Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq (33 page)

Trying to get me out of that mood, Hatim said, “Now you’re speaking Iraqi? What else are you hiding up your sleeve?”

My crying got louder. He got up to help me come back up on the couch. I told him, “Get me out of here! Get me out! I don’t want to live in this cruel city that kills its sons this way. Can you imagine the lives of these young men who executed their colleagues? How will they live after this experience? The dead are dead, but those who will live have been totally destroyed.”

He held me tight, wrapping his arm around my body while I tried to get away. I said, “Why this way? Political coups happen everywhere in the world. Trials, fair or unfair, are held and prisons all over the world are packed with political prisoners, but why this brutality? I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to be a journalist, or have anything to do with public affairs. I don’t want literature or art. I want to be a little donkey, a cow, or a bird. I don’t want to be involved to this extent in all human grief.”

“Nora, please snap out of it. Please, my darling.”

“Where are the mothers? Where are the wives? The children, Hatim, where?”

“They bear the consequences of their actions. What are you protesting, Nora?”

“Not in this savage way. These are one-third of the command. This means that there was considerable support for this view.”

“Imagine what would have happened if that coup were successful: they would have traded places, the killer and the killed.”

“Why is it done in the street, Hatim? I will never understand Iraq. I will never understand it even though I love Iraq very much. I will not understand.”

“What has this to do with Iraq? The people have nothing to do with it. It’s a struggle for power.”

“Every people deserves its leader. Isn’t that what we’ve believed all our lives?”

“So, it’s an attempt to give the people a chance to choose their leader. Revolutions have victims.”

He hugged me hard. I understood his logic and the way he thinks. He can reach conclusions easily and once he does, the case is closed, while I dwell on all the details. When he finds me trapped in perplexity, he hugs me or leaves me by myself for hours to calm down while I contemplate the sky over Baghdad, then he closes the door and leaves. Then he invites me for a stroll in Zawra Park, where we walk hand in hand and then dine out and come back home after I get over my bad mood and dark thoughts.

Actually, he could never get me out of my bad moods unless I myself had reached some degree of equanimity. And that could come from an unexpected source: meeting somebody unknown to me who would remind me of Egypt, or an old girlfriend of mine, or even a neighbor coming by. Hatim would be surprised that I had come out to the world again and turned the page. But today I wanted to close my eyes forever and erase from my memory all that I had seen by any means possible so that I could live in this country and adjust to the place and go back to work.

I went in the morning to the office, since staying at home alone after Hatim had gone to work would have driven me crazy. When Hilmi Amin opened the door my tears came down like a torrential rain. I turned into a little, inconsolable girl. He gave me a big hug.

I said, “Did you see what happened?”

He said, “Yes. The tape was played in all the party branches, in addition to television. In other words: viewing was mandatory.”

I said, “You say ‘tape.’ Was it recorded?”

He said, “Of course. Do you imagine they would leave an event like that to chance? It had already been done and recorded and released only after control over all Iraq had been achieved.”

I said, “Do you think Saddam’s rise to power was engineered to happen at this time in particular or was it a matter of who is faster, who would get there first to beat the other one?”

He said, “Nothing is known for sure so far, but what is certain is that the side that accused the other of selling Iraq out to Syria has triumphed. As we concluded in our previous analysis, Saddam would not accept to be the third man in the Iraqi–Syrian Ba‘th Party hierarchy.”

I said, “Why weren’t Syrian–Iraqi relations discussed openly, so everyone could come to a final agreement, instead of the coup attempt and accusations of treason?”

He said, “All the reasons that the accused gave during the trial for having a different point of view from that of the party were unacceptable, since the party, as far as I’ve learned, allows every issue,
no matter how minor, to be discussed within the party committees. Therefore the reason it was considered treasonous was because it was not discussed within the committees of the party, but was secretly arranged with the Syrian side.”

I said, “Who knows? These are countries of many coups, whether here or in Syria.”

He said, “You are right. Who knows where anyone in power today will be tomorrow?”

He went on to say, “I don’t think, Nora, that we will see any Syrian–Iraqi cooperation, at least in our present job.”

The Iraqi–Syrian Ba‘th Party file was closed. The borders were closed on both sides. Once again our activity was confined to Iraq alone.

August 1977

Jerusalem

Hatim called out in alarm, “Nora! Nora! Where are you?”

“On the roof. What’s wrong?”

“What are you doing on the roof now? Come down, quick.”

I said as I came down, somewhat worried, “I was returning the bedding to the storeroom. It’s getting cooler, thank God. Why are you so tense?”

“Sadat announced in the People’s Assembly that he was ready to go to Jerusalem.”

“Oh my God! What a catastrophe! Did Hilmi Amin call?”

“It came in the news. They called the visit ‘treason.’”

I picked up the phone and kept trying to call Ramsis Hotel, angrily. I never heard of a press bureau without a telephone.

Hatim said, “Wait till the morning.”

I said, “Who knows what the consequences will be in the morning?”

We heard knocks on the door. Shukry and Sabah came in asking, in alarm, about the repercussions of this bizarre announcement for Egyptians in Iraq.

Hatim said, “Nobody knows. We know exactly the same as you so far.”

The telephone didn’t stop ringing. All the Egyptians we knew called. They were worried that the visit would lead to their expulsion from Iraq. Within hours the Iraqi street reached a boiling point after the media roused people with zealous rhetoric. I kept moving among Iraqis and Egyptians and went to several police stations. We ran all over following the reaction to the events and the news. The Egyptian embassy was not closed. We wrote reports describing reactions on the popular as well as the governmental level. On our way back from the Ministry of Information, we heard a group of young Iraqis commenting on a pregnant Egyptian woman as she crossed the street, saying, “A she-donkey which wants to have a donkey!”

Hilmi Amin said to them, “Shame on you! Men don’t attack a woman for any reason!”

One of them said, “Go back to your country, you lackeys of Israel.”

Hilmi Amin said, “This kind of talk is pointless. The Egyptian people have paid the price with thousands of young men to defend Palestine. Why don’t you go to school, instead of standing idly on street corners.”

I took him by the hand and we crossed the street, saying, “Don’t get mad at them. They are just being enthusiastic. I’ve never seen you so irritated. When I passed these young men, they would repeat refrains from Egyptian songs.”

He laughed, saying, “They were flirting with you?”

I said, “Yes and they’d say ‘Your love has set me on fire,’ and many other expressions like that. This is what will last. As for talk of treason and the like, this is the enthusiastic reaction to what they hear and see on radio and television all day long.”

Two days later we went to al-Khalsa village to see how the Egyptian peasants were doing. I was quite afraid that the experiment would collapse. People received us with their usual warm welcome. A few minutes into our visit, Engineer Mahdi, director of the project, got out of his car. Before shaking his hand I asked him, “Any news?”

He said calmly, “Everything is under control. A petty-minded announcer came to the village and enthusiastically asked the peasants to condemn the visit and to badmouth Sadat. I kicked him out at once. He said, ‘This is party work.’ I said, ‘I am responsible.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell the higher-ups.’ I said, ‘Go ahead, tell them.’ And of course he couldn’t do anything and left angrily and no one else will come. My responsibility is to protect the village against passing whims. This is not a propaganda project; it’s an experiment that requires care and stability, not politics and its fickle turns.”

Hilmi said, “You are right,” and he continued, “What do the peasants have to do with Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem?”

Hilmi said, “No one asked their opinion whether he should go or not!”

I said, “And nobody has asked them before making any decision.”

I looked at Engineer Mahdi for a long time. This man did not know how much I loved him at that moment and how I considered him a sincere friend, even though I knew nothing about him as a person. I just followed his work and I saw that he loved the peasants and knew every inch of this reclaimed land. He gauged the abilities of every peasant and gave to each from his rich experience to help them achieve the highest productivity of their land. He kept track of their needs and adjusted his planning accordingly, and persuaded upper management levels to give the peasants additional support. He studied why certain families succeeded in staying and settling down and why others failed, so he helped them adjust with the help of an excellent team in the Agricultural Unit. It was through his efforts that, after getting cows and chickens, they also got apiaries. And when they began to reap the fruits of their labor, he and the Unit showed them how to get loans to buy trucks to move their crops to the market and to serve neighboring villages also. The village grew and began to take root in the new land and to have its own entity and distinct character.

I realized as Engineer Mahdi was talking to us about Sadat’s problem that only wise, thinking people were capable of changing society. A revolutionary comes first with his courage and rush, then
he needs support from calmer people. I wanted to ask him whether he was a Ba‘thist or not, but I wasn’t sure I should: What did it matter whether he was within the party or outside? What mattered was that he was making it possible for the project to succeed.

The Iraqi government issued a decree making it punishable by a six-month jail sentence for anyone to insult any Egyptian because of Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem. The resolution came about to calm Egyptians’ anxiety about staying in the country and silenced those tongues that had treated Egyptian workers, in particular, insolently. For the first time in many days, Baghdad went to bed quietly, but the repercussions of the events were far from simple or over. There was a growing desire among Ba‘thist intellectuals to repudiate Egypt. Iraqi unions called for relocating Arab unions from Egypt to Iraq.

We anxiously followed what was happening in Egypt. Egyptian journalists outside Egypt decided to hold a meeting in Paris to discuss the situation. Hilmi Amin made his preparations to travel. We went without prior arrangement to the Journalists’ Union to renew our memberships. We met some colleagues who started talking to us about the treasonous act and its impact on the region. They said we had to move the Union of Arab Journalists from Cairo to Baghdad.

Hilmi Amin said, “The Egyptian Journalists’ Union is now engaged in a struggle against Sadat, and instead of supporting it, you want to kill it? Isn’t that strange?”

Angry shouts rose, “Yes, we have to move the Union!”

Hilmi Amin said, “The presence of the Union of Arab Journalists in Egypt would strengthen the position of the Egyptian Union which is expecting to be targeted and its members and journalists to be arrested, because of their opinions.”

One of those present said, “We shouldn’t let Arab unions stay in a country that betrays the cause.”

Hilmi said, “The Doctors’ Union is struggling against Sadat and the same goes for the Lawyers’ Union. They are independent unions whose members are subjected to brutal repression by the head of the state, and you know these matters in detail, just as I do.”

Someone said, “How can the Arab Union issue statements from Cairo condemning Sadat’s treason? It must be moved to Baghdad.”

Hilmi said, “Please don’t just pay lip service to patriotism. Let’s admit the real motivation here, which is opportunism, pure and simple. You want to grab what the Egyptians have achieved in their long struggle and their pioneering work.”

“This is not true. We must teach Sadat a lesson he cannot forget. We must boycott Egypt and impoverish it so it would revolt against him and against his treason.”

Hilmi Amin choked as he said, “The idea of impoverishing Egypt and so on is so naive. It won’t happen.”

I said, “A revolution cannot be manufactured outside the country.”

“We should expel Egyptian workers from all Arab countries, so they’ll rise up and kill him.”

Another said, “Kill whom? The Egyptians didn’t do anything. We are the ones who will pay the price for the treason.”

Hilmi said, “This is just empty talk. You won’t pay anything until Israeli soldiers arrive on the banks of the Tigris.”

Two journalists said, “Excuse me, the chairman is waiting for you.”

The chairman met us at the door of his office and ordered tea for us. Then he asked us about who would attend the Paris meeting.

Hilmi Amin said, “Only those members of the Journalists’ Union in exile.”

The chairman said, “Some Egyptian journalists here in Iraq, like Nora Suleiman, Ahmad Ezzedin, Hala El Badry, and others want to attend and they are members of the Union of Arab Journalists and they are practicing the profession, so why shouldn’t they attend?”

Hilmi Amin said, “If we open this door we will face many problems. This is a professional meeting to be attended by professionals who are members of a specific union. It should be conducted in accordance with rules that would preserve its legitimacy so that their decisions might be binding on their union.”