Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (32 page)

I said, “Wouldn’t members of the national and regional commands oppose this accession to power after the union with Syria? I’ve heard some rumors about there being two currents and two schools of thought in the party about Syria, and Saddam specifically.”

He said, “All the more reason to expedite announcing his accession to power.”

I said, “I noticed that the decorations in the streets in preparation for celebrating the 17th of July are unusual this year. I even
asked Hatim about celebrations of previous years and he said they seemed much more elaborate this year. He said the workers expect an announcement of something big, maybe al-Bakr’s stepping down and Saddam replacing him. When Hatim says that, it means that the rumor has reached the street or that it’s a trial balloon.”

Hilmi said, “Wow! We are now analyzing trial balloons!”

I said, “I learned about trial balloons in a practical way and paid attention to it since the movie
Ascending to the Abyss
. Do you remember it?”

He said, “Of course. Tomorrow will come soon enough and I remember how people created a surprise for the government, which suddenly realized that they and the people were not on the same page at the moment Abla, who collaborated with the Jews, was arrested. The people applauded her arrest wildly, thus expressing their opinion frankly about normalization and Sadat’s going to Jerusalem.”

Saddam took over. Machine guns expressed joy by shooting the sky over Baghdad. I’ve never in my life seen more mass hysteria. I began asking myself, “Could it be that the party orchestrated all of it?” But, no. I believe it is Saddam’s charisma that makes people throw themselves under the wheels of his car and welcome him with all these fervid chants all over Iraq. Don’t you remember, Nora, what you heard after the 1967 setback in Egypt that the crowds that were awaiting Abdel Nasser’s motorcades were arranged in return for five pounds and a bottle of milk per person? This is the talk of biased people. Egyptians adored Gamal Abdel Nasser, despite all the people on the right, and his massive funeral is the best proof of that. I wonder what the left thinks. What does the Iraqi Communist Party think of what is happening? But where is the party? Doesn’t it have to be there to have opinions? Most of the members have been put on trial or executed or emigrated. Nothing can stand against Saddam Hussein’s power. That was already a fact when he was vice president. Now that he is president what will happen? I remembered that Anhar was a member of the Iraqi Communist Party and I thanked God that she had not been arrested and that she had not
fled Iraq. I love her and I love working with her. We understand each other easily, but understanding Hilmi Amin is hampered by the barrier between a boss and an underling, no matter how great the friendship. How about the age difference, Nora?

We received news that the celebrations that have disturbed the seven heavens over Baghdad did not end well and that a great catastrophe was about to be announced. We were told that that announcement would be made on July 18 and 19, one day after Saddam took power.

All Iraqi newspapers had one banner headline:

The Conspiracy: A Failed Attempt at Toppling the Regime

The news gave details about uncovering treason inside the Iraqi Ba‘th Party and a secret organization composed of some members of the regional command in Iraq in collaboration with some members of the command council of the party in Syria, with the aim of toppling the regime in Iraq and seizing power. The state, we were told, has come into possession of the names of the traitors who had taken part in the organization at all levels. Some names were revealed. At the top of the list was Adnan Hamdani, minister of planning, a member of the national and regional commands, the closest person to President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, and one of those most enthusiastic supporters of union with Syria. Also named were Ghanim Abd al-Jalil, a member of the regional front, Muhammad Ayish, president of the Federation of Labor Unions and secretary general of the Labor Bureau of the party, Muhammad Mahjub, minister of education, and a long list of other high-ranking leaders.

Baghdad was dumbfounded. I didn’t find anyone in the street who had a comment on what happened. Ordinary Iraqis were terribly afraid but silent, while Ba‘thists parroted what Baghdad Radio was saying, namely that the details would follow shortly when the trials began.

Saddam Hussein, president of the Iraqi Republic, announced that the trial would be public and that retribution would be meted out by the peers of the accused at every party level.

We moved quickly, following up on events between the Ministry of Information and the Iraqi News Agency. Our work had usually been confined to features with a certain amount of political analysis from time to time, usually written by Hilmi Amin and with great sensitivity. I watched Ustaz Amin’s dilemma, now that the bureau had become a private press bureau. I would hear his real daily analysis of what was happening around us and of the domestic and international conflicts, and what he, as a member of an Egyptian political group, thought about the “internal Iraqi affairs” as he put it. I also watched Anhar, sad and afraid, and her loss of appetite and weight. I attributed that to the wave of arrests of communists but also to her relationship with Hilmi Amin. I tried to comfort her and tell her to take care of herself. Her eyes would well up with tears and she would say, “God is generous.”

Tomorrow would be an official holiday because of the anticipated high temperature. We got secret details from some of the families of those accused of treason: Ghanim Abd al-Jalil’s wife had a severe nervous breakdown and hysteria and was taken to the Medical City Hospital and the accused leaders’ families were deported and their properties confiscated. Hatim alerted me to read clan relationships behind the names and how the present crisis would result in a big problem in the future because the clans of those leaders were among Iraq’s largest and most influential. I asked him, “Is a clan stronger than the state with a new ruler at the helm?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I don’t think so. Iraq is changing,” I said.

The weather forecast said the temperature would reach a high of fifty-two degrees Celsius and warned against staying out in the sun. I said, “Oh God! Do we need this?”

Hatim said, “The air cooler is on.”

Machine guns kept firing live ammunition at the sky and the television kept broadcasting songs celebrating victory against enemies of the country with refrains like “Hooray for the steadfast Ba‘th, hooray.” People stayed confined to their homes because of the heat,
turning on air conditioners and coolers at the same time, which resulted in power cuts, starting early in the morning. The effect was a cheerless atmosphere, in spite of all the songs they broadcast. We were transfixed in front of the television, following events.

Hatim said, “What’s this? How?”

The streets of the capital were filled with crowds carrying banners. Ba‘th Party members stood on both sides of the street. Armored cars of the army and police appeared together moving in a large procession, followed by flatbed trucks on which red sacks were stacked. I asked Hatim, “Are these stones? Where are the accused?”

The trucks kept coming, followed by tanks and heavily armored cars and they all entered a structure that resembled a stadium. They stood in one line in their dark khaki color with brown spots. Then the engine roars stopped all at once as a large crowd wearing identical uniforms shouted various slogans. They did not announce the name of the building so we tried to guess what it was and we ended up assuming that it was the Baghdad Stadium. A truck left the line and moved forward, then came to a stop. The driver got off to open the tailgate of the truck and a number of soldiers lining the two sides of the road climbed into the truck and pushed the red sacks, whose upper ends were tied, with clubs. The sacks moved, fell back, then tried to stand up straight. We both screamed, “The detainees are in the sacks!”

The soldiers pushed them forward and they moved without seeing the edge of the tailgate and they fell down in a pile on the ground. They tried to stand up but fell down again. The soldiers fell upon them with their clubs. The detainees in the sacks kept jumping as the clubs rained down on them. One of them collapsed; a soldier hit him. He got up staggering and bumped into one of his fellow detainees. They both fell to the ground.

The announcer shouted, “Traitors of the homeland: enemies of the country! Retribution, Baghdad: treachery of the Syrian Ba‘th! You have eaten and drunk in this country, from its bounty, so why the vileness and the treason?”

The sacks were made to stand up. One of the soldiers undid the ropes that tied them together. Some of the accused managed to free their heads from the sacks somehow. Then the soldiers opened the sacks one after another and tied the tops again under the neck to reveal the head clearly. The cameras focused on the frowning faces, the disheveled black hair and bloodshot eyes and the contusions and the bruises that covered the faces. One man stepped forward to read out the names of the accused, members of the National Committee, and then asked the other members of the committee to step forward and execute their colleagues. They tied the accused to poles. Some of them were kept blindfolded, their faces covered by big bags. (We found out the following day that those whose eyes had been gouged wore special bags on their heads to conceal their eyes.) We heard shots and the blood-soaked sacks fell to the ground amid the crowd’s shouts for revenge. There was a power outage. Sweat poured out of our bodies and the heat frayed our nerves. The horrific scene had dealt us a heavy blow. We put towels on our thighs to dry the sweat that was flowing like rain. We turned on the battery-operated radio.

“Shouldn’t I have been on the scene?”

“Everybody is on the screen right now in front of your eyes. What more do you want?”

“At least I should have been in the midst of the people to hear what they have to say directly.”

“No one will be able to tell you anything other than what you’re hearing here. The ones who will tell you the truth are your own friends and you’ve heard enough from them the last few days.”

His arm reached out to hold me and he said, “I cannot do without you, Umm Yasir. I have every right to protect my beloved. Thank God you did not go out. The center of Baghdad will be hell on earth.”

The power came back and with it television transmission. The scene did not change much. Another party level was on trial. This time it was members of the regional command. The positions of the
accused were recited, as were the roles they had played in the conspiracy to overthrow the government. They carried the sacks to the poles and members of the same level in the party acted as the firing squads. Executions followed one another in quick succession. The party ranks kept getting lower and the names that filled Baghdad with pride and arrogance fell and their glow dried out in blotches of disgrace. Hatim drew my attention to the complex network connecting the party and the state. He said, “Notice that each party official is also responsible for one of the major institutions, especially in the more sensitive departments: security, planning, industry, and information.”

I looked at Hatim as if with new eyes. His knowledge of Iraqi society was increasing every day, perhaps more than mine even though I was the journalist. It was all thanks to his daily contact with the workers and his getting close to their personal and family life. Iraqi engineers and workers did not hide their standing in the party or the name of their clans. He was able to see clearly the secret network of relations in the factory. And because he was an outsider, he understood the linkages but insisted on applying a set of rules and administrative orders equally to everybody, in order to avoid certain clashes. Therefore his colleagues loved and trusted him. They invited him several times to join the Ba‘th Party, dangling before his eyes a high post in the party, one of whose goals was Arab unity. He told them simply, “I am Egyptian, performing a specific job, and I will not join the party.” They finally accepted his point of view and did not pressure him. But at least they had given him the opportunity to see the reality of their world.

It was now two o’clock in the afternoon. The heat was at its peak: fifty-two degrees Celsius in the shade but it felt as if it were rising. Electrical power followed its own erratic system: we assumed that they cut it off from certain areas and restored it to other areas on a rotational basis to reduce pressure on the grid. That was the only logic in this mad scene that flew in the face of logic. Radio and television were still listing the names of the accused and broadcasting military marches and shouts. Cameras and microphones kept
moving from street shots among the people and the trial in the stadium. Hatim sneaked to the kitchen to place skewers on the grill. He came back, carrying a bottle of juice for me. I said, “Do you think I can swallow anything?”

He said, “It is four o’clock now and soon you’ll be very hungry.”

I had been moving since the early morning between the couch and the floor whose rug I had removed to feel cool, but it was no use. I gathered every vessel I could and filled it with water and placed the filled containers throughout the room. I turned on the ceiling fans, so that when the power came back on it created other forms of cooling to help the air cooler that was overworked. Every hour or so we moved between the shower and the living room. We had on light cotton clothes. And even as we moved we kept our ears and eyes whenever possible glued to the sources of the news. The scene of our coming out wet from the bathroom turned into a comic scene as we noticed the disappearance of the drops of water as soon as they made it to the very hot floor. We looked like sea creatures from the North Pole panting on a rocky island below the equator.

At five o’clock I brought the food in front of the television. I could only chew a few small bites. We were content to eat some yogurt. I took the rest of the food back to the kitchen. I wanted to take a short nap. The charges were now being leveled at lower-level party youths. They were lined up in their sacks and young members of the party stepped forward and opened fire with their automatic machine guns, then the sacks fell down in their pools of blood. I said in the Iraqi dialect, “What is that? What’s that?”