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

The horror of the war was never far away. A constant flow of wounded soldiers streamed into Baghdad; the bodies of the dead lay in flimsy open coffins, attracting swarms of flies. There were never enough doctors or medical supplies, and many of the wounded died unattended. These sights terrified the local population, who could only assume that their conscripted loved ones suffered similar fates on more distant fronts.

The Ottoman military casualties on the Mesopotamian front amounted to approximately 38,000 lives out of an estimated total of 305,085 lost Empire-wide. Civilian casualties were even higher. There were increasing numbers of destitute women begging on the streets, many with infant children, who had escaped from the ravaged villages south of Baghdad where the fighting continued, or whose menfolk had been taken to the front, leaving them to fend for themselves. Some were even imprisoned by the authorities for their husbands’ desertions. The plight of these women moved many, including a leading poet, Ma’ruf Rusafi, who wrote:

He died, the one that gave her safety and happiness

And fate, after his absence, lumbered her with poverty …

Walking, she carried her infant on a tear-covered breast;

His swaddle from rags, repelling any onlooker.

No man, but me did I hear her

Pleading with her God, her suffering life …

3

All That is Good Will Happen

A Marriage Prospect

(1916)

THE INSANITY ON the streets outside afflicted Hadi’s grandmother, Khadja. Gossip abounded about the general state of moral turpitude in Baghdad, now that the city streets were awash with refugees, and Khadja was concerned by the long hours her grandson spent at Military Headquarters, adrift in a sea of corruption. At home, she had caught him stealing interested glances at several young women who had come with their mothers to visit her; she also suspected him of flirting with their pretty new maid. She concluded that it was time for Hadi, now aged eighteen, to marry.

Ensconced within her own quarters in the large Chalabi house, Khadja had outlived her husband, Ali Chalabi, and her robustness and energy were boundless. She had a reputation as a domestic tyrant who never had to repeat her decrees more than once. A fair-skinned woman with small eyes and a delicate physique, she occupied herself by matchmaking and initiating divorces between couples, applying equal effort to both activities.

Summoning her three eldest daughters, Munira, Amira and Shaouna, and her son Abdul Hussein, Khadja delivered her verdict with respect to Hadi. Hadi’s mother, Jamila, was excluded from the meeting on the basis that she was an outsider. Although she had been married to Abdul Hussein for many years, she was still disliked by her sisters-in-law because they had originally wanted another wife for their brother, believing he was too good for her.

An oil portrait of Jamila, Abdul Hussein’s wife.

Khadja was so feared that no one else dared approach her kursidar, her private sitting room, unless invited, except for the servant who brought them the tea at the beginning of the meeting. Resplendent on her satin-covered seat, Khadja smoked her nargilleh and ran through the list of potential brides for her grandson.

The name Bibi Begum was mentioned a few times. Although she was personally unknown to the family, the girl was the niece of the wife of a distant cousin of theirs and the daughter of Sayyid Hassan al-Bassam, a respected merchant who had died five years earlier. They also knew her mother Rumia well. Rumia was a highly regarded, God-fearing woman, famed for her culinary talents and her lineage – her mother was a granddaughter of the Persian Qajar Shah, Fath Ali Shah. She came from a well travelled and erudite family, the Postforoush from Azerbaijan, who had settled in Kazimiya several generations earlier.

For hours the three Chalabi daughters discussed the advantages and disadvantages of such a union. Munira preferred another family, the Qotobs, whose daughters she thought much prettier. Amira disagreed, considering them too haughty. But finally and inevitably they agreed with their mother, settling on Bibi.

When he came home later that day, Hadi was informed of their decision. He knew that he was expected to get married; it was a part of life. In addition to being a religious duty, marriage was a rite of passage that everyone went through. Love, if it came at all, was expected to come after marriage. It would have been impossible for it to come before, as there was almost no opportunity for a young man such as Hadi to meet a suitable bride outside the family in any respectable setting. He accepted the decision with a combination of excitement and trepidation, trying to imagine what Bibi looked like from the description that was given to him. But none of the Chalabi women – not even Khadja – had an inkling of the true nature of the girl’s personality and temperament.

Sixteen-year-old Bibi had recently had an argument with her mother, Rumia. Her grandfather Sayyid Nassir had summoned her to his sitting room, where he and Rumia were drinking tea. A willowy and cultured woman, Rumia sat quietly out of respect for her elderly father-in-law while he informed Bibi that he had been approached about the prospect of marrying her to a distant cousin who was a mullah. He explained that the cousin was moving to Persia, where she would join him if the match went ahead.

Incensed, Bibi declared brazenly, ‘I don’t want him!’ The force of her response silenced the room.

Rumia covered her eyes in despair, fearful of the damage her daughter’s character would inflict on her reputation. After a moment she looked up and pleaded in a small voice, ‘Bibi, be reasonable, what is it that you expect? He’s a good man. Don’t become blind with your empty dreams – life requires sacrifice.’ Rumia knew that her daughter wanted to live comfortably, to mix in good company and travel the world in style. Apparently all those Persian love poems she had learned when younger had gone to her head.

Bibi was adamant. ‘Yes, mother, you remind me of that every day, and I can see it all around us,’ she said firmly. ‘But why should I sacrifice myself to this man? I don’t want to be a mullah’s wife; I don’t want him – I won’t discuss it!’

Bibi retreated to her room, where she kept a hidden stash of hand-rolled cigarettes that she had discreetly stolen from Rumia over time. She lit one up and sat with her back against the door so that no one could come in. She had been a smoker since the age of twelve, and now she played an old game: with every puff, she followed the rising smoke, seeing what shape it suggested and interpreting this in relation to one of her many wishes. If the puff of smoke retained the same shape for a count of five, it meant her wish would come true. Now she wished for a suitable man – handsome, intelligent and well-to-do.

Bibi had been her late father Sayyid Hassan’s favourite, and nothing could ever compensate her for his loss. Even as a young girl, precocious and with a sharp turn of phrase, she had commanded and demanded attention from all, particularly from her father. Her name, Bibi Begum, was partly a testament to her father’s travels. Not content with one title to call his daughter, he put two nouns together: ‘Lady Madam’ in Urdu and Hindi. However, in picking the name Bibi, he also stripped her of the title she would earn when she eventually became a grandmother, as ‘Bibi’ was the name grandmothers were given in Mesopotamia. Long before she became a grandmother, Bibi’s name imbued her with matriarchal qualities. It seemed to give her the foundation upon which to build her life.

As a little girl, Bibi had always been excited as she waited for her father to come home from his latest travels in the East; from Persia and India where he bought goods for his wholesale provisions business in Baghdad. Everyone else in the household would rush around, preparing for their master’s return, except for Bibi, who would flit in and out of the courtyard to check whether he had arrived.

She always wanted to be the first to greet him, ahead of her mother and her two brothers. Once she had spotted him from a distance, walking along the alleyway with several men. Trailing behind them came a cart piled high with cases. Bibi couldn’t contain her excitement a moment longer and ran over the cobbles to her father, flinging her arms around him as he reached down to pick her up.

‘My, my, you’ve grown, my khatuna, my darling,’ he chuckled as he kissed her warmly on her flushed cheeks.

‘Did you bring me back lots of presents?’

‘You naughty girl, is this the first thing you ask your father after such a long trip?’ Sayyid Hassan laughed.

‘Well, did you?’ Bibi insisted.

‘Of course I did,’ Sayyid Hassan replied with a smile.

‘And do you have lots of stories to tell me?’

‘Lots and lots. Let’s go inside.’

No one embraced her like that any more, and no one gave her the sorts of gifts her father had once lavished upon her. He had had a good eye, always returning from his travels with lovely objects for the house and beautiful jewels for his wife and daughter.

Sayyid Hassan had taken a deep interest in Bibi’s education. She appeared to have inherited from her mother’s cultivated and bookish family a talent for poetry and learned conversation, and he saw her interest perk up whenever her maternal uncles visited, when she would hang upon their every word. However, there were no girls’ schools in Kazimiya and only a handful in Baghdad, to which few of the local townsfolk ventured.

As a solution to this dilemma, two male teachers were hired to teach Bibi. One was a sheikh who taught her to read the Quran and gave her lessons about Islam; the other taught her literature and poetry. Bibi proved to have a knack for memorizing and reciting verse and songs that she retained all her life. Her language teacher was an Iranian resident of Kazimiya, and he included Persian poems, which were both tender and spiritual, in Bibi’s curriculum.

Bibi was also encouraged to pray, having watched her parents do this every day since her infancy. As a little girl, one of her favourite things was to recite prayers to her father, thus commanding his full attention.

With her mother, things were different. Religiosity was perpetually in the air around Rumia and she seemed obsessed with doing good, a trait that Bibi absorbed unconsciously, even though she felt overwhelmed by her mother’s devotion to God, and became ever more critical of her ascetic ways. Since Rumia was busy with the household chores and managing her staff, she had little time in which to give Bibi the undivided attention she craved.

When Sayyid Hassan died unexpectedly after an attack of pneumonia, Bibi’s life crumbled. She was only eleven years old; she had been inconsolable as she watched him losing his life force breath by breath. Even now, she still had occasional nightmares about the men who had removed his body from the house, and the wailing of the women during his funeral rites.

With his death, life had changed drastically for the lively household; it had shut itself away from the outside world, and Rumia too had seemed to fold into herself. Only Saeeda, Rumia’s young maid and confidante, had been able to lull Bibi to sleep, as she had become terrified of death, which became a lasting obsession for her. Saeeda soothed her, putting her strong arms around her and rocking her, recounting her own tragedy.

Saeeda had lost her family when she had been kidnapped as a little girl in Sudan. She had been sold into slavery several times over before arriving in Mesopotamia at the age of ten, whereupon she had been freed by a renowned Persian sage known as Al-Qotob, the Pivot. She had become a servant in the household of the Pivot, and as his family had close ties with Rumia’s household, she had eventually found her way into Rumia’s employ. Her story gripped Bibi’s imagination and demanded her sympathy, shaking her out of herself. She tried to put herself in Saeeda’s shoes, but the experience was too painful. The two girls, at least, had a common bond: both had suffered a terrible loss at a tender age.

Khadja sent word that she would like to pay Rumia a visit. Although she had approved the choice of Hadi’s bride in theory, she wanted to make sure there were no hidden flaws in the girl. ‘You can never trust anyone else’s eyes,’ she told herself.

Rumia realized what the honour of Khadja’s visit implied: there was interest in Bibi from the Chalabi household. She calculated that the prospective groom must be Abdul Hussein’s oldest son, Hadi, as his other boys were little more than children. She let Bibi know that they were expecting important visitors.

On the given day, Khadja set off on foot with her three daughters in tow. They were accompanied by a servant girl each, as well as by Jamila, the groom’s mother, who walked meekly behind. Jamila dreaded spending any time with her female in-laws, especially during social visits, when she could never get a word in edgeways.

Clutching their abayas, Khadja and her daughters muttered to each other in irritation. Jamila was certain they were talking about her. She was very unsure about this afternoon. Her son was too young to get married, she felt, but she was unable to express her opinion freely, especially to her mother-in-law.

Naturally apprehensive about the visit of the Chalabi women, Bibi prayed that her mother’s quiet manner wouldn’t turn the day into a disaster. But, to her immense relief, Rumia presented the visitors with a feast of a tea, dazzling them with her culinary talents and her natural elegance. She had used her skills in the marketplace to obtain goods that were now in short supply, owing to the military’s requisitioning of fresh produce. Saeeda had also proved invaluable, scouring the main square for ingredients. Back home in her kitchen, Rumia had prepared a variety of sweet pastries and stuffed bread, which she served on the delicate silverware her late husband had bought during his travels many years earlier.

A woman in an abaya walks by the river.

Khadja and her middle daughter, Amira, did most of the talking. Amira took after her mother, and rumour had it that she wore the trousers in her marriage. During the years that her husband Uzri was in prison, time had spun her misery into anger, which threaded its way through everything she said. An eccentric woman, she had a great dislike of the cold, and took to her bed in November each year, rising only in April once the weather had warmed up. During that time she received visitors in bed, had her meals there and continued to run the household from her bedroom. Her husband’s incarceration had compromised even this ritual, and she commiserated with Rumia on the hardships of living without a spouse.