THROUGHOUT HISTORY, THERE have been great men who united themselves with important moments. During and after World War I, Jafar Al-Askari, Nouri Al-Said, King Faisal I, Lawrence of Arabia and Sati Al-Husri were such men. Three of them were closely related to Mayada, and she knew their lives as she knew her own.
In 1918, at the end of the Great War, 400 years of Ottoman power had finally ended. No government ruled Iraq, and the Iraqi people found themselves with a chance for a new beginning. The British and French governments, which had helped them defeat the Ottomans, promised freedom for all Arabs. And compelled by this dream, Jafar, Nouri, Lawrence of Arabia, and Faisal risked their lives many times.
But no man was more daring than Mayada’s grandfather, Jafar Al-Askari.
It was perhaps a twist of fate that Jafar Al-Askari was born at the same time the Ottoman Empire was dying. He entered the world on June 13, 1885, and his parents, Mustafa and Fatima, were living in Baghdad, where his father was serving as the Military Governor of Iraq and the Chief of Staff of the Fourth Army.
Jafar favored his father in every way, with chestnut hair and brown eyes that flashed with gold, and a brilliant mind that allowed him to excel in military strategy, languages and politics.
As a son of an Army Chief of Staff, Jafar received the finest education. And because his father was a military man, that schooling was directed toward the art and practice of soldiering. Then tragedy struck. Mustafa noticed a red mark on his shoulder, a mark the Turks call a “Lion’s Paw.” Whether the mark was a cancerous melanoma or perhaps even anthrax is unclear, but Mustafa was bed-ridden and soon died a painful death.
Though he mourned the death of his father, Jafar went on to complete his education. While at military school, he met his lifelong best friend, Nouri Al-Said. The two men grew so close that they made a pact to marry each other’s sister, and followed through on it: Nouri married Jafar’s younger sister, Naeema, and Jafar married Nouri’s sister, Fakhriya.
When World War I broke out, Jafar fought with the Ottomans and the Germans, quickly becoming a highly decorated general, but Jafar was so uniquely talented that the British approached him to fight on their side. Jafar refused their appeals until Sultan Mohammed Resat ordered the execution of several of Jafar’s friends. He became disillusioned with the Ottoman cause and agreed to the requests of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and Prince Faisal of the Hijaz (later to become King Faisal of Syria and Iraq) to join the Arab Army. It was during the war that Jafar and Prince Faisal became close friends. Jafar Al-Askari became the Commander of the Arab Regular Forces. He was the only man in World War I awarded the top military decoration from both the Germans and the British.
When the British occupied Iraq after the war, they had great difficulty keeping Iraqi tribesmen from attacking their soldiers. In order to appease the Iraqis, the British chose to assume an indirect role in ruling the country, and set up a monarchy supervised by the British government. After much discussion and with the encouragement of British representatives in Iraq, Winston Churchill decided that Prince Faisal, whose father ruled Mecca and Medina, would be Iraq’s new king, despite the fact that Faisal had never set foot inside Iraq’s borders.
When Faisal arrived in Iraq to take over the country, his close friends and former army commanders Jafar Al-Askari and Nouri Al-Said were there waiting to serve him. Hundreds of Englishmen and Iraqis gathered on the banks of the Tigris River for Faisal’s coronation. The proclamation was read in Arabic, announcing that Faisal had won the election of the people, and a band played the British anthem, “God Save the King,” much to the shock of the Iraqis present.
Jafar served as Minister of Defense and Nouri served as Chief of Staff. From that first day there were many struggles, but the three men held the country together by sheer determination. Then, in 1933, after only twelve years of rule, King Faisal became very ill with heart problems, left for Switzerland, and died there at the age of forty-eight. Prince Ghazi, King Faisal’s only son, became King Ghazi I.
Jafar had lived in London for a number of years, but in 1934, his friend and brother-in-law, Nouri, who was now the Iraqi Prime Minister, appealed to Jafar to return and help him run the government. Nouri explained to Jafar that he faced so many foes in Iraq that he needed the strength Jafar represented by his side. Jafar adored England, where he said he needed only to carry a walking stick—unlike Iraq, where he needed to be armed at all times. Nevertheless, the situation in Iraq was becoming more and more turbulent, and Jafar finally agreed to Nouri’s appeal, once again assuming the position of Minister of Defense.
Two years later, in October 1936, Jafar ordered the army to perform a series of routine exercises, but he was met with a surprise. A man that Jafar believed to be his friend, General Bakir Sidqi, Commander of the Second Division of the Army, decided to stage a military coup, the first in modern Iraq.
Three airplanes dropped bombs, and while one fell harmlessly in the Tigris, the other two hit the Ministry of Interior and the building that housed the Council of Ministers. Another bomb hit the main post office building.
Jafar decided to meet the army and stop it from marching on Baghdad. The British ambassador Sir Clark Keer was there when Jafar made the vow, and Keer later wrote that Jafar’s mission was an act of sheer gallantry, a bravery no other man in the government possessed. King Ghazi was concerned for Jafar’s safety, but Jafar said it was his duty to protect the king and the country. As Jafar was leaving, King Ghazi apparently shuddered with a premonition. He ran out of the palace to stop Jafar, but it was too late—Jafar was gone.
Jafar could not know that his friend Sidqi had asked five of his associates to kill him. The first four of the five said they would never kill a man as noble as Jafar Al-Askari. The fifth man however—Captain Jameel, a man who had never met Jafar—agreed to serve as the assassin.
A number of Sidqi’s troops met Jafar on the outskirts of Baghdad and told him they would escort him to Sidqi. Jafar was asked to sit in the front seat, and soon realized that something was amiss. He turned in his seat to face the men, saying, “I have a feeling you people are going to kill me. But I am not afraid of dying. Dying is the natural end of every human life. I tell you, however, that if you start killing, you will be held accountable for all the hardship you will put this country through. You will create a river of blood.”
When the car stopped at Sidqi’s camp and Jafar got out, Captain Jameel shot him in the back. Jafar lived only long enough to turn around and cry out, “Noooooo!” A hasty grave was dug in the sand and Jafar was buried. Bakir Sidqi swore his men to secrecy.
When Jafar failed to return to the palace, the country descended into chaos. Jafar had been the glue that held the government together. Sidqi took over Baghdad and forced King Ghazi to name a new government.
The Arab world was shocked that Jafar Al-Askari was dead. Sadly, Jafar’s prediction that Iraq would become a river of blood came true. Sidqi was soon assassinated by officers loyal to Jafar. The royal family remained at the head of numerous rotating governments, as one military coup followed another.
In 1958, the royal family invited Mayada’s parents to accompany them on a holiday before returning for the wedding of the king, Faisal II, but Mayada’s mother, Salwa, insisted that Mayada have a French Dior gown for her role as flower girl in the wedding.
Mayada was only three, but her mother had arranged a fitting at a French Dior shop in Geneva. The family was in Europe when they heard that General Abdul-Karim Qassim, an army officer, had ordered a number of soldiers to surround the royal palace. Over a loudspeaker, they ordered the family to step outside. It was only 7:45 in the morning, but soon afterward, the kitchen door at the back of the palace opened and the royals began to spill out. The officers shouted for the family to step toward the little garden at the side of the palace and stand next to a huge mulberry tree. The royal family lined up, along with the servants. The very young king, confused, kept saluting the officers.
A captain by the name of Al-Obousi shot at the king, splitting his skull open. Everyone else then opened fire. After the massacre, the bodies of the family were dragged to a van, and a crowd began to loot the palace.
As the van passed through the palace gate, a man at the gate jumped into the van and stabbed all the dead bodies. The van was then stopped by a military jeep, whose soldiers took the bodies of the young king and the regent. Crowds had begun to gather, and to pacify the angry mob, the driver threw them the body of Faisal’s regent, which was promptly stripped naked, dragged across Baghdad and hung from one of the balconies at the Al-Karhk Hotel. The crowd then cut off his hands, arms, feet, legs and genitals, ripped open his mouth, then dragged what remained of his body to the Ministry of Defense and hung it there. A young man from the crowd then took a dagger and ripped open his belly and several men in the crowd draped the regent’s intestines around their necks, like necklaces, and danced in the streets. Finally, someone took the regent’s body, splashed it with gasoline and set it on fire. The remains were thrown in the river.
The young king was taken to the Al-Rasheed Military Hospital, where the doctors pronounced him dead. His body was temporarily buried on the hospital grounds, to avoid a similar mutilation by the crowds. Other family members were also buried there.
Prime Minister Nouri Al-Said, the uncle of Mayada’s father, was on the run. He had heard about the massacre and knew there was nothing he could do but save himself. Nouri was an old man by then, but the crowds nevertheless wanted him dead, as well. A neighbor, Um Abdul Ameer Al-Estarabadi, urged Nouri to escape to the Ummara tribes, who would give him refuge. Nouri put on a woman’s abaaya (cloak) for camouflage. Unfortunately, Nouri and the neighbor decided to stop along the river in Abu Nawas, and someone in a passing mob spotted a man’s shoes beneath a woman’s abaaya. Sensing something was amiss, they seized Nouri. He was bound and tied to the rear of a car and dragged through the streets of Baghdad.
The mob threw Nouri’s lifeless body into the street, where cars took turns running over him. Others used knives to cut off his fingers. Later, a well-known lady from a good family in Baghdad went around to parties showing off one of Nouri’s fingers in a silver cigarette box. Baghdad had been turned upside down.
After Nouri’s family heard about the killing, his son Sabah went to ask for his father’s body, so the family could have a proper burial. Sabah was murdered and dragged through the streets, as well.
And as Jafar predicted, the coups continued, finally leading to the emergence of the Baath Party, led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakir and Saddam Hussein. Its aims were a socialist, secular government that would aspire to Pan-Arab unity and Arab rule in the face of foreign domination.
The Baath Party first came to power in Iraq in February 1963, but was overthrown before the end of that year. A more powerful Baath movement guided by Saddam Hussein returned to Iraq in 1968. For Mayada, the Baath Party had become a never-ending nightmare, the root of so many of Iraq’s troubles.
That first night in prison was the longest night she had ever spent. Her eyes wide open, she thought of her family, of Fay and Ali, and blamed herself for not leaving when her mother had warned her that Iraq was finished. Mayada retraced the history of Saddam’s Iraq in her mind and realized that while Iraqis were being lulled into tranquility by Saddam’s charismatic personality, he was crafting four black doors to contain—and obscure—his evil.
In 1980, Saddam had been the President of Iraq for only a year, and many Iraqis still believed in his greatness, but he was actually plotting the first of two wars that would ruin Iraq.
It was a peaceful September day. Baghdad was still wrapped in the cool of the morning. Mayada and her husband, Salam, were having an early breakfast at her mother’s home. She watched him eat and contemplated what he would look like when he was old. She hoped that she would not be around to see his black hair turn gray and his body thicken from all of the eggs, toast, milk and sugar he liked to consume.
Mayada had discovered on their honeymoon that she had made a mistake when she agreed to be his wife. Now she toyed frequently with the idea of leaving him, but women in the Middle East approach divorce with extreme caution. So she had accepted that she would be one of many millions of women who live without complaint in a loveless marriage.
Mayada had another reason for feeling anxious. Salam had recently been drafted into compulsory military service; he was now uncomfortably attired in his army fatigues. He tugged at his sleeves and pulled at the crotch of his trousers, which had been washed only once and were still stiff. He was dressed as a warrior, yet Mayada could not connect the idea of violence with this man now living so intimately with her. As these ideas were working their way through her mind, her mother’s house was shaken by a loud “swooooosh,” followed by the blasts of lesser reverberations. Dishes rattled, lights flickered and her mother’s three brightly feathered finches fluttered nervously from one side of their cage to the other. Fear washed through her body and settled into her stomach. “Salam, are those Israeli planes?”
Salam’s face flickered in astonishment while small beads of sweat formed on his skin. His husky voice took on a strange high tone. “No. No. It cannot be.”
Mayada’s heart beat faster as she waited for the piercing sounds of sirens, but the air around them was silent. Salam moved quickly to turn on the radio, but routine programming filled the airwaves. Mayada was working at the Al-Jumhuriya newspaper in Baghdad, so she decided to ring the office. As her hand reached for the receiver the phone startled her with an incoming ring. She lifted the receiver and heard the voice of Dr. Fadil Al-Barrak, a recent acquaintance of her family. Dr. Fadil was the head of the secret police, the man that everyone knew answered only to Saddam Hussein. It was uncharacteristic that a soft-spoken gentleman such as Dr. Fadil held a position that placed him in charge of internal security, but soon after Saddam assumed complete power, he had revamped the intelligence organizations. Saddam had said that an ignorant man was less trustworthy than an intelligent man, and had appointed a number of highly educated Iraqis to prominent positions. Dr. Fadil was an enormously powerful person in Iraq, overseeing many security departments, including security affairs, Islamic movements, military defectors sections, economic security, opposition groups, drug affairs and others.
Few people in Iraq had the ear of men in such high positions, but Mayada thought little of it at the time, because her parents and grandparents had always been connected to important world leaders.
Truthfully, though, Dr. Fadil had an unusual relationship with her family. While he had become a family friend, Mayada’s mother, Salwa, had never actually invited him to occupy that role. Dr. Fadil was a writer and had come to their family requesting to see the books and papers belonging to Mayada’s famous maternal grandfather, Sati Al-Husri. Mayada’s family thought nothing of the request, since Sati’s writings on Arab Nationalism and Arab educational programs were frequently used as a reference for many Arab writers. From that simple beginning, Dr. Fadil had become a more frequent guest in their home.
On that fateful day Dr. Fadil skipped his usual niceties. “Is Salam serving in Baghdad?”
Mayada felt a flicker of surprise over his concern for her husband’s safety. Dr. Fadil had disapproved of her marriage from the first moment, because Salam was from a very well-known feudal family. His father had owned slaves until 1960, and a revolutionary Baathist like Dr. Fadil deliberately avoided former slave owners. Nevertheless, his closeness to the family had not ended, and he had even given Mayada an expensive piece of jewelry on her wedding day.
“No, he is serving in Al-Mahaweel,” Mayada answered, referring to a military base in southern Iraq. Sensing that something unusual was afoot, she asked Fadil what was going on.
He whispered ominously, “This is your pin-up hero waging war against us.” She knew immediately what he meant, and also understood that the war-planes had nothing to do with Iraqi internal friction but instead related to the growing tension between Iran and Iraq. Despite the seriousness of the moment, she almost laughed aloud at his mention of her “pin-up hero,” for she understood how a foolish incident that meant nothing, really, had so angered this man who considered himself a loyal supporter of her family.
The incident had occurred during her engagement and was directly linked to a 1979 student gathering at the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Several bombs exploded during the gathering, killing two students and wounding many others. A week after the bombing there was a huge student march from the University to the Bab Al-Muaadam cemetery, where the slain students had been buried. The demonstration meandered through the city and even passed through the main street close to her mother’s home. Two government ministers were heading the march, so there were numerous police cars, secret police and intelligence agents patrolling the entire area. When the demonstration passed by her mother’s home, two hand grenades were tossed into the procession. The house next to her mother’s home was occupied by the Iranian consulate, and so the Iraqi secret police immediately assumed the violence had originated there.
Mayada’s family home was a beautiful one with large balconies. Her bedroom had a wide veranda that extended out above their garden and overlooked the consulate. Security forces had to pass through her bedroom to look out on the balcony, from which they planned to shoot into the home of the Iranian representative.
A few weeks before, Mayada had cut and pasted on her wall a catchy photograph of Ayatollah Khomeini, showing the scowling cleric in his black turban framed against a fuchsia background.
When the secret police burst into her room and spotted the image of their enemy, they were so stunned that they forgot they were in pursuit of dangerous rebels and instead rushed to report her treason to the authorities. The Iranians were saved from a barrage of bullets on that day because the young woman Mayada Al-Askari had posted a picture of the Shiite cleric Khomeini on her wall. Such an offense was considered treasonous by the minority Sunni government. But Mayada was too young and too confident to believe she could be in serious trouble for pasting a photograph on her wall.
When Dr. Fadil was told about this incident, he phoned her. The usual warmth of his voice cooled as he informed her that he would be passing by the house at ten o’clock that evening and to please not toss her precious jewel box here and there for everyone to see. She understood his reference at once, for in Iraq when one wishes to scorn a person they say the opposite, and although Khomeini was called a “jewel box” by Dr. Fadil, the cultural translation meant that Dr. Fadil’s enemy was in reality a piece of slime.
Dr. Fadil was a man of his word. He arrived promptly at ten that evening, and although his face was calm, his manner bore a distinct frostiness. A tall man, he stood at his full height as he looked down at Mayada, and she noticed that his left eye was smaller than his right eye. For the first time, she felt that Dr. Fadil was not exactly the kindly man he pretended to be. He squeezed his lips together before asking Mayada’s mother, Salwa, for a glass of scotch. He took a long gulp before returning his full attention to Mayada.
A man so close to Saddam possessed great power within the Iraqi governmental hierarchy, and he had the might to have her crushed like an insect, but he loosened up a bit after the scotch passed his lips and began to lecture her like a schoolmaster about their neighbors, the Iranians. He twisted his glass in his hands as he gathered his words and said, “You should have seen Khomeini when he was deported from Iran. He had nothing and we opened up our country to him. He lived in Iraq for many years as a welcomed refugee and when Saddam approached him to speak to the Shiite people against the Shah, who was doing nothing but trying to topple our government, he refused.” The soft-spoken Dr. Fadil surprised Mayada and her mother with a sudden outburst. “The man is nothing more than a Persian with shit stuffed inside his bones!” Visibly struggling to gain control of his emotions, he cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Behind his pious facade he’s conspiring with the imperialists.”
Mayada was still naïve in those days, believing that no harm would come her way; she struggled to hold back a laugh but sensed that Dr. Fadil was at a breaking point. His lowered lids couldn’t conceal the anger in his eyes, and his olive skin had reddened with passion, but she was still brave enough to say, “I thought the Baath Party preaches democracy, and if this is the case, why can’t I hang up the picture of my enemy on the wall? I should have the right to hang any picture I please in my bedroom.” When he took a deep breath she saw that he was growing even more serious, and so she tried to ease the moment with lighter words. “The color contrast of the pink and black was what caught my eye.” She laughed. “It was the color, not the cleric.”
Dr. Fadil was furious at her careless words, and he shouted about her lack of Arab loyalty against the Persian beasts. Her mother was a wise woman and knew the ways of men. She replenished his scotch and murmured, “It is good you are here to guide my daughter. She has no father, you know.”
Mayada felt a surge of anger at her mother, cringing at the idea that any other man might consider himself a substitute for her father, Nizar Al-Askari.
She loved her father with a great passion. March 2, 1974—the day her father had died after a long bout with colon cancer—was the saddest day of her life. She could still barely think about her father, and any time the memory of his suffering came to her, sadness would creep through her body like a spreading darkness, and she would actually become ill. But now she remembered the gentle masculine love that enveloped the three women her father loved most, his wife Salwa and his two daughters, Mayada and Abdiya. During his last conversation with his girls, he had been frantic with the knowledge that he was going to die very soon and would be leaving his daughters without a father’s protection. He had trembled while telling Salwa that Mayada must go to medical school at the American University in Beirut, that he had the funds in a bank in Lebanon for that purpose and that Abdiya should follow her sister. He had looked at Abdiya and called her his “little kitty,” and emphasized that education should be her main goal in life. Her father’s devotion to learning was understandable because he was a highly educated man who had studied economics at the American University of Beirut and then went on to read economics at King’s College at Cambridge, where his tutor was the well-known economist John Maynard Keynes.
With her mother’s words still ringing in her ears, Mayada felt an unexpected spasm of hatred toward Dr. Fadil, hatred that he had lived while her own father had died, even though she knew such thoughts were sinful—only God could make such determinations. She watched as her mother placated the man with her soothing words, yet she was thinking that a person couldn’t appease ruthlessness for very long. For the first time, she was beginning to suspect that Dr. Fadil had a merciless element to his character previously unknown to her or her mother. She thought back to how other Iraqis reacted to his name and to the fact that she knew him. Some veiled their eyes and glanced away, suddenly remembering long-forgotten tasks that needed their attention, while others lavished on her a respect she had not earned—and in the next breath asked her to intervene and assist them in getting this job or that plot of land.
She wanted to ask him why Iraqis reacted to his name with such obvious trepidation, but her mother furtively pinched her arm and gave her a penetrating look.
Dr. Fadil obviously liked the idea of lending a guiding hand to the granddaughter of the legendary Sati Al-Husri. He smiled and then drank some more scotch. He teased Mayada’s mother about the foolishness of children. Before he left the house, he reminded Mayada that without his protection, the discovery of her pin-up hero would have landed Mayada’s entire household in prison for an extended term. When Dr. Fadil finally departed at midnight, Mayada grudgingly admitted that her mother was a genius in manipulating such awkward situations.
And it was this same Dr. Fadil, who still remembered that incident, that now informed her that Iran and Iraq were at war. He told her that Iranian planes had entered Iraqi airspace and passed over Baghdad, although he claimed that Iraqi heroes had now chased them back across the border.
After hanging up the telephone, she reported to Salam what she had learned and then watched as her husband blundered through the house gathering a few supplies to take with him to the front. She felt a sickening realization wash over her that Salam might well be the first battlefront casualty. Although Mayada did not wish to be married to the man, neither did she want him to die.
Women in the Middle East generally accept the rituals of marriage and child-raising without question. Mayada was no exception. By the time she was twenty-three years old, she had considered marriage more than once.
When an attractive man named Salam Al-Haimous walked into her newspaper office to place an ad, the shy-mannered man quickly won her attention. When he saw Mayada, Salam mentioned that they were next-door neighbors. Mesmerized by his gorgeous face, Mayada wondered how she had failed to notice him. But from that day on, she grew more observant. When Mayada next arrived at her home, Salam waited outside to greet her. Despite Salwa’s misgivings about the marriage, Mayada and Salam had gained the blessings of both parents within a few months.
As soon as the ceremony ended, the joyous couple left Baghdad for a lengthy European honeymoon. Mayada had traveled the world regularly since she was a child, but Salam had never been out of Iraq. Within an hour of boarding the aircraft, Salam made it clear that as an Arab sheik, he insisted his wife hide her knowledge in front of others. He explained with a grin, “I will handle everything. I am the man.”
In Italy, Salam wanted to ride all the trains. Mayada adored the museums. Salam liked the gambling casinos. Mayada browsed the libraries.
Country by country, the marriage quickly unraveled.
In Spain, Mayada discovered that Salam thought Picasso, the world-famous painter, was the name of a food dish.
And with that, Mayada realized she had made the biggest mistake of her life.
Still, she dreaded the thought of Salam risking his life in war.
That September morning was only the beginning of years of crushing losses. The ensuing war between Saddam and Khomeini led to the deaths of 1.5 million men, women and children.
Actually, the source of the hostility had begun when Mayada was only a child. At the time of Mayada’s youth, Khomeini was a cranky but unknown religious cleric. Believing that the secular government of the Shah of Iran was ruining the religious life of Iran’s Shiite society, Khomeini was blunt in his criticism of the Shah. An impatient Shah then exiled Khomeini, who fled across the border into Iraq, where he lived for fifteen years in An-Najaf, the Shiite holy city. Khomeini continued to stir up dissent against any ruler not faithfully following the tenets of Islam’s Shiite branch—including the regime of his host, Saddam Hussein. In the Middle East, dictators and kings tread softly around the words of religious clerics, for many Muslims are willing to die for such men.
A year before that September bombing, Saddam received a request from the Shah to exile Khomeini from Iraq. In return, the Shah agreed to stop supplying Iraq’s Shiite population with weapons. Such a promise was welcome to the new Iraqi dictator, who was a member of the Sunni minority. He distrusted Iraq’s Shiite majority, and saw this simple request as an easy way to help solidify his rule. Besides, he was already seething with anger over Khomeini’s refusal to criticize the Shah on Saddam’s behalf. Saddam quickly moved to deport the disruptive cleric from Iraq. A year later, when Khomeini returned from exile in Paris and assumed control of the Iranian government, he proved that he was actually a devoted enemy of Saddam Hussein. Tensions continued to build, and when the Iraqi Shiites formed a group called “al-Da’wah al Islamiyah,” or the “Islamic Call,” which was designed to stage riots and call for a fundamentalist government based on the Iranian model, Saddam moved against his own Shiite population, making wholesale arrests in every Shiite village and ordering death sentences for prominent Shiite leaders. The al-Da’wah responded with the attempted assassination of Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz.
The long-ago rift between two obstinate opponents, Khomeini and the Shah, had hardened the animosity between the governments of Iran and Iraq. Feeling threatened by this new and increasingly cantankerous enemy at his border, Saddam justified a military attack by rejecting the 1975 Algiers agreement with Iran, which had given that country sovereignty over the Shatt-al-Arab, a narrow waterway that was Iraq’s only access to the Persian Gulf. For centuries the two countries had bickered over rights to this waterway, so the sore point was a familiar wound for Saddam to pick.
The war was an eight-year nightmare. Like many Iraqis and Iranians, Mayada and her young children lived like frightened animals, hovering under the dining table or behind the sofa while Iranian bomber pilots broke through Iraqi clouds, eager to kill every living Iraqi. That terrifying time would never fade from her memory even if she lived to be a hundred years old. She would never forget the time the bombs and gunfire became so intense that word spread throughout Baghdad that the Iranians had overrun the city. She had screamed at her terrified babies to get down, to hide under their beds while she rushed through the house locking the doors and moving heavy furniture against the windows, believing that any moment she and the children would be murdered by the victorious Iranians.
The war finally ground to a weary halt on August 20, 1988, when Iran and Iraq accepted U.N. Security Council Resolution No. 598, which called for a cease-fire. Iraqis were so relieved to see the end of the shockingly bloody war that they celebrated by dancing in the streets for more than thirty days.
The Iraqis were still in the process of repairing their damaged infrastructure when a second black door opened and Saddam sent his troops on a desert hike from Baghdad, with orders to invade their tiny Kuwaiti neighbor. This invasion brought the fury of the allied Western nations upon their heads, deluging them with yet another war and leading Mayada to believe that Iraqis would soon swim in rivers of blood. But this second war came and went so rapidly, with the bulk of the Allied bombs precisely hitting their military targets and rarely straying into residential areas, that she felt it a mere skirmish in comparison to the Iranian war. But the moment the war ended, new trouble came from every quarter, with Shiite uprisings in the south and Kurdish uprisings in the north.
Mayada didn’t know what would happen next. Her marriage had been a sham that finally ended in divorce, and now in the midst of war and mayhem she was the sole protector of two young children. She braced for street fighting in Baghdad and rushed to gather extra bread, eggs and water. But to her astonishment, the Allied soldiers quit and simply walked away from their victory without entering Baghdad. This was followed by a short period of idyllic calm, which seemed weird and wonderful after the horror of two wars in only ten years.
The calm quickly gave way to desperation, because the U.N. sanctions lurked behind a third black door. For Mayada, the sanctions were more crippling than the wars. The daily grind of searching market stalls for reasonably priced sustenance to prepare for her two growing children was the most demoralizing task of her life. No pain is more tormenting than to stare into the face of your hungry child and have nothing to offer. She became so desperate that she even sold family heirlooms, such as the jewels in her Turkish grandmother’s medal, presented to Melek by the Sultan. Mayada took ancient maps and antique books to the sidewalk vendors and sold them for a fraction of their true value.
There was yet a fourth black door waiting to open, one that Mayada had sensed as a growing shadow from the first moment of Saddam’s reign. Crouched ominously behind the seemingly endless cycle of wars and violence was the Iraqi Baath Socialist Party’s internal security apparatus, the secret police, which had been put in place by Saddam in 1968, when Mayada was only thirteen. The police state had grown along with her as she had matured into young adulthood, tormenting every Iraqi who passed by Baladiyat or other prisons, the sources of millions of Iraqi whispers such as, “Allah Yostur—God forbid and preserve us.”
As she lay in the dark cell, Mayada cursed herself for her false sense of safety. Most Iraqis were terrified that they could be accused of false crimes at any time without the opportunity to offer an explanation of innocence.
But that first night in Baladiyat cleared Mayada’s mind about Iraq, and she promised herself that if she got out of prison alive, she would pause no longer than it took her to pack a bag and grab her children. She would leave her home and her country and never return, even if she had to sit on the street corners of Amman and sell cigarettes, just as Samara had done.
All the other women in the cell were sleeping. She began to hear steps outside the door, and other doors began to open and close. As the voices grew more urgent, Mayada wondered if the prison was on fire and expected to see smoke seeping through the small opening in their cell door. For the fourth time in only twelve hours, she feared that her time on earth was ending. But there was no sign of fire. Just as she relaxed, Mayada heard a scream that made the roots of her hair tingle. When the first scream was followed by a second and then by a third, she raised herself on her elbows.
Samara rushed quickly to her side and whispered, “Do not worry. They bring in a fresh shift of torturers during the night.”
At that moment a heart-wrenching screech was released throughout the prison. Samara pressed her hand upon Mayada’s face and told her, “I know it is difficult, but try to sleep if you can. You do not know what tomorrow might bring, and you will be better prepared if you are rested.”
But Mayada could not sleep and lay awake the rest of the night.
Even in prison they had a muezzin, and when dawn came she heard the familiar sing-song call to prayer, bringing comfort to her Muslim heart: “God is great, there is no God but God and Mohammad was His Prophet. Come to prayer, come to prayer. God is great, there is no God, but God.”
Mayada pulled up from her metal bunk and balanced on top, vainly trying to escape the aura of the toilet. She faced Mecca and prayed to Allah. Mayada asked God to solve her problem and to get her out of Baladiyat as quickly as possible.
Just as she completed her prayers, breakfast was distributed. She watched closely as the women clambered to the door to receive small portions of lentils and bread, and small cups of tea and glasses of water. Samara said, “I will get you a plate.”
Mayada said that she couldn’t eat, but asked Samara to save her one spoonful of sugar for energy. But she noticed that Samara set aside an extra plate of lentils topped by a slice of bread, obviously in the hope that she could convince her to sample a small portion.
After breakfast, the seventeen women began to take turns using the single toilet. In her modesty, Mayada willed her body to shut down, and she decided that a good side effect of her self-imposed fast would be the lack of need for the toilet.
She sat quietly on the edge of the bunk and watched the women milling about with haste as though they had a busy day ahead of them. A few women paused long enough to give her, their new cellmate, small smiles of encouragement, and Mayada smiled back.
Suddenly the small opening in the door was pushed from the other side and a raspy voice echoed throughout the cell. “Mayada Nizar Jafar Mustafa Al-Askari.”
Fear made her knees so weak that she could not stand, but Samara rallied around her and whispered, “This is a miracle! They never ask for the prisoner the first day after they are imprisoned, but always make the person sweat out two or three weeks in this pit before the first interrogation.”
Mayada did not feel it was a miracle but Samara tried to soothe her. “They do not torture in the early morning. Never! Never! You will be questioned minus the torture, you wait and see.”
Mayada’s body felt so heavy that if she didn’t know better, she would have assumed lead had been poured into her bones during the night. It took a little pull and then a little push from behind for Samara to get her to the door.
The man outside blindfolded her, which almost brought Mayada to hysterics, but she swallowed three or four times in quick succession and reminded herself of Samara’s words—that there were no torture sessions in the morning hours. A sleepless night combined with an empty stomach caused her legs to wobble. She continually crashed into the sides of the hallways. Someone from behind kept grabbing her by the shoulders to keep her pointed in the right direction, and even then it was impossible to walk steadily. Finally one of the men cursed loudly and yanked the blindfold off her eyes and gestured angrily for her to step forward into a room.
One of the men was short and round, though his fingers did not match his torso. They were long and bony, and he snapped them loudly as he gestured for Mayada to enter. She followed his command.
The room was the size of a small auditorium. Three men in security uniforms, all with mustaches, dark hair and bulldog-like features so indistinguishable that she had to hold her tongue to keep from asking if they were related, sat behind a long desk. She instantly sensed that the man in the middle, with his arrogant stare, was the leader, and she knew she had guessed correctly when he ordered the man sitting to his right to open a new page. He glared at her and told her to sit down. “What is your name?” he asked her, as though he didn’t know who he had summoned.
Mayada panicked, thinking that she was about to undergo a trial without legal counsel, or even knowing the charges against her, but she told them that her name was Mayada Nizar Jafar Mustafa Al-Askari, and the designated writer wrote while the leader shouted, “She is known as Um Ali around the Mutanabi and Al-Battawiyeen areas,” which referred to the two quarters of Baghdad where the printing houses were located.
She was not surprised that he knew she was the mother of Ali, but was troubled that the name of her son had passed over his tongue.
He suddenly shouted so loudly that she winced. “Write that she is a Sunni who is highly supportive of the Shiite.” He continued to glare at her. “You were supposed to have come to us two years ago, but Dr. A. Al-Hadithi spared you, all because your great-grandfather was an honor to Iraq.”
She knew that Dr. A. Al-Hadithi held an important post in the Iraqi government, and that his master’s thesis had discussed the educational methods used by her grandfather, Sati Al-Husri.
With a grin, the interrogator added, “Which, of course, was a pity, for we had looked forward to questioning the niece of that bastard Nouri Al-Said.”
She took care not to move a muscle in her face. She was not surprised to hear him attack her father’s Uncle Nouri. She had been told by many others that while her grandfather Jafar was much loved by most Iraqis of his day—so fondly remembered, in fact, that it would be difficult to find anyone with even a harsh word to say about him—Nouri was a different story. He had been a tough, pragmatic leader who did what he felt he had to do to safeguard the newly formed country of Iraq. During the many years he had ruled as Prime Minister, he had created many enemies.
The leader leaned over and whispered loudly into the writer’s ear, and Mayada took that moment to glance to her left and to her right. She was immediately sorry that she had. The walls around her were smeared with blood. She saw chairs with bindings, tables stacked high with various instruments of torture. She saw electrical cables for battery chargers and a contraption that looked like a bow without the arrows. But the most frightening pieces of torture equipment were the various hooks that dangled from the ceiling. When Mayada glanced to the floor beneath those hooks, she saw splashes of fresh blood, which she supposed were left over from the torture sessions she had heard during the night.
The leader shouted one question after another. “Do you have any computers at home? Have you printed any leaflets calling for the overthrow of our President? Do you hire rebels to do your dirty work?”
She breathlessly answered, “No, no,” over and over, telling him, “My shop is for commercial graphic designing and the people who work for me are computer engineers. They are highly educated, and they would never risk their lives through such illegal acts.”
The leader threw her completely off balance when he abruptly changed the subject. His voice lowered dramatically and he began asking her questions about her mother. He wanted to know where Salwa was living and what was the last post she had held in the government, and did she plan on returning and using her skills to further the cause of Iraq, and had Mayada spoken with her mother recently and if so, how was the royal family of Jordan?
Mayada sputtered as she answered. “While she was the Director General of Research and Studies in the Bureau of International Relations before she retired, it is common knowledge that my mother is living in Amman. I am not certain when she plans to visit me in Iraq, but I will be pleased to telephone her and ask her that question, if you wish.”
The leader laughed loudly and told her, “I see that you are as clever as your father’s uncle, Nouri. That man outwitted every opponent until the last day of his life. But his cowardly disguise as a veiled woman couldn’t save him from death.” Without a pause, he asked her once again to reveal all the illegal information on her computers.
Mayada replied, “I am telling you that there are no illegal documents on any of my computers.”
He looked at her from under his heavy eyelids. “That is correct. We have already examined all your computer files and disks. We found nothing.”
Mayada had been sitting there swollen with fear, even though she knew that there was nothing in her files but run-of-the-mill printing work, but with his words she deflated like a balloon stuck by a sharp needle. To hear her inquisitor admit such a thing was a relief, a gift as precious as the rarest diamond. For the first time, Mayada felt a small flicker of hope that she might live.
With his statement she grew bold. “When will I be released?”
He laughed, “Released? Who said you would be released?”
Mayada was befuddled and stared at her interrogator in despair.
He added, “But you can count your blessings that our beloved leader, Saddam, gave us orders not to use violent methods while talking to females. Those instructions arrived this morning, and they saved you.”
The third man, who had not spoken until this moment, suddenly sat upright in his chair and his voice rang first with disappointment and then with indignation at this new information. Mayada saw that he was so irate that she could only guess he held the position of principal torturer and had sat through her interrogation eagerly envisioning the various methods that would make her shriek in pain and despair. Unable to control his frustration, he shouted at her, “I will cook you in a frying pan with grease very soon,” which is a common threat in Iraq when someone wishes to inform you that they are going to slowly put you to death.
The leader glared at the third man, and she thought for a moment that the two men were going to clash over her fate, but the third man wilted under the leader’s direct gaze.
The leader ordered, “Go back to your cell. We are not finished with you and will call you back tomorrow.”
Now she felt brave enough to test his resolve. “If you have found nothing illegal, then why am I here?”
“Perhaps something was missed.”
She pushed. “I have children that I raise alone. They need their mother and I must go home to tend to them.”
The leader twisted in his seat and looked directly at her. He replied in a spiteful tone, “Your family has lost its power. Jafar is dead. Nouri is dead. Sati is dead. Nizar is dead. Salwa has abandoned you. There is no one to defend you here.”
She grew quiet in the knowledge that he was right. Since Saddam’s rise to power, Iraq had turned into such a place that her jailers could enter false information into her computers and take that information to their supervisors, and those men would slowly climb the ladder of command, convincing others that she was indeed guilty and worthy of their torture. And, truthfully, who was there to help her? No one—there was no one to turn to, she sadly admitted to herself.
President Saddam’s face came to mind, and she speculated what his response would be if she telephoned his palace office and politely asked for his assistance in obtaining a release from Baladiyat prison. She had met Saddam five or six times, and had even had been honored and rewarded by him for her writings. She had been specially selected to translate Nostradamus’s writings for Saddam’s reading pleasure. He had a great interest in the book, since he believed he was a world figure mentioned in the astrologer’s predictions. Mayada had even saved other lives in the past by pleading for personal mercy from Saddam. But she quickly dismissed the idea of placing such a call, for the small pad where she kept his telephone number was hidden in a secret place in her home. Even if she had the number in her pocket and managed to reach his offices, she assumed Saddam would not take her call, for she had not spoken with him since Dr. Fadil had been convicted of treason and put to death.
She stared for a moment at the three men questioning her and wondered what they might say if they knew she had Saddam’s private telephone number. But she knew deep down that she was not a close family friend whom Saddam would bother to defend. Besides, he was a paranoid man who had deceived and even killed close family members. If he happened to hear that someone was disloyal, he accepted the accusation without question. She recalled how Saddam had trusted Dr. Fadil for more than twenty years, but that when a false allegation against Fadil was raised, Saddam had been ruthless.
“Go!” the leader shouted at her. “Get out of my sight!”
Mayada looked at him intently for a brief moment and was tempted to ask how it was possible to hate a woman he did not know, but she didn’t dare. She collected herself by taking a few deep breaths and then stood and walked slowly to the door, for it was important to her that she hide her fear in front of these men.
The same men waited outside the door to walk her back to the cell, and one of the two appeared to be sleeping with his head resting against the wall. Mayada cleared her throat and both men jumped to attention. When she stepped outside the door, she saw that another prisoner was waiting to go into the interrogation room. He was extremely thin, almost ghost-like, and he squatted on the floor. When Mayada walked out, he stood. Mayada thought then that rather than a ghost, he resembled a swaying palm tree. His face was badly bruised and he had the saddest eyes Mayada had ever seen. A guard pushed him roughly toward the door of the room she had just exited. The guard was exceptionally cruel, cursing him and ordering him to move when it was clear that the man did not have the strength to stand upright. Mayada and the thin man exchanged a look. She had a strong sense that today was the last day of that poor man’s life, but she smiled, hoping that somehow the smile of a woman would lift his spirits. He must have thought the same, for he took a big chance that won him a blow to his bruised face when he said, “Contact my family for me. I am Professor . . .” but his words were cut short. He was lifted off his feet and tossed like a bag of dried hay into the interrogation room.
Back in her cell, there was an air of excitement. Two new prisoners had just arrived, bringing their number to twenty. When she heard the news, Mayada searched the cell for new faces. But Samara hustled her to the bunk and asked for every detail of her interrogation. “Tell me everything,” she demanded.
After Mayada gave her the full account, Samara leaped to her feet and praised Allah, saying, “Our Mayada has just experienced three miracles. I have been in Baladiyat for four months and I have never heard of such a thing.”
Mayada was smiling. Samara was so theatrical. She posed with one hand on her hip and gestured with the other. “Here are the miracles. Number one: The interrogators sent for Mayada the very day after her detention. This, as we all know, never happens. These cruel men always let a new prisoner sit in the cell and suffer for a few days first. Number two: Mayada was not physically mistreated. Again, this never happens. They always like to inflict torture. Number three: No real questions were asked. The interrogator even admitted that Mayada’s computers were clean.”
Samara then clapped her hands together. “Three miracles. This means our Mayada is not long for cell 52.” Samara smiled broadly. “Everyone in this cell think of the messages you want to send to your families. Mayada will be released soon.” She turned to Mayada. “You will be our carrier pigeon, Mayada. In Baladiyat, freed prisoners are our only method of sending out messages.”
Samara was so positively enthusiastic that a small gleam of hope began to grow in Mayada’s heart that perhaps her time in Baladiyat actually would be brief.
But just as her spirits began to be lifted by the thought that she would soon see Fay and Ali, the women heard boots running in the hallway and secret police shouting, “His heart stopped!”
It was forbidden, but Mayada dropped to her knees and opened the slit where their food was shoved into the cell. There was the professor. He was lying flat in the prison hallway. Mayada was struck with a great sadness that she had been unable to catch his name, so that someone might notify his family.
She turned and looked at Samara. “Why are they upset that he is dead? They are the ones who killed him.”
Samara shrugged and told her what she had already guessed. “With certain prisoners they desire additional information. They are experts at keeping the ones they are questioning one breath away from death. It is a game for them to see if they can push and pull a human back and forth, in and out of the grave. When a prisoner dies one moment before they wish them dead, it is considered a failure.”
The tragic end of the professor instantly switched Mayada’s mood from sweet anticipation to bitter sadness, and she returned to the bunk and lay quietly. She had been in prison for only one day, yet it already felt like a lifetime.
The sounds of the other nineteen chattering shadow women, crowded in a tiny space, increased to a loud crescendo. The foul smells from the toilet seemed to cling to her clothes and her skin and her hair. Although the day had hardly begun, she was tired. She closed her eyes. Drawn to the power of her memories, she thought about her mother’s father, her grandfather Sati, the man who also became a legend in the Arab world. She wondered what her Jido Sati, as she called him, would say if he knew that his precious little granddaughter was locked in the notorious Baladiyat prison.