The summer that thieves violated the Chuqor community, a deep friendship developed between Hameed Nylon, Abdallah Ali, and Gulbahar’s husband, Faruq Shamil, who worked in the municipality of Kirkuk’s print shop located on Queen Aliya Street. In the course of time, a young Turkmen with a delicate, calm face—Najat Salim—joined their group. He was studying in the vocational training program sponsored by the Iraq Petroleum Company in New Kirkuk. Usually they met in the neighborhood or went to a nearby coffee shop to play backgammon or dominoes. Although their meetings seemed innocent to most people in the Chuqor community, where people thought of themselves as each others’ friends even without any declaration of friendship, the matter was much more than that this time. A destiny stronger than friendship united these men, for they had begun to savor new ideas that were not common knowledge among most residents of the Chuqor neighborhood. They would curse the English, mock them, and dub them imperialists who exploited their workers. The son of Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri—Fathallah—who owned a bottling plant for Namlet, laughed when talking with Hameed Nylon: “I can barely understand you, Hameed. Why curse the English? Don’t you know they benefit this city? How can you say they exploit their workers when the oil company pays a worker many times more than he could earn working for the state?”
As a matter of fact, the position adopted in discussions by Hameed Nylon and the others was weak, and they had trouble convincing people, for even bakers, butchers, and chauffeurs acknowledged the benefits the English bestowed on the city and envied the well-off employees of the oil company. Moreover, the company compensated employees it forced to retire on account of age with hundreds of dinars and a gold medal for those who had served a long time. This English compassion had made an impression on people’s hearts. Even Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri himself once proclaimed in a Friday sermon that the English were more compassionate than many Muslims. In response to this, Hameed Nylon and his friends spread a rumor that Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri received each month a fat envelope filled with cash from the English, and women began to speak contemptuously of the mullah, asserting that he drank arak, too, normally concealing the glass under his turban. The workers earned their money by the sweat of their brows, the mullah by propaganda for the English. The image of Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri became so tarnished in the community that many people boycotted his mosque and frequented a nearby one, which had a zealous young imam, who called for war against the Jews in Palestine and the defense of Jerusalem. Thus Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri felt compelled to deliver a fiery sermon in which he cursed the English, for no reason at all, and announced a jihad against them throughout the Islamic world. The following morning, slogans scrawled in red paint appeared on the walls: “Down with English Imperialism,” “Down with Zionism,” “Long Live the Oil Workers’ Union,” and “Long Live the Iraqi Communist Party.”
These slogans excited a great commotion among the people, who did not understand the meaning of the words “Union” or “Communist Party,” although they grasped, after a fashion, the danger of these terms when around noon they saw a Jeep enter the community. Policemen wearing khaki Bermuda shorts leapt from it. They carried a bucket filled with white paint and some brushes and proceeded to cover the red slogans with their paint. Because they could not read, they also smeared paint over insults that kids had recorded on the walls against each other. The children, who were delighted by the serious interest the police displayed in their handiwork, began to show the police all the slogans written on the walls. Once they realized that the policemen’s goal was to obliterate only the Communist slogans, they filled the neighborhood’s walls—out of sight of the police—with the slogans “Long Live the Communist Party” and “The Oil Workers’ Union Lives.” Then they would return to show these to the policemen. The children’s mischief-making exhausted the police, who never caught on to this deceit and worked until evening, when they were forced to withdraw even though they had not obliterated all the slogans because they had run out of paint. They promised to return the next day but did not keep their promise, although the children covered the community’s walls with more slogans than had been effaced and actually created some new slogans that were even more damaging and critical attacks on the state’s honor.
The policemen who came the next day were in plain clothes. The women who normally sat in front of their houses noticed three strangers entering the mosque, as if to pray there, only to leave in a few minutes with Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, who appeared terrified. He raised his hands toward the heavens, protesting almost in a scream. The women learned from the children, who had also left the mosque, following the group, that the three men were secret government agents who were taking Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri away with them to lock him up on charges of nationalist agitation. The women then rose, leaving behind their small children, who began to crawl across the ground between people’s feet. The women started cursing the security agents, who refrained from responding to them for fear of scandal but who urged the mullah, since he was dragging his feet, to step lively. Some of the women known for their boldness and insolence, however, allowing their wraps to flutter open in the breeze, caught up with the group and cursed the government and the English all the way to the little souk, where it became impossible to stay abreast of the men. At that point, one of the security agents turned to his two comrades to say, “Praise God who has delivered us from those women.” Then, directing his words to Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, he asked provocatively, “If you’re such a scaredy-cat that you crap in your pants, why ask for trouble by cursing the government?” The mullah swore that he had always supported the government and Nuri al-Sa‘id in particular and had attacked Rashid Ali al-Gaylani in his Friday sermon after that leader’s movement collapsed, holding him responsible for Muslim blood that was shed in the battle of Sin al-Dhubban in al-Habaniya against the British. The security agent laughingly told him, “These are old stories that no longer concern anyone.”
In the barracks, which were on the other side of the city, overlooking the river, they sat the mullah down on a wooden chair before an old desk, behind which sat a man he recognized as Deputy Lieutenant Husayn al-Nasiri, who told Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, “Fine, mullah; given that you are one of the religious men we respect, you should not have become a Communist.”
The mullah’s face blanched and he was unable to keep from shaking: “God’s forgiveness, my son; God’s forgiveness!”
Noting how frightened he was, the deputy lieutenant procured a glass of water for him along with a tumbler of tea with sugar, to calm him. Then he asked him critically, “If you’re not a Communist, why do you attack the government?”
Since the mullah thought it pointless to explain his real reasons, to excuse himself he said, “I won’t deny that I attacked the English, but that was because they fired Hameed Nylon, and this matter has nothing to do with our government, may God preserve it. I am known throughout Kirkuk for my support for His Excellency Nuri al-Sa‘id.”
Then the public security deputy lieutenant laughed to lighten the atmosphere: “This doesn’t matter; you can even support the Socialist Salih Jabr, since I myself am an enthusiastic Socialist. My concern is stamping out Communism and clandestine unions that advocate disbelief and atheism.”
Mullah Zayn al-Abidin agreed: “God’s curse on Stalin and all the Reds in the world!”
At that point, the deputy lieutenant, who did not hide his affection for the mullah, proposed that he should act as a security representative in his neighborhood in return for seven dinars a month. He would only need to keep an eye on the Communists and enemies of the government and to inform on them. He reminded the cleric that the walls of the Chuqor community had been covered with Communist slogans, a fact that indicated that Communists lived there. Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri thanked him for the government’s expression of confidence, but denied that there were any Communists in his community. He suggested that those who had written the slogans had perhaps come from other neighborhoods. Then he added that God had bestowed His goodness on him, so that his family owned a bottling plant for the soft drink Namlet and another for making ice, in addition to an up-to-date flour mill. He concluded his apology by saying, “My station does not permit me to serve as a spy, but I’ll talk with the student who lives with me in the mosque. He’s poor and needy and one of God’s people. He might be willing to act as a secret agent for you.”
Smiling, the deputy lieutenant said, “Never mind about your student; it’s not that big a deal.” Then he apologized for upsetting the mullah and, escorting him to the door, said, “I hope you won’t meddle in politics from now on. If you feel you need to say something, curse Communism; that’s the only party a person is allowed to curse in this country.”
Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, however, after being humiliated in this fashion, definitely did not meddle in politics again, not even to curse Communism, for if the commissioner himself was a Socialist, who could guarantee that the police chief was not a secret supporter of Communism? As a matter of fact, Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri was wrong about certain points, especially about his student Aziz Shirwan, whom he had proposed to the deputy lieutenant as a secret agent. The mullah knew that this young Kurd, who had come from Sulaymaniya to study Islamic jurisprudence with the mullah, lived in the mosque and knocked on doors each afternoon in hopes of receiving a loaf of flat bread or a section of one—since people deemed it a religious duty to feed him. He did not know that he was not merely a Communist but had transformed the mosque itself into a secret drop point for Party mail. He had thought about fleeing when the security men led the mullah away but had returned and decided against it when he learned the truth. He reassured the distraught mullah by telling him that security men often try to exert pressure on religious figures to frighten them.
From that day forward, Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri enjoyed unprecedented respect, for people began to speak of him as a stalwart nationalist who held firm to the principles of his faith. Indeed, some people spread a rumor that he had slapped the police chief himself and had proceeded to open the prison gate and set the prisoners free without anyone daring to stop him. Mullah Zayn al-Abidin actually felt proud when he heard these rumors, which he greeted with a crafty smile. He declined to comment on them, although he became more cautious and adhered to the deputy lieutenant’s advice to avoid wading into politics. Instead, he turned his attention to the gender of angels: were they male or female? His opinion—which differed from that of many Muslim religious scholars—was that angels are female and that there are no male angels. He supported this opinion by reference to the fact that a male inevitably possesses a penis, which would not be something an angel would need, since they naturally do not copulate. If they are not males, then logically they must be females. At any rate, a sound intellect would reach this conclusion. Hameed Nylon—once during a discussion overheard by men in the coffeehouse—replied, “If we follow your logic, we should conclude that the angels are eunuchs, for what need would a female angel have for genitals if there are no male angels?” His view was convincing, although all the men present rejected it, since they scorned eunuchs. Then Hameed Nylon smiled and told the mullah, “I agree with you, mullah, for God’s taste is too refined to create male angels resembling us ugly men when He could make them like the heavenly maidens who delight the heart.” The men guffawed, but the mullah said, “Damn you, Hameed. You turn everything into a joke.” All the same, Hameed Nylon’s argument made an impact on Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, who began to search for irrefutable arguments for his position.
Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri’s assertion to Deputy Lieutenant Husayn al-Nasiri that there were no Communists in the Chuqor community was credible, for there were no Kakaiyeen with the thick mustaches that were considered a sure sign of Communism. People were right to believe this, for Communists in the city during World War II had deliberately adopted Stalin’s mustache as a symbol of their nationalist struggle. That made the job easier for security agents, who recognized and pursued them. Of course, law student Aziz Shirwan, Hameed Nylon, and all the other men in the community had mustaches, since a man would not be considered manly without one. Thus the worst insult exchanged in a quarrel was for one man to threaten another, “I’ll shave off your mustache!” Their mustaches, however, were thin, not thick, and more like two strokes under the nose from a draughtsman’s brush than anything else. Indeed, the mustache of the oil worker Abdallah Ali, who was thin, brown, and lanky, was trimmed on both sides to look almost like Hitler’s. Thus it was impossible for anyone to imagine that these men were connected to politics in any way.
Except for the law student Aziz Shirwan, who was already a Communist when he moved to the neighborhood, and for Faruq Shamil, who met Communists in the print shop where he worked—and in any case he had moved into the Chuqor community from elsewhere—there were no dyed-in-the-wool Communists in the neighborhood. The others—including Hameed Nylon, who had begun to transport passengers between Kirkuk and al-Hawija in an old, wood-sided vehicle that belonged to a Jew named Shamu’il, who had a shop selling watches in al-Awqaf Street and who was the sole agent for Swiss Felca and Nivada watches—were preoccupied with a single thought: a union that would defend the rights of its members. The police considered unions to be simply another face of Communism and pursued them mercilessly. Hameed Nylon, however, believed firmly that had there been a public union for oil workers, Mr. McNeely and his prostitute-wife, Helen, would not have been able to toss him out on the street like a rat. Indeed, he was so touched when he learned that the clandestine union had issued a flyer defending him that his eyes were bathed in tears. When Najat Salim showed him the flyer, he read it again and again. Then he hid it carefully in a bag at home. That same day, he asked Najat Salim to introduce him to these folks. Najat Salim asked him, “Why should I introduce you? They are closer than you think.” Hameed Nylon was perplexed. So Najat Salim said, “Let’s go have tea at the union.” He led Hameed to the room where Faruq Shamil lived with his wife Gulbahar, right next to his own house. Hameed Nylon burst out laughing and ruffled the evening calm of the Chuqor neighborhood, exclaiming, “What an ass I am!”
Thus Hameed Nylon found his way to the trade union, for although Faruq Shamil did not work for the oil company, he was a member of the cell that directed the work of the city’s unions. At this session, Faruq Shamil told him to attempt—circumspectly—to interest working men in the Chuqor neighborhood in joining the unions and to put them in contact with the leadership of the workers’ movement in the city. Hameed Nylon disappeared then for a full week. When he returned, he brought with him a list of the names of twenty-one individuals in the Chuqor community—including four oil workers—who wished to join a union. Hameed Nylon apologized that he had not had enough time to contact more people. The men admittedly belonged to diverse professions and included an officer at the rank of second lieutenant, a policeman, three soldiers, and a dervish known in the neighborhood for sticking skewers through his cheeks and swallowing glass. He was a member of the Qadiriya Brotherhood and affiliated with a Sufi lodge located in the Kurdish regions of the city. Faruq Shamil was puzzled to find the name of the thief Mahmud al-Arabi on Hameed Nylon’s roster as well. He asked Hameed gravely, “What did you say to get a person like the thief Mahmud al-Arabi to side with the union?” Hameed Nylon replied, laughing, “Oh, it was easy with Mahmud. I suggested that he should head a union that would embrace all the thieves of Kirkuk, and that was exactly what he wanted.”
Hameed Nylon had scarcely joined the union and contacted the oil workers when a marked difference was observed in their relationship with the firm, which they held responsible for the injustices they felt, especially after it sacked several employees whom it considered saboteurs. These men eventually fell into the hands of the police, who tortured them with special German-made, nail-pulling pincers that the minister of the interior had purchased himself during his annual holiday in Turkey. This gross attack led the workers to call a strike, since they felt their personal honor had been impugned.
During the week preceding the oil workers’ strike, neighborhood men, who as a matter of course met each afternoon in front of their homes, noticed a stranger in a dishdasha riding into the community on a bicycle. He traversed the community several times, going back and forth, before stopping in front of the mosque to watch the young men gathering. They had spotted him: “Look! He’s an undercover agent come to spy on us.” Hameed Nylon wanted to challenge and beat the stranger, but Faruq Shamil stopped him: “That’s not how it’s done, Hameed. Wait just a moment.” Faruq Shamil went home. He was gone a few minutes and then returned, laughing. He did not even look at the man, who had taken a seat on the mosque’s bench, withdrawing from his pocket a dark loaf of military-issue bread, which he proceeded to gnaw on greedily.
A few moments later, the men standing there heard Gulbahar’s voice screaming at the man with the bike, “Dog, scamp, for days now you’ve been annoying women in our community. Don’t you have an ounce of shame or honor?” Before the man could swallow the morsel he was chewing, she pulled off her sandals to beat him. Suddenly the women who had been sitting in front of their homes burst out screaming. Other women left their chores indoors to attack the man, who cried as he fled, “No, by God, I’ve done nothing.” Blows landed on his head from every direction, and the children took part in the screaming and drubbing too. One even caught the man off guard from behind and attempted to sodomize him with a metal rod as punishment for his insolence toward the women of the community. It was Abbas Bahlawan who rescued him by grabbing hold of him as if he were a scared rat. Then he slapped him a few times, until he fell into the narrow, open sewer that passed through the neighborhood, lifted him again, and gave him a kick that sent him sprawling on his face and made his nose bleed profusely. He tried to flee, but the children seized him and he fell once more. Abbas Bahlawan raised the bicycle into the air and threw it so far that it broke. He grasped the man and lifted him up, threatening, “If you enter this community again, you can kiss your ass good-bye.” The man swore, “I’ll never set foot in this community again so long as I live.” Then Abbas Bahlawan turned toward the women and children to say, “Let him go. You’ll never see his filthy face again.” The man—whose dishdasha was ripped and soiled with muck and blood—left, dragging his bicycle, which was too damaged to ride. He actually was never seen there again.
The day of the strike, Hameed Nylon stood with more than twenty workers on the train tracks that connected the city and the company to prevent frightened and hesitant workers from going to work, calling them cowards and stooges of the English. Many brawls broke out between strikers and non-strikers during which the food in the men’s lunch buckets spilled onto the ground and some men used their cutlery to defend themselves. That first day the police stood at a distance, watching the workers fight one another, ready to intervene at an opportune moment. Hameed Nylon, along with three other workers, retreated to the rear, back to the mouths of the alleyways leading to the main thoroughfare. Whenever he saw an oil worker in his blue uniform, he greeted him, saying casually, “Go home. They’ve sent us home today. Enjoy your holiday, brother.” The worker would ask in astonishment, “Holiday? What holiday?” Then Hameed Nylon would respond quickly, “Don’t you know? The king is visiting Kirkuk today.” This was the way he approached the unsophisticated. For those who seemed more on the ball, he would pretend to be fleeing, after having escaped with his life, claiming that battles had erupted between the police and the workers and that the police were arresting people—indeed, that they were firing indiscriminately on any worker they encountered. He advised them to go back home. Many believed him without even asking any more questions. In fact, his reasoning was only rarely rejected, even by workers who knew what was happening. He would tell these men that the strike’s goal was to increase their salaries and to realize gains for them and that it was in their self-interest to join the strike in defense of their own welfare—if nothing else—instead of weakening the operation and harming others. In any event, they would not be held accountable, even if the strike failed, because they could always claim to their bosses that the striking workers had prevented them from getting to work. His spiel was quite seductive: “Share our victory, or, in the event of a failure, blame it all on us.”
Seventeen days of the strike passed without bringing a settlement. True, work at the firm was crippled once the number of strikers increased, but no one thought of yielding to the workers. That would have been, quite simply, a violation of principle and was therefore intolerable to the police chief, the governor, and the minister of the interior. Mr. Tissow, the head of the firm, actually would have liked to bargain with the strikers because he himself had once been a member of the Labour Party when he was a student at Cambridge University, but the governor told him politely, “I understand your humane sentiments, Mr. Tissow, for you Englishmen are fond of democracy, but how can you practice democracy with donkeys?”
The translator whom the governor had brought along was apparently less than fluent in English and became confused, substituting “monkeys” for “donkeys,” so that Mr. Tissow then smiled and replied, “Your Excellency, you should address this question to Darwin.”
As a matter of fact, the issue was bigger even than the governor himself, although he attempted to project an image of being a decisive man of action, for the minister of the interior contacted him by telephone and ordered him to suppress the strike at any cost. The minister of the interior had himself received a comparable order from the prime minister, who had decided to resort to force on the advice of the British High Commissioner, who unfortunately was a member of the Conservative Party and hated workers because his party had lost the most recent election to them.
The workers met every day, from early in the morning, in Gawirbaghi, which was a parched garden not far from the offices of the oil company. There they recited poems by Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, Ma‘ruf al-Rasafi, and other less well-known poets. Naturally, half the inhabitants of Kirkuk found their way to Gawirbaghi—especially the women and children—not to show their support, which was assumed, but because the strike was a thrilling song fest, which lasted from morning till evening and which differed from any Kirkuk had ever witnessed. The strikers’ children and wives brought them food, even from the furthest communities in the city. The women’s trills, which rang out continually, re-energized those men who were quaking with fear inside. Thus they came to see the affair as a question of personal honor, as if it were a clash with a hostile tribe.
The first hours of the seventeenth day of the strike passed like the others. The workers delivered harangues and chanted slogans in the garden. Men, women, and children gathered round to watch. Security men, who were circulating on their bicycles, observed them. Children sat on the branches of olive trees that grew here and there. Even the armored police vehicle was still parked where it had been: at the head of the street leading to the garden. Everything seemed normal until noon, when someone arrived to say that large numbers of mounted policemen were massing at the beginning of the street. Fear drove the workers to greater zeal and they shouted even louder, although everyone expected some face-saving resolution. Finally a Jeep with a rifle-mount appeared. In the back stood three policemen and a lieutenant. The crowd surrounding the area fearfully moved back at first, although they soon returned cautiously when the lieutenant, from his place in the open Jeep, began to address the workers: “We warn you to evacuate the area, end the strike, and return to your jobs. You are the victims of a Communist plot. The Communists are exploiting you and deceiving you. The Communists are friends of the Jews and wish to get you into trouble. Unless you disperse now, the police will intervene.”
Even before the lieutenant had concluded his threatening oration, cries and curses resounded in the garden: “Scum, return to your masters and kiss their asses!” Many people broke branches from the trees and trimmed them into staffs in preparation for a battle. A worker somewhere started a chant that others repeated: “Strike till death!” At that, the Jeep retreated amid the worker’s guffaws and catcalls, “The cowards are fleeing.” It was, however, only a few minutes before the armored vehicle returned, followed by a large number of mounted policemen armed with truncheons. Only then did most of the onlookers grasp the danger of the situation. They raced off in every direction, while continuing to watch the spectacle with interest. Others stayed where they were because they felt allied with the workers, or perhaps because they had misunderstood the situation.
Silence reigned over the strikers who had held their ground. They grasped green tree limbs as if these would suffice to ward off the danger confronting them. Suddenly an intermittent round of gunfire resounded. The striking workers lowered their heads amid the universal turmoil and screaming. The first round was followed by a second and a third. The workers looked about and sought shelter behind the trunks of the garden’s few trees. Terror-stricken onlookers mixed together with the strikers till they formed a single bloc. Just then, the ground shook from the hooves of the horses that had reached the garden. Their riders, truncheons in hand, were oblivious to any of the crowd of humans who fell beneath their horses’ hooves. Occasional shots were fired by policemen and security agents. A number of workers clashed with policemen who had fallen off their horses. In this battle, Hameed Nylon, who—like all the strikers—had concealed his identity by winding a cloth around his head, although short, demonstrated bravery that surprised even himself. From inside his shirt he drew out a dagger, which he carried in defiance of the union’s instructions, and began to stab the bellies of the horses from the rear till they were writhing with pain and threw their riders or fell down with them. A Kurdish dervish, who had come from Erbil to present a display of his supernatural powers in a nearby Sufi lodge, seized a policeman who had fallen to the ground, dragged him behind some trees, and then butchered him, after reciting the opening prayer of the Qur’an for his soul.
The battle ended with the flight of the striking workers, who left behind them thirteen slain, including a child—struck by a bullet—who remained lodged where he had been sitting in the branches of a tree, two women, and a vendor of cooked broad beans, who had fallen in a heap over his cart. More than twenty of the wounded were placed under arrest. Others managed to escape from the hands of the police and security agents. Of the attackers, three policemen were killed, including the one slaughtered by the dervish. All the attackers listed themselves as wounded in order to receive the ten-dinar bonus that the minister of the interior had earmarked for casualties.
Many from the Chuqor community and from those recruited by Hameed Nylon witnessed the carnage only to emerge unscathed, with nothing more than bruises, which this person or that received, but Hadi Ahmad received a blow to the head. He was a ten-year-old boy whose father owned a portable camera of the old-fashioned type that ends with a black cloth into which the photographer sticks his head while the customer sits against a plain sheet placed in front of a wall—on the quay at the head of the stone bridge opposite the barracks—while he too is shrouded in black as he faces the moving lens. The blow that the boy received from the truncheon of a mounted cop left him unconscious. Had Abbas Bahlawan not plucked him up and carried him home, he would certainly have died beneath the horses’ hooves. When he regained consciousness, the sight in one of his eyes was gone. Worse than that, he had suffered some neural trauma and permanently lost his sense of equilibrium, a condition that stumped all attempts by imams and physicians to find a cure. His left eye, however, quickly regained its sight, thanks to the genius of a young ophthalmologist who had studied in Turkey after despairing of gaining entrance to the Medical College in Baghdad, first because his marks did not average more than fifty and second because he was an Arts Faculty graduate. All this, however, did not prevent the doctor from venturing on an experimental treatment that American ophthalmologists would only adopt forty years later. This Turkmen physician realized that the boy Hadi Ahmad had suffered a detached retina, which needed to be lifted and reattached in its previous location. The challenge did not lie in lifting the retina, for even a nurse could do that, but in reattaching it where it belonged. Since there seemed to be nothing to lose because that eye was sightless, no matter what, he had a simple idea that not even the devil could have dreamed up. This was to fix the retina back in place with a normal adhesive. That resulted in another miracle for the Chuqor neighborhood, although this time it was a medical one, for after half a minute the boy rose and could see better than ever, since the doctor had placed the retina precisely where it belonged, bypassing some of nature’s shortcomings.
The bloodbath was followed by a wave of arrests, including those of all the leaders of the strike. The police turned the facts upside down, asserting that the strikers had launched the attack and had fired on the lieutenant when he came to ask them to evacuate the area. The Chuqor neighborhood escaped these arrests, however, since the police focused on suspects already known to them, and these were not from the Chuqor community. All the same, Hameed Nylon disappeared, without his absence exciting any suspicion, for his wife Fatima claimed that he had traveled to Lebanon on business and that he would be gone for several months. Some people in the neighborhood spread a rumor that he had gone to Turkey, where he had enlisted in the Turkish division sent to Korea in order to plunge into the war on the Americans’ side against the Communist revolutionaries. Others said he was actually fighting for the Communists against the Americans.
The massacre in Gawirbaghi Garden scared the striking workers, who returned to their jobs at the oil company the next day as if nothing had happened, although they avoided each other’s eyes for fear their hearts’ shame would show. They had lost their battle and had no alternative to returning to work, without any preconditions and most of all without a union.
At the same time as the workers acknowledged their defeat, Mr. Tissow undertook to comply with all the demands the workers had advanced during the strike, except for recognition of the union. That, he said, was an issue for the regional authorities, not for the Iraq Petroleum Company. He declared that he did not want the workers and the company to be separated by an iron curtain like the one the Communists had erected in Europe. He appropriated this phrasing from Winston Churchill, who had originated it a few months earlier. The magazine Qarandal, published in Baghdad, reported it for the first time, attributed to the firm’s director general.
In point of fact, Mr. Tissow adopted his conciliatory posture after holding a private meeting with British Intelligence at the Iraq Petroleum Company. The meeting was also attended by Mr. John Brown, who was known as “the Arab” and who served as a political attaché at the British Embassy, which was located in Baghdad on the Tigris River on the Karkh side. Mr. Brown had assigned exceptional importance to the oil workers’ strike—even more than the Iraqi government itself—affirming that the strike was considered a link in the chain of an international Communist conspiracy, led by Stalin himself, to end British influence in the world and to establish people’s dictatorships like those Communism was then founding in Eastern Europe, in Greece, which borders the Middle East, in Iran’s Kurdistan, which touches Iraq, in China, where Mao Tse-tung controlled most of the territory, and likewise in Korea and Vietnam. Mr. Brown explained that the Iraqi government was totally isolated, “But thank God for this nation’s tribal structure, for citizens here normally follow their chiefs, and the chiefs are in the pocket of our friend Mr. Nuri al-Sa‘id. This is the only guarantee of our presence in this country now; there’s nothing else.” Then Mr. Brown revealed that the central headquarters of British Intelligence in London possessed information that indicated the probability that some of the firm’s British employees had themselves played a role in inciting the Iraqi workers to strike. He offered a list of names of English employees who were associated with the British Communist Party or who had been active in left-wing politics in Britain. At the end of his remarks, Mr. Brown said, “If it was possible to tolerate a situation like this for tactical reasons in wartime, it’s not possible now.”
At this meeting, which lasted more than two hours, they finally decided it was necessary both to impose covert surveillance on leftist English employees until they could be transferred back to England and to contact the Iraqi authorities to explain that the best posture to take toward the strikers was a conciliatory one, rather than a severe one, for fear of arousing nationalist feelings—especially since many Iraqis held Britain responsible for the massacres that Jews were committing against Arabs in Palestine.
Afterwards Mr. Tissow escorted his guest Mr. Brown and the members of the British Intelligence team attached to the firm to a banquet held at the British Club. A dance followed, but Mr. Brown did not attend, because he felt tired after his strenuous trip from Baghdad to Kirkuk. He was unaccustomed to the intense heat, which affected his chronic low blood pressure. Thus he retired for the night apologetically, expressing his wish that Mr. Tissow enjoy himself.
The following day, Governor Ahmad Sulayman was puzzled when Mr. Tissow, emphasizing the danger of doing anything to increase tensions at that time, requested that he treat the imprisoned workers leniently and even release them after a trial that would merely be a formality. The governor, who was trying to suppress his own rebellious emotions, looked at him: “If the workers learn of your humane stance, none of them will dare open his mouth to call for a strike.”
Mr. Tissow smiled proudly, “Yes, Your Excellency, we place flowers every day on the tomb of Karl Marx in London.”
The governor contacted the police chief, relaying to him Mr. Tissow’s desire that he go easy on the incarcerated prisoners. The police chief said, “I don’t know if that will be possible, for two have already died of torture and others are as good as dead.”
The governor quickly responded, “That makes no difference. You can add those to the other fatalities and claim they died in hospital as a result of their wounds, but keep your men from beating the others. Indeed, provide medical care for them before you present them in open court. Then release them, which will affirm that we are actually democratic.”
Thus the court, which was convened six weeks later, found no grounds for conviction of the strike’s leaders and pronounced them innocent of all the charges directed against them. In fact, the court displayed such exceptional impartiality that it issued an order for the arrest of the lieutenant and the three policemen who were with him in the armored vehicle, charging them with planning the massacre. The police chief, however, later tore up this order himself, telling the head of the court, “It’s true that we asked you to be impartial in issuing your verdict, but not to the point of sending my men to prison.” The security men were upset when they saw the strike leaders hug each other in delight at being liberated. They approached them to whisper, “Don’t think that you’ve escaped from our hands. We’ll find a way to crush your skulls if you so much as breathe again.” The workers, however, displayed no reaction to this provocation; they were puzzled by the spirit of impartiality that had suddenly descended on the government. There was something suspicious about the matter, but they attributed it to the government’s retreat in the face of public pressure. They were content to save their skins, which still bore scars from the whips.
As a matter of fact, the only one from the Chuqor community who attended this trial, which was held in the first courtroom on the second floor of the Palace of Justice and which lasted for seventeen days, was Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, who wanted a closer look at the Communists. The trial helped him form a somewhat more positive impression of these people, whom he termed atheists. He returned, saying that the only difference between them and other people was their blindness and adherence to a heresy called Communism. He declared that any type of heresy is an error, especially a godless heresy. All the same, he explained to the men attending his study session in the mosque that as a point of fact Communism was not a creation of Stalin’s thought, as Communists claimed, but an invention of Ahmad ibn Qarmat, who had established the first communist society while attempting to destroy the Islamic state.
Between the failure of the oil workers’ strike and the general Jewish migration to Palestine two or three years later, no events excited the interest of the Chuqor community except for their support of the execution in Baghdad of the Jewish spy Adas, which the people supported, and the parade the Chuqor community mounted, with drums and tambourines, to mark the return of three of its sons: soldiers who had gone with the Iraqi army to combat the Jews in Palestine. They were the very same soldiers whom Hameed Nylon had recruited for the union drive.
The three told many tales, which were transformed with time into legends. They said that the Jewish army would not have been able to stand up for even a few days to the Iraqi forces, which were advancing on Haifa, Jaffa, and Tel Aviv, had it not been for the treachery of Nuri al-Sa‘id, who ordered the military commanders, each time, to withdraw from any site they occupied. In fact, they swore they had witnessed Jews holding up pictures of Nuri al-Sa‘id and chanting his name. The crowd laughed each time they mentioned the terror that overcame the Jews whenever they heard any reference to the Iraqi army, since they believed that the Iraqis were cannibals. Iraqi forces had once taken prisoner a number of Jewish Hagana and placed them in detention. Then the Iraqi commander had come and examined them, one after the other, finally choosing five of them saying, “Take these five and slaughter them. Then prepare them for cooking today: three for lunch and two for supper.” These terrified Jews were led away to two isolated tents: ingredients for lunch in one tent and those for supper in the other. The Iraqis allowed supper to escape so they would carry the frightening news to the Jews, namely that the Iraqis ate their prisoners, which was precisely the message the Iraqi commander wanted conveyed to the Jewish soldiers.
An earlier event that had roused the entire city, not just the Chuqor community, was the crash of a small, two-passenger airplane, for this was the first time a plane had crashed in Kirkuk. It fell on some trees in the garden of the Officers’ Club and demolished a side of the outer wall, leaving its right wing visible from the street. Children used it as a see-saw, clinging to it despite the presence of a police guard, who occasionally was obliged to visit a nearby coffeehouse to pee or drink tea. Hadi Ahmad—the boy whose retina the ophthalmologist had reattached with glue—managed to slip inside the plane through its wrecked door. There he found a compass, which he carried around his neck for years to come as a good luck charm, not even removing it when he entered the public bath.
After the return of the three soldiers to the Chuqor community from the Palestine War, the Iraqi government expelled Jews from the country, placing them and their suitcases in open trucks that conveyed them through the desert to Transjordan and from there to Israel. Many wept, asking to stay, saying, “Iraq is our homeland,” but the police arrested such refuseniks, charging them with spying and Communism, and then transported them in police vehicles that dropped them off beyond the nation’s borders. The only persons to escape from this expulsion were some young Jewish women who were in love with young Muslim men: they eloped after professing Islam.
The whole Chuqor community welcomed the Jewish woman Hayat Sasson, who had changed her name to Hayat Yusuf, after she married Najat Salim, who had completed the training program at the oil company and acquired a first-rate post there. He had gained an excellent command of English from his passionate reading of English-language editions of Maxim Gorky’s works, which the Eugene Bookstore, located near Cinema al-Alamein, imported without ever arousing the suspicions of the police, who, naturally, did not know any English. The women of the Chuqor community, accompanied by their children, had gone to view the Jewish/Muslim woman and to welcome her. On the morning of the wedding day, Najat Salim’s mother and some other women danced. Seized by a musical euphoria, they partnered the male dancer, a Turkmen known professionally as “Sprout,” who shook his midriff to the rhythmic music of his troupe, which consisted of a drummer and a folk oboist. The women were not embarrassed to be around male dancers like these, who attended women-only parties dressed in women’s outfits and sporting rouge and powder on their faces. From time to time a woman would stick a coin in his hand and tell him a name. Then he would stop dancing, yell very loudly, “A tip!” and announce the name of the donor’s family. His companion would begin drumming again, and he would swivel his hips swiftly to the music.
During this party, someone came in to say that Hayat’s parents were standing outside the house and wanted to spirit away their daughter. Then Najat’s mother went out and threw stones at them, scolding them. She said, “Hayat’s become a Muslim; there’s no hope for you now.” Thus they were forced to withdraw, weeping. When the children wanted to pursue them, Najat’s mother stopped them. She said, “Come back to the wedding. They’re Hayat’s parents, in spite of everything.”
Trucks came every morning to the Jewish community, who opened the doors of their houses to Muslims, selling everything they could, from household furniture to cooking pots and tea tumblers. Burhan’s mother bought an iron bed for half a dinar, and the boy usurped it the moment it arrived in their house. Although he fell off it repeatedly while he slept, he finally got the knack of sleeping on it. In fact, it became his favorite place to write and read, and he prevented the others from getting on it.
Hameed Nylon appeared again after an absence of more than three months, as if he had suddenly emerged from the belly of the earth. He affirmed that he had been in Lebanon, although there was no indication that he had made his fortune there, for he returned to work on the Kirkuk-to-al-Hawija route, driving a Jeep that transported Arabs along with their sheep, goats, and chickens. As a matter of fact, he kept the secret of his disappearance even from his wife Fatima. When the strike that the government had met with a hail of bullets had failed, he had ridden off heading toward Chamchamal, which lies between Kirkuk and Sulaymaniya. From there, he had made his way on foot, without a guide, to the nearby mountains. He was searching for Khula Pees, a Kurdish brigand who had killed three policemen and had then sought refuge as an outlaw on a mountain, where men with problematic relationships with the government had followed him. When the police had tried to pursue him later, he had killed tens of them, forcing them to retreat, humiliated and defeated. Hameed Nylon went from one mountain to another in search of him and finally discovered him one day in front of a cave at the head of a valley. Starting with this first meeting, he attempted to persuade the brigand to transform his gang into a people’s liberation army modeled after that of Mao Tse-tung, but this robber, who was illiterate and near-sighted, after staring at Hameed Nylon for some time, asked, “What would I gain from that?” Hameed Nylon replied with the astuteness of a person who can read other men’s minds, “You’ll become the people’s hero.” The thief smiled and retorted, “But I already am the people’s hero.” After that, none of Hameed Nylon’s efforts during the three months he spent with the thief panned out. In the man’s head, there was only one idea, which was to kill the greatest number of policemen he could.
This was the first time that Hameed Nylon had ever failed to sell a person one of his ideas. He considered proclaiming a liberating, armed rebellion in the style of Mao Tse-tung, whom he greatly revered, but realized that he did not possess even a single rifle with which to fire the revolution’s opening shot. Thus, Hameed Nylon retraced his steps home, but without losing hope, since a trip of a thousand miles begins with a single step, as Mao Tse-tung had said. This was a phrase that Faruq Shamil had frequently repeated to him.