I was born by caesarian section at the Al-Haydari Private Hospital in Baghdad on 25 June 1972.
My mother was aged forty-two and my father sixty-five. They had met in Baghdad two years earlier at an exhibition of art by the children of the primary school where, at the time, my mother was the principal. Neither had been married before. My mother, Kamila Al-Turck, was born in Basra, in the south of Iraq, and was the third of ten children in a poor family—she had five sisters and four brothers. As well as teaching, she had raised six of her younger siblings, assuming the role of parent and breadwinner after their mother and father both died young. Her two older sisters and one of her younger sisters had married and left the family home. The rest relied on her.
Shortly after meeting my father, my mother was demoted from principal to teacher at the school for refusing to join the Ba’ath Party. She was forced to retire altogether when she married my father, because the Ba’athists were opposed to his political and professional affiliations. It was a strange decision; until the day she died, my mother was always a great admirer of Saddam Hussein. She just didn’t want to join the party.
My father’s family was at the other end of the economic, social and political spectrum. He was from one of Iraq’s traditional ruling families. Through him, I am descended from the Prophet Mohammed, and my grandfather was the head of the Sunni faith in large parts of Iraq and the Moslem world. The leadership of that section of the Sunni faith is handed down through the family, but neither my father nor his older brother would accept the role when my grandfather died. Instead, it was passed to a cousin. Also through my father, I’m descended from the most traditional of Iraqi aristocracy, one of the nine families that originally ruled Baghdad.
My father, Abdul Razak Al Muderis, spent his whole life based in Baghdad. He was the second oldest of five children—he had an older brother and three younger sisters—and was an intellectual, a lawyer who rose to become a judge. Over the years, he had established a wealthy lifestyle and extensive contacts among the intelligentsia and artistic elite.
His older brother Mahmood also reached high office; he held a number of ministerial portfolios but is probably better remembered for his literary talents. At the time, he was Iraq’s most revered writer of short stories. He died in his forties of a liver complaint, but has been immortalised through statues of him in Egypt, where he spent his last days.
Another of my father’s siblings was also a high achiever. His youngest sister was the first female university lecturer in Iraq, teaching the Science of Human Society. As far as I’m aware, it’s not a subject that is studied in Western countries, but it covers the development of society from nomadic and feudal roots to contemporary structures. Traditionally my family were high academic achievers, with many pursuing careers in law or medicine.
I was very close to my father and I admired him enormously. It was he who instilled in me the lifelong values of intellectual pursuit, study, hard work and dedication, as well as the merit of questioning conventional wisdom and charting your own course through life.
He was from another era—a dapper man who was very traditional in appearance, in a colonial kind of way. He always wore a suit, collared shirt and tie. I never once saw him casually dressed or in Arabic clothing.
He had the wisdom of a man who’d experienced a life in search of knowledge and understanding. And, as much as his appearance was very traditional, his thinking was extremely radical and independent.
Because of his age, he had finished working by the time I was growing up. Instead, he would spend his days reading. His scholarly pursuit covered almost every academic area you can think of—science, history, politics, philosophy, literature. Most evenings he would be driven to a prestigious club in the city where he would play chess with Iraq’s most accomplished intellectuals and artists, discussing anything and everything.
There was only one person I can remember him refusing to discuss things with—an uncle on my mother’s side who had lived in Saudi Arabia and the United States, but in more recent times had become extremely religious, to the point of fanaticism. He would often attempt to talk to my father—who had a degree in religion and had memorised large parts of The Koran before becoming an agnostic—about the Islamic faith. My father would never take the bait.
‘I really don’t remember anything. You know more than me,’ he would say.
I asked my father why he wouldn’t discuss religion with this uncle. My father told me: ‘His views are upside down. He’s already made up his mind. You can’t educate someone who has such extreme views. He’s been brainwashed and is far too passionate.’
My father always emphasised the power of logic and went to great lengths to drum the same rational approach into me. He insisted that decisions you make that are based on logic are usually right. He applied the philosophy across all facets of life, but especially religion.
I remember him telling me: ‘If you think your action will cause damage to anyone or anything, you shouldn’t do it, regardless of what The Koran says.’
And he openly questioned many of the fundamental teachings of The Koran, like eating pork. He explained to me that this teaching made sense in the old days when refrigeration didn’t exist and a person could become seriously ill if they ate pork that hadn’t been correctly processed and stored, but with modern equipment, ‘it’s not so logical now’. Similarly, he believed that even though smoking was not specifically forbidden religiously, ‘It’s bad for you. So it makes sense not to do it.’
I recall one day at primary school, we were told the story of god instructing Abraham to sacrifice his only son. It’s the same story in The Bible and The Koran. As a kid, I was puzzled by the tale and asked my father about it.
He was very dismissive. ‘It’s stupid,’ he said. ‘Can you imagine going to sleep, having a nightmare where god tells you to kill your son and you go ahead and do it? What makes you think this is an instruction from god rather than just a straightforward nightmare? The man must have been delusional or a psychopath!’
No doubt it was his view of the world that led me to also become an agnostic.
As an example of how open-minded my father was, his best friend was the head of the synagogue in Baghdad. Not the most popular person in a state that is strongly against the existence of Israel!
Through that friendship in particular, my father developed a close interest in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. He blamed the turn of events largely on the British colonialists. Everywhere the British went, they left disaster, he believed. In Palestine, for example, the various ethnic groups had lived in some kind of harmony until the British arrived. ‘Now look at it!’ he would say with exasperation.
As well as being an intellectual and free thinker, my father was a chess champion, renowned for playing against ten others at the same time as he taught them the finer points of the game. Of course, he introduced me to chess, which was to be a regular comfort in moments of considerable stress in later years. Sometimes, when I was a young boy, he would take me to the club with him. I found it fascinating to watch these academic adults talk and debate all aspects of life over the chessboard.
In line with his liberal views, I don’t remember my father ever smacking me. I feared him greatly, but out of respect, not terror. My father was my hero and one of my deepest regrets is that I didn’t have enough time with him, because he was already getting on in years when I was born.
The Al Muderis family’s political and social power had been very much tied to the establishment, so its influence declined with the overthrow of the monarchy, the emergence of the republic and particularly the rise of the Ba’ath Party and Saddam from the late 1960s.
All the same, it was a privileged family and we were financially comfortable.
My mother’s approach to life, probably because of the family demands placed on her from an early age, was completely different. Where my father was considered, measured, calm and softly spoken, she was passionate and opinionated. She was always busy and was more interested in family and friends than academic pursuits. Our house was a meeting place for her relatives and acquaintances. One of her brothers, an artist and sculptor, lived with us most of the time, while her other siblings who lived in Baghdad would visit almost every day and stay for a meal.
My mother was much more a doer than a talker, which came in handy in later years. As time went by, she increasingly managed our assets—particularly a shop and office complex in downtown Baghdad that provided most of our income by that stage.
My father wasn’t a businessman and had largely gone along with the guy who was managing the building for us. It turned out he was sub-leasing space and taking the rent for himself rather than passing it on to us. My father clearly thought the whole thing was too much of a headache to address directly, but my mother wasn’t having a bar of it and took over the building management role herself.
My mother was also a much more traditional Moslem than my father. She would tell me: ‘You’re a Moslem, you shouldn’t drink and you shouldn’t smoke.’
I was born at a time of gathering turmoil. Just twenty-four days earlier, the oil fields of Iraq had been nationalised in the midst of the worldwide oil crisis, significantly antagonising the Western nations which were so heavily dependent on supplies from the Middle East.
My father went very much against the tide of public opinion in his condemnation of the move. While Iraqis were celebrating the demonstration of independence represented by the nationalisation, my father was telling my mother: ‘This is a disaster. We need to find another country!’
He believed Iraq couldn’t properly manage the oil industry on its own and that most of the wealth would be stolen by individuals. Which is exactly what happened. My father felt Iraq needed the expertise of the Western companies to keep things on an even keel. He was of the view that if Western companies had retained a 5 per cent share, everything would have run smoothly and everyone would have prospered.
While I was the only child of my parents’ marriage, there were four of us in the family unit during my early years. Most of the time, my cousin Hamid lived with us. His father had died before Hamid was born and his mother, Amina, my mother’s oldest sister, had died in labour. Hamid was sixteen years older than me, but we were like brothers and I looked up to him, as younger siblings do.
My cousin was very active, adventurous and mischievous, which is always impressive to someone who’s much younger. Hamid would take me down to the Tigris River and we’d go swimming, even though it was fast-flowing in places. He did a lot of boxing training and was pretty fit, but he never actually fought a bout.
His rebellious nature did pitch him into trouble along the way. He lost his licence for drink driving after he had an accident on his motorbike with his girlfriend on the back. She broke her wrist in the accident. That didn’t go down terribly well with his girlfriend or, more importantly, her family. Actually, her family were livid and determined to wreak some revenge—which meant Hamid had to go into hiding and lie low for a couple of weeks until the heat died down. He didn’t get a warm welcome when he arrived home either.
Hamid worked with my mother’s brother, the sculptor, Ismail Fattah Al-Turk. He was a technician and would make the casts for the bronze sculptures my uncle was producing. My cousin lived with us until 1978, when I was six years old. At the age of twenty-two, he decided it was time to branch out, so he went to the United States looking for a better life. He’s still there, living in New York and working as a businessman, trading goods, importing and exporting.
Baghdad was a very safe city in those days and remained that way until the start of the war with Iran in 1980. The Iraqi capital is a city of seven million people and plenty of contrasts, split down the middle by the Tigris River, which winds through the city, from north to south, like a snake.
The old, historic centre is full of narrow streets and buildings that are two, three or four storeys tall, a mix of commercial and residential accommodation. Many of the widespread older structures are rundown and clearly in need of repair or restoration. The old city is slightly chaotic, teeming with people, and a nightmare for traffic. Some of the mosques and churches date back hundreds of years. In those days the city was protected by walls, and the ruins of some of those old structures are still in place.
The modern central business district, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, is like a commercial centre in any developed nation—clusters of newer, concrete and glass high-rise commercial buildings, unit blocks and hotels, most of them built in the 1970s and ’80s. Surrounding them are older low-rise areas that aren’t far short of slums. It’s a busy and bustling but organised city centre. Saddam built a new road system for the city with highways and major connecting arterials to improve the traffic flow.
The banks of the Tigris are lined with restaurants, bars and clubs. It’s a very social part of the city—and going out at night is enormously popular because it’s the cooler time of day in what is a hot climate. The sun is very strong in Iraq and the summers long. In line with the climate, the people of Baghdad can demonstrate a fairly hot temperament. They are very proud and can be quite aggressive.
Outside the centre, most of the suburbs are low rise, with larger, mainly two-storey homes and wide areas set aside for citrus and palm trees. To the north-east of the city centre is the Army Canal, an open waterway built to take the city’s sewage. On the other side is Sadr City, which has always been a lower socio-economic area, with small homes crowded together. It’s renowned as a hotspot of trouble. You could always tell if there was a problem in Sadr City—the army would simply close the bridges and move in to corner the perceived trouble-makers.
Baghdad is largely laid out in a grid system, although there is a little more variation in Wazeria, one of the city’s wealthiest areas, where we lived when I was a small child. Wazeria is a neighbourhood of peaceful tree-lined streets on the eastern banks of the Tigris in the north of Baghdad.
I remember little of our first house, although I know it was opposite the North Gate Cemetery, which served as the British cemetery in Baghdad. I do recall that as a child I would go for walks along the banks of the Tigris with my mother and father, taking in the parks, playgrounds and cafés along the way. There was little I could have wished for that I didn’t already have.
We moved when I was about four into a large, two-storey home with a big garden in a newer, nearby suburb called Al Mustansiria. My mother loved flowers, so there were extensive garden beds filled with fragrant plants during spring and summer. Much of the rest of the garden was covered with fruit trees—lemons, oranges, four or five date palms, a couple of grapefruit trees.
Iraqi houses tend to be constructed to a similar design. They’re usually two-storey, rectangular structures with flat roofs. They’re built with clay bricks but some are finished with the bare brickwork while others are rendered on the outside and painted, usually white or beige. Inside the rooms tend to be about 4 by 5 metres. Usually there’s a covered area outside to protect cars from the powerful sun. It’s typical for a house to be surrounded by a garden as well as a high wall or fence for privacy.
Our house met all these measures. It included a large living area, a guest area, a kitchen and three bedrooms on the ground floor. Another two bedrooms were upstairs. And there was a garage large enough to accommodate five cars. My father’s favourite vehicle was a Volvo, while, for a long time, my mother used to drive an MG sports car. She eventually gave it up and switched to a Volkswagen Beetle. Quite a change of direction—from the sporty to the subdued. Unlike my mother, my father never drove himself. We employed a regular driver in addition to a nanny and a housekeeper.
The rest of the household was made up of at least one cat and a dog. The cats were always kept indoors, because, believe it or not, the sun outside was too hot for them. The dogs, on the other hand, were confined to the garden where they kept guard against trespassers.
When I was a young lad, every day during the school year my father would take me, in the chauffeur-driven car, to the First of June Primary School—it was named for the date that commemorated the nationalisation of the Iraqi oil fields. We’d leave home about seven each morning to start lessons at eight. School finished at two in the afternoon. Children had to go to school six days a week—Saturday through Thursday, with the Moslem holy day on Friday as a day off. I remember a lot of homework so, while school was finished by early afternoon, there was plenty of studying to keep me occupied at home.
I went through all my school years, from the start of kindergarten to the end of high school, with two particularly close friends, Manaf and Ayser.
Manaf ’s father was number two in the police force in Baghdad and his mother was a teacher at our primary school. Manaf was Sunni, tall and slim, not terribly academic and hopeless at sport. But a good bloke. I think he lives in Sweden these days.
Ayser’s father owned a cloth factory and his mother was a lecturer. They were the complete opposite of my parents—strict and deeply religious Shi’ites. The front door of their home was locked at six o’clock every night, and woe betide Ayser if he wasn’t home by then. There was never any question of him drinking or smoking—well, in his parents’ minds anyway. Ayser, however, was as rebellious as most young people and he drank and smoked—he just made sure he wasn’t caught! As far as I know, Ayser is still in Baghdad.
My family was also fortunate enough to spend a number of months each year travelling overseas. In winter we would stay in Baghdad, but in summer the world was our oyster. My father would take us off to the United States or Europe—the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the old Soviet Union, Greece, Turkey, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and what were then Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
I recollect bits and pieces from most of the places we visited. We would stay in comfortable hotels and become involved in all the traditional tourist activities. Italy left a particular mark on me, because I recall it as being very dangerous, especially crossing the road in Rome. Athens lingers in the memory as well—partly because of The Acropolis, but mostly because, as a youngster, I was struck by what a dirty city it was.
One incident in Bulgaria especially stays with me. We were in the resort town of Varna on the Black Sea. I went shopping with my mother and we came back to find my father in the shopping plaza, surrounded by women who were obviously prostitutes trying to tap into the needs of a wealthy older man. It was hilarious, because it was the exact antithesis of my father. He was amused and, I guess, a little flattered, but there is absolutely no way he would have been interested in a Bulgarian prostitute and I recall him explaining to them that he was far too old to be worried about anything like that. Even in that situation, he was unerringly polite.
We went to the United States six or seven times, including a number of trips to New York and also to what I considered horrible cities like Detroit and Cleveland, where we visited relatives. Detroit struck me as being industrial and dirty, while Cleveland was dull because my cousin there was an odd character and would actively discourage us from venturing far from his home. We were in the United States on 22 September 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran.
My father was decisive in his response and said we had to go straight back to Baghdad. He obviously sensed the magnitude of what was to unfold over the next eight years—and looking back, he was right. Quite simply, it was the beginning of the end for the way of life we had known. As it was for many Iraqis, for that matter.
Our family flew out of the United States on the first available plane, bound for a brief stopover in Athens before heading to the Iraqi capital. All was going to plan until we were on the final leg from Athens. In mid-flight, there was an announcement over the loudspeaker system that Baghdad Airport had been bombed and then closed. That meant a hurried—and rather nerve-wracking—change of plans as we were diverted to Amman in Jordan.
All flights into Baghdad had been cancelled. So, while we were much closer to home than we had been in New York or Athens, we still didn’t have any direct air access. This meant an uncomfortable night at the ramshackle Amman Airport, attempting to sleep on drooping plastic chairs. From there, we had to make arrangements to take a bus back to our home city.
Waiting around for a bus was particularly tedious—but things got worse when it actually arrived. The bus was more like a truck. We were bundled aboard and sat on bench seats for the tortuous overnight drive on the rugged roads to Baghdad. It was less than a week since the start of the war with Iran so the lights on all vehicles had to be dimmed. Drivers were ordered to paint the top of the headlights blue so they couldn’t be seen from the military aircraft that may have been flying above.
The first night back at home should have been an opportunity to rest and recover from the journey. But it turned out to be nothing of the sort. Baghdad was being bombed and I had no sooner gone to bed than the air-raid siren sounded.
The next day, the Iraqi media reported that seventy Iranian aircraft had been shot down. But, as always, the first casualty of war is the truth and you have to wonder what the real tally was. Nevertheless, that offers some idea of the intensity of the bombing at that stage of the conflict. The air raids continued like that for the first couple of weeks of the war, but gradually, over time, they slowly diminished and petered out.
Quite clearly, though, the comfort of my early years had come to a sudden and, from my seven-year-old point of view at least, unexpected end. The turmoil had begun.