Mosul, fighting the remaining Ottoman army there. Several other battles were being fought by the Ottomans against the Allies, who were moving in on many fronts in the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia and Palestine. A blockade of the Dardanelles incapacitated the Ottomans, and Istanbul became awash with refugees fleeing the fighting. Unable to withstand further pressure, the Ottoman government surrendered unconditionally at Mudros, a harbour on Lemnos, a Greek island in the Aegean, on 31 October 1918.
Four hundred years of Ottoman rule in Mesopotamia had ended. What would replace it?
NOVEMBER 1999, BEIRUT
It’s a Saturday night and I’m out for dinner with a couple of friends. Another friend calls on his cell phone, inviting us to join him at a place nearby where there’s music. Slowly we make our way through the lively night to join him. I haven’t bothered to ask what kind of music it is or who will be performing.
On a small stage in the middle of the room, a short, unassuming and serious-looking man takes his place on a chair with a guitar on his lap and starts singing. I discover he is a well-known Iraqi artist, Ilham al-Madfa’i. To my surprise he sings a popular old Iraqi folk song fused with flamenco beats.
Mali Shughul bil Soug, maret ashufak
’Atshan hafn issnin, warwi ’ala shufak …
Wu as’al ’anil mahbub, minhu ili shafah …
Wi shlon anam il layl, winta ’ala bali
Hatta il simach bil may, yibtchi ’ala hali
I have no business in the market, I just came to see you.
I’ve been thirsty for years, only the sight of you will quench it …
I want to ask about the beloved, who saw him? …
How can I sleep the night, when you are on my mind?
Even the fish in the water cry for me.
Something deep inside me is moved as I hear the familiar words about a lover pining for his sweetheart, sung by Madfa’i with such longing and weariness. Images from the song bring to life a childhood memory of Bibi singing it to me as a taste of her country. I am overcome by floods of tears, which puzzles my friends, and myself as well. My ‘foreignness’ has come to the fore – the other half of my identity which is usually well concealed beneath my comfortable outward Lebanese appearance.
I can’t explain, let alone understand, this deep homesickness that I feel. What am I homesick for?
BOOK TWO
Replanting Eden
SEPTEMBER 2005
My aunt Raifa invites me to lunch at her house in Putney, south of the river in London. She knows I am going to ask questions about her life in Iraq. My other aunt, Thamina, is also invited, as well as two cousins of mine, Raifa’s daughter Zina, and my uncle Rushdi’s daughter, Nadia. Both my aunts are in their eighties. Although, like me, Zina and Nadia are Bibi’s grandchildren, they belong to my mother’s generation, since my grandparents had my father relatively late.
I’m the first to arrive. As my aunt sets the table in the kitchen while we wait for the others, I sit in her reception room. I see many valuable pieces, antique objets d’art, silver and precious glass – a museum curator’s fantasy. Many of these inherited pieces have made a long journey, often from London or Paris (where they were purchased) to Baghdad, and back again to London via Beirut. Each has a story, like the silver tray table engraved with my grandfather’s initials which was bought decades ago from Mappin & Webb. My aunt likes to tell their tales. I think they reassure her.
A sadness comes over me as I think of how the emotional charge of these objects has changed over time. Here in my aunt’s flat, I feel almost as if they have been reduced to something grotesque. It is as if they have been dragged across history and then forced to fit into more cramped circumstances than they were once accustomed to.
Later we sit in the kitchen, three generations of women discussing Bibi over dishes such as timan za’faran, saffron-flavoured rice, and sabzi, green herb stew. It seems amazing that Bibi’s influence is so pervasive that nearly twenty years after her death she has managed to bring us together.
Culturally and psychologically,