Asmer, Me, and Battaween

Samir Nakkash was born in 1938 in Baghdad/ Al Battaween – Iraq. Forced to leave Iraq in 1951 with his family while he was a teenager. Lived in Israel, India, Iran and the UK. During his journey in those places he learned many languages but he kept writing in Arabic.


IN SABLAKH

The novel “Shlomo the Kurdish, Me and the Time” is about the life of a Kurdish Jew born in Sablakh (now called Mahabad) in Iran, and forced to leave it to Baghdad, India, then Israel. I failed to know who the “Me” in the title is. The story of Shlomo is told by his own as if talking to somebody, that somebody may be Sameer Naqqash, who referred to himself in the title of the novel by “Me”.

Well Shlomo is religious and this is so clear from the beginning. That was the first challenge to my love to this novel. The second challenge is that Shlomo is a merchant, and a successful one, the wealthiest in his poor village, still he is crying and waning… talking about that period while waning like a child… well the challenge is harder dear friend…

He is married to a loyal wife named Asmer. We know nothing about Asmer in the novel which didn’t describe her features. Shlomo loved a girl, a very young one. Asmer felt his passion. She went to that girl’s father and talked to the father who accepted to give is daughter as a second wife to Shlomo. Shlomo accepted the second wife happily like usual for a spoiled child... and please allow me to declare that I cannot love nor respect this man… well I will just try to respect…. Ok?

With pages passing by, the girl starts turning into a noisy annoying wife and a mother of a kid. While the second wife was giving birth to the second kid while explosions of the war between the Russians and the Othmans are taking place in Mahabad. You deserve it Shlomo, and Raja’a Nakkash, your novel is annoying… especially that it says nothing about the suffering of the new wife, old wife, and children.. the protagonist Shlomo is at the centre of your lights, is as obese as your 360 pages novel full of egocentricity and selfishness.

If I were you Raja’a Nakkash, I would have neglected Shlomo with his long beard thinking about money, sex and candies, that spoiled child, and told the story of his first wife, Asmer.
I would even chose a lover for Asmer, a secret lover, a young man full of charm and courage and life.

Once Shlomo started to talk about the growing up of his son and the waking up of his desires to play with….. I thought he would say to play with girls, philosophy, art, or something that we like to play with, but he said “moneys”….he even didn’t say money, he said moneys…
The idea of leaving Sablakh was a “sperm in the womb of unknown future” as the writer said. The pregnancy with it would take a road in which reality reached from its unbelievable news and weight of symbols what is equal to myths.

When the Russians invaded they tried to make good relations with the Christians, as brothers of the same religion. Then the Othmans and the Germans came and “liberated” it. The Othmans killed the Christians of Sablakh and ordered the Jews to bury the dead bodies. When the Russians regained the control on Sablakh, they killed the Muslims and ordered the Jews to bury the dead bodies.

IN BAGHDAD

Of the important chapters in the novel are the chapters dated to 1941, and to 1951. In 1941, the year of Farhood, in June the Baghdadis were talking about the rumor of Nazi forces entering Baghdad soon. The Iraqi Jews were afraid from this rumor due to the reputation of how the Nazis treat the Jews wherever they go. The non-Jewish Iraqis were “hoping” that the Nazis would come to “rescue” them from the British occupation. Rumors increased about the withdrawal of the British forces and about the entering of German forces. Suddenly new rumors said that the German had withdrawn and the British would come back. At that time, Iraqis attacked the Iraqi Jews and took their possessions from money and gold and other things, and killed a lot of them. Shlomo, during that time was away from his home in a house of a friend. His wife Asmer became afraid about him and wondered if he had been harmed by the terrorists. She went out running in the direction of the house of his friend. She saw men armed with knives. The knives men noticed that this lady is in terror, so she must have been a Jew. They threatened her, she cried “Shlomo!!” they hit her with their knives and she cried again while her holy blood was reaveled. With the third Shlomo cry she fell on the ground and emit no voice, no more.

Shlomo stayed in Baghdad and he started to be a famous merchant. In 1951 the police ordered the Jewish or Iranian origins to leave Baghdad. They didn’t accept that he took his money with him. He must leave at once. And he did.

Al Bataween, where Samir Naqqash the novelist had been born, Shlomo’s family, and the lady who take care of me when I was a child had lived, is nowadays a neglected area while the old houses are very sad in their loneliness and abuse. I hope that comes the day that Shlomo, his sons and daughters, or grandsons and daughters can come to regain their father’s possessions and to live a respectful life where they belong as I hope that I one day meet that lady who took care of me when I was a kid and told me about Jesus.

Patience of an Ordinary Iraqi

We went to the elections happily and voted with great joy and pride of ourselves believing that we are writing history. I was glad due to my belief that the Iraqis would chose the best, and that the Iraqi politicians are more experienced than before.

After the elections, and day by day I was nauseated by the performance of the politicians’ emotional shouting on each other having no Iraq in their mind, giving the impression that what they fear about is their chairs, their pockets, and their narrow belongings.
Last Friday I went to central Baghdad and sat next to Dijla:






Sabreen (still, we have patience)
Ya weali (oh my suffering)
Ya 7baibiti Sabreen (my love, we still have endurance)
Ya wleifiti Sabreen (my companion, we still have patience)
Sabr el ashjar 3la sheta (the endurance of trees in the face of winter)
Sabr el ghareeb ib wa7shita (the patience of the stranger in his loneliness)
Sabreen
Belchi Allah yin6i mrad lil sabreen (hoping that God will give the patient what he wants)

I joined a symposium run by Al Mada and Naseer Al Jaderchi, who failed to get enough voices to have a chair in the parliament till now, was giving a short speech about Mustafa Al Barzani, the Kurdish leader. I went to a restaurant and ate rice and spinach sauce with a glass of yogurt.
Would the nowadays Iraqi politicians put Iraq into their eyes? would they hear Fuad Salim and join us in a simple lunch next to Dijla?


The singer, Fuad Salim, was a know member of the Iraqi Communist Party since long time and the previous regime had ban his songs.

The Psychiatrist in "A House Near Tigris River"

Chapter Five

“This doctor you send is to is a mad man! He needs somebody to treat him!” p. 33

Sahera’s evidence for the madness of the psychiatrist was his habit of holding that unlit cigarette and acting as if it is lit, i.e. taking a breath in, and acting as if getting rid of the tobacco ash in an ashtray. She also seemed annoyed because he didn’t let her speak. He just put her out, then blame her for the fire that Saeed had caused, then asking her why she is acting as if she is Saeed’s mother. All the interview had raised some annoying feelings inside Sahera… but that was important… isn’t it?

The writer had wrote the scene of the fire set by Saeed in the psychiatrist’s desk in a caricature way by exaggeration to prove, or provide, the “funny” character of psychiatrists and the fate they deserve: “setting fire in their papers, i.e., in their theories, in their pseudoscience” as may the writer wanted to say as I think.

Chapter 6

“from among the dark shadows that are stuck to the room’s ceiling, the mad doctor’s face reared to her, with his shining bald, his glasses, and his unlit cigarette.” P.41

When he appeared to her while she was sleeping at her bed at night, he offered her more time to speak and to lie on the couch… so he used the couch, with some more time, and that was Saheera’s dream. So the writers said indirectly that people dream that their psychiatrists are giving more time and using the couch… i.e. being more psychologically oriented than biologically…

The psychiatrist unlit cigarette might be a symbol to an ineffective tool (cigarette that gives no smoke= ineffective cigarette)… and more worse, even if that tool (cigarette= drug=pharmacology) would work, it will do bad things more than good (cigarette smoke—cancer//// pharmacology--- dependence or dulling of the mind)… so that’s maybe how the psychiatric “biological” tools is seen in this novel.

In Chapter 20, and the novel was about to end the psychiatrist had lied on his couch and talked to the new patient about his worries, then he brought all the patient’s files and pissed on them, then set fire on them… that was little naïve from the writer but still the symbol is shouting that the psychiatrist, in the writer’s mind, is not respecting the patients, is helpless, and nihilistic.

The psychiatrist in the Mahdi Esa Alsaqr novel is only a secondary character to help the main characters Saeed and Sahera to tell their complicated story with the Iraq-Iran eight years war, cadavers, poverty, and inhumanity. I wondered how psychiatry in such a circumstances be practiced. Insomnia can be attributed to the hot weather and lack of electricity leading to no air cooling and darkness. No enough food would lead to weight loss, and hence fatigability, headache, and poor concentration. War is not interesting off course, so loss of interest in life (=war)…. And many deaths in family and neighborhoods and friends… so could one diagnose depression? Especially when not psychotic? The DSM-IV had regarded bereavement as an exclusion from the diagnosis of depression… but what about war and its consequences?

The novel is written in Baghdad from 7th May 1991 to 5th January 1992…. Such times… Yeah … Such times… I got empathetic with the writer and his protagonists in spite of everything… the novel end and “…. and the lights of fires are illuminating the skies of the city!”…
Now that the fires are getting weaker and weaker, what would be the role of mental health in this city, and how would it be perceived by Saheera, Saeed, and Alsqr?

Mothers and Candles

The 8th of March is the International Women's Day. I saw that activity in Al Sayd Club in Baghdad in T.V. in advance for that coming day. All those ladies singing and dancing and playing music. I would vote for her, she is stronge, clever, and beautiful. I took a novel and started to read.

It was 1991 and there was no electricity in Baghdad. The psychiatric clinic was lit with candles. Sahera and Saeed were waiting for their turn to the doctor when a woman came and talked to Sahera (Sahera is a common female name which means: a woman who stay awake at night) asking her about Saeed and whether he is her husband or brother .. or what?

Sahera annoyed from that woman questions decided to attack her with a question: “how many children do you have?” and as the woman told her frightened that she got four children, Sahera held her from her arms so that she didn’t escape and said: “I advise you to put them back to inside your womb urgently, and that you seal your womb with red wax, so that they don’t take them from you. And do not let anyone form them to go out, not now!”. She let go of the woman’s arm who escaped away from Sahera who’s turn to enter to the psychiatrist had come.

Mehdi Esa Alsaqr novel “A House Near Tigris River” had drowned me in its charm. I put the novel away and took Kaplan’s and Sadock’s text and searched for Otto Rank and read under his name:
“He developed a new theory which he called Birth Trauma. Anxiety is correlated with separation from the mother- specifically, with separation from the womb, the source of effortless gratification. This painful experience results in primal anxiety. Sleep and dreams symbolize the return to the womb”.

In the psychiatrists room, lit by three candles, all the three talked at the same time, Saheera was asked to go outside to leave Saeed alone with the psychiatrist. Saeed refused to talk. The eight pages describing the interview were so clever in describing the internal world of Saeed who was going away in memories then coming back to the psychiatrist who asks him to talk about what is bothering him. Saeed noticed the huge amount of papers on the table between him and that psychiatrist with that unlit cigarette in his hands. Saeed (a common Arabic name means: Happy) asked the psychiatrist to give him matches. Some few pages of the novel went in Saeed’s memories and the psychiatrist’s insistence. Finally Saeed got the matches; he lit a stick and set fire in the papers. The psychiatrist started shouting while trying to control the fire with his hands.

As he controlled the fire, Sahera and the psychiatrist assistant entered the room, the psychiatrist blamed Sahera for the fire that had burned part of his white shirt. Sahera complained: “But you didn’t let me speak!!! “. The psychiatrist saw Saheera now alone while Saeed waits outside. He blamed her for acting as if Saeed’s mom saying: “you are not old, so why do you make yourself a mother for a man you did not give birth to?”

The psychiatrist prescribed drugs and asked them to come later. That was it. The novel leaves you, at page 40 in this 200 pages novel, not knowing what is the relation between Sahera and Saeed and why is Saeed is trying to set fire in everything he see, and why is Sahera is married to a man since one week and she is still a virgin as Saeed said to the psychiatrist?
Forty pages of clever narration that leaves you thirsty for more and you have no choice but to continue.

So That I Can Smell Baghdad

Some researchers wrote books of history about Baghdad. Why doesn’t my curiosity get satisfied from what they wrote? What am I searching for in novels about Baghdad history? Why novels?
Historians write their books about incidents and dates. Their trial to be “objective” as opposed to the “subjective” had made their writings important, of high scientific value, but tasteless and without smell. Smell?

Smell is one of the most primitive senses. Physiologically, smell has a more direct route to the brain than any other senses since its receptors in the nasal cavity connect to the brain directly without synapses, in the contrary to the other senses. Of interest, is the direct connection between the olfactory bulb (part of brain responsible for smell) and the cortex known to be involved in the formation of long term memories.

If only Patrick Suskind had written his novel “Perfume” without those murders then it would have been one of my best novels, and films.

I cannot remember many things from my early life, I mean when I was a child, but I can remember some smells from that period, and some few other things. Why am I introducing myself to my Baghdad history via novels is that maybe I am trying to smell Baghdad well and keep it in my memory.


Smell of the 8 Years War

Khidr, believed at some lapses of the mind and time that there are cameras watching him. He also believed that he is looking like Marlon Brando especially in the film “Last Tango in Paris”. He headed to Baghdad T.V. managers and offered that he help them!

That was what I read from the novel before I bought it. The library man told me that the novelist, Nasef Falak is his friend and had told him that this novel is about his life in the Iraq-Iran war. The novel title was little strange and long: “Khidr Qad and the Olive Green Era”. Olive Green is referring to the color of the uniform of Iraqi army before 2003. Khidr is an Arabic male name. Qad in Arabic means “maybe” in English but in the novel Khidr is called Khidr Qad because one day, when interrogated by a member of the security men in the eighties, he kept answering: Qad… Qad… (means Maybe… maybe) to all the questions. They thought he had a mental illness. Since then and he is called as Khidr Qad.

Khidr’s brother “Abboudi” tried to be excused from the military service. He went to the secret handicap atelier in Souq Mraidi and asked them to break his arm for him to be faced by that question: a fracture by a bullet, or normal fracture?
Abboudi ended in a military unit of the physically handicapped and mentally ill.

“All the soldier are unified by one expression in the faces, an expression at the extreme of the dissension and obscurity. Their eyes are gloomy black holes, they are black hollows that drink all the darkness. With a unifying smile, stuck on the jaws from ear to another, not a smile but a neutral grimace. Took place between the sea of the horrible and the desert of the absentmindedness, one grimace copied over the soldiers’ faces, compelled to do so like a destiny that must happen like the birth cry.”
p. 66

Nsaif Falak, born in Baghdad/ Karradat Mariam in 1954, graduated from the college of Beaux Art 1980, went to Iran in 1983 to spend 6 years there, came back to Iraq to be impresent in Abu Ghraib prison for 4 years then released.


Smell of Candles

Adieu Babel—Naim Kattan





Remember the Ruins of Um Kalthum? Remember Farida and that novel about Saleema Murad? He is the same writer, Naim Kattan. Born in Iraq in 1928, and living in Canada since 1954.

P 48-50:

“we were Jewish, we knew that, and everybody did. But we were also sons of this land. Sons of this home. And we had to declare this every moment. To scream it continuously fearing that it might be forgotten. Fearing that we would be deprived from our right in the fortune that God had given to this kingdom, his kingdom.

“Isn’t it right that we were the best Arabic grammar scientists? We were delighted every time we mention the quotations of linguists: Father Krimli, Jewish teacher. Very ordinary thing. There were no conflict nor any consideration in the love that we hold for this language that we were speaking since birth, and it was ours to the same degree that it was to desert Bedouins.

“The names the Jewish used to call their children with were evidence to their big talent in adaptation to the changing reality, without meaning that they were sacrificing their old loyalties or abandoning their fidelity to their roots.

“In this land that knew havoc after havoc, in this land of immigrants, they were always the example of stability and continuity. They endured in the face of the most tyrannical invaders coming from the most omnipotent and savage empires. They had to show every new master, more of their new assurances. To pay heavy prices so that to protect their heritage and to defeat extinction. All over centuries they were the witnesses on victories and defeats, on fervor and anger. And they had, times and times again, extracted their rights from this land. They are the sons of this land in a double way. Isn’t every one of them got two names at least? One is Jewish remembering us of the old ancestors: Ezekiel, Abraham, Naseem, Ezra, or Elyahoo, Lea, Rifka, Samha, or Raheel.

“And with every new era, new names were added to this stable eternal list, another list of names that changes with the situations, remembering of the presence of the outside world while it change place with the eternity world. In this way the Persian named like Khatoon, had leaft the place to Turkish ones, like Geourji. Then it was time for the western world to introduce its special names to the families, and we were suddenly in front of Flora, Regina, Rene, Albert, Edward, and Morris. New masters, new names. And the mother, with their inherited wisdom, were reading in the future the wave of nationalisim that would go high and unstable, so they put vague names to their sons that could be read with multiple meaning and references, putting some important bit of suspicion wandering around their real belonging at the crucial moments, when it is time to join an institute or office. This didn’t reach the degree of capturing the names of Muslim imams & holy martyrs. No family thought of naming their son Mohammed, or their daughter Fatima. But, there was a plentiful portion of shared neutral names, like Subhi and Akram and Zaki and Jameel, with the addition of the easiness of changing Joseph to Yousuf, and Abraham to Ibraheem. There is no religious suggestion in these names. All that is there are that these names were a bet on characters of children and to let them have some qualities of “generosity” or “beauty”. “


The last page of the novel says:

“These faces that are looking at me, these faces that are going away, these faces that I look at from behind the buss glass, these faces will be Iraq. These faces will be all that is left for me from Iraq. I hope that I will carry their reflection forever. That must happen sp that I keep my childhood. That must happen so that I can enter the new world without being cut from this essential part of me. Without scattering frivolously this raceme of dream and memories.”

“The buss went in an unpaved road. I hoped helplessly that these faces stay alive forever. Sand started to go up drawing a curtain between us and the city which started to disappear a little by little in a dense dark miserable mist. Stones started to scatter under the grinding sound of the tires. Through the tears that flew slowly on my cheeks I saw dogs barking and running behind us. I am no more in need of throwing a stone on them so that they go away. I don’t need to throw to protect myself from them".

So he left, like others did, with a bitter feeling, leaving their country of origin, were their roots are deeper than any others. If one day my soul would be free, I would send her to Meskinta church in Al Meedan, lit a candle, put the chain around my neck and make a wish that you all return in a welcoming warm country, filled with love and respect, and I would leave my soul there praying till the iron chain would unlock automatically no matter how long it may take.

Smell of Dijla

Da’abool… Amal Porter





Starts by that Baghdadi evening where Da’abool is left alone in the carpentry atelier he works in next to Dijla. He took one of the boats he made by his own hands, put his Arak bottle in it, and went into the river heading for the source of that song he was hearing, a song of Iraqi maqam. On his way he started to take sips of Arak and soon he started to sing with the song. A wave of memory took him to his childhood back when his family had died in a big fire that spread to their house from the neighboring buildings that belong to the British army. Da’aboul doesn’t know how old he was at the time of that fire that caused big fear to enter his little heart. He went running escaping the fire. His mother and his sister Badriya must had died, he said to his self. He went running in that Baghdadi night worried that a bad spirit (Al Khannaq) may harm him as his mother always had warned him from. She did not warn his sister. Little Da’aboul had concluded that Al Khannaq hurt only boys, not girls. So when he was found the second day by that man who thought Da’aoul was a girl, Da’aboul lied and said that he is a girl and his name is Badriya, same of his sister’s name. That man took him (her) to his house to live and work as a servant for them. Azzouri and his wife Rihlo treated “her” like their daughter. But one day Rihlo insisted that she takes “her” to the public bath. Da’aboul, being afraid that his male identity would be exposed in the bath went running from Azzouri and Rihlo to a new family house, to Hafeetha. Haffethat got a son and a daughter and Da’aboul, also known as Badria and treated as a girl, had to care for the children and for the household. He remembers how he helped the Hafeetha in the bath while she was naked. After some time his male identity was discovered and he was expelled from the house with threats of harming him. He went running to another family’s house, a couple of Syrians who lives in Baghdad for a while. The man taught him to make Auds in his carpenter atelier and also how to play it. In the atelier Da’aboul also met some few people with special taste to music and art including Ali. The woman taught him about Islam religion. When they left to Syria some time after, tears filled the scene with rain of nostalgia and gratitude.
A novel written by the color of old Baghdadi mud bricks, by the smell of Iraqi Arak Mistiki, by the time of Qushla, next to Dijla.

Da’aboul, left alone, went to Ali who took him to a big carpenter atelier of making wooden boats next to Dijla. Usta Hoobi the boss of the atelier was happy that he got such a punctual and artistic carpenter and he let Da’aboul to live in the atelier. Da’aboul would spend the nights after the morning working hours alone next to Dijla with his Aud, sometimes with the accompany of Ali.

Ali who is from a wealthy family closed to spend his time working in that “Usta Hoobi” carpenter atelier. He chose Da’aboul, that silent man, to tell him about his change of religion and about his love to Iraqi Maqam. Da’aboul told Ali about his love to Saleema the baker. When Ali suddenly died Da’aboul refused to join the traditional way of saying farewell to Ali, after all Da’aboul was the only one who knew about Ali’s change of religion in India next to that holy river. Da’abould said farwell to Ali in his own special way.

During my life, I was asked many times why do I read novels, and don’t I have something better to do with my time? The worst times when a bunch of people ask me and laugh on me. I was shocked many times how I get speechless. It seemed that I don’t know why I do read those novels. If I am looking for history then there are hundreds if not thousands, if not millions, of professional history books. If I am searching for psychology then read academic texts. But books are books after all, and the more academic they are, the more soulless, the more odorless. I read novels about Baghdad so that I can feel the pain of Khidr Qad and his brother Abboudi, so that I feel the identity crises our land is suffering from while its most strong deep roots are being pulled out, so that I can smell the candles St Meskinta and her children had lit one day before their martyrdom, so that I join Da’aboul in that farewell ritual next to Dijla. So that I love more my Baghdad and keep her perfume deep in my mind. So that I never forget.

Thief

Today was a rainy day in Baghdad. A malicious girl invited me to an adventure in which she stolen my time, worries and boredom.

(NANCY):
Strawberries cherries and an angel’s kiss in spring
My summer wine is really made from all these things

(LEE):
I walked in town on silver spurs that jingled to
A song that I had only sang to just a few
She saw my silver spurs and said lets pass some time
And I will give to you summer wine
Ohh-oh-oh summer wine



I woke up on a strange tune, a tune of something like when a metallic spoon hits an empty wine glass. The house was dim since there was no electricity and I thought that it was dawn. I went walking dazed to the kitchen. Nobody was there so I drank a glass of water to hear again that same one note tune: “TINN”!

“Who is there?” I headed for the hall to find a strangely tall white cigarette lit next to a wine glass with few deep red drops. I took the glass and started to smell the wine. “He He He” I heard my front door shut with that malicious laughter. I run to my door to find it half opened, half closed. I wanted to open it but she was holding the door from the outside and pulling it. We fought on the door but her laughter was so loud threatening that my neighbors may woke up from this unbelievable incident in this early cold dim morning so I let her close the door on me and heard her steps going down stairs. As I tried to check the time, I discovered that she had stolen all my clocks and watches.

(NANCY):

Strawberries cherries and an angel’s kiss in spring

My summer wine is really made from all these things

Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time

And I will give to you summer wine

Ohhh-oh summer wine

(LEE):

My eyes grew heavy and my lips they could not speak

I tried to get up but I couldn’t find my feet

She reassured me with an unfamiliar line

And then she gave to me more summer wine

Ohh-oh-oh summer wine

Was it a dream or not is a question to answer before I get enough deep sleep so as soon as I knew that it is raining in Baghdad I took my leather jacket over my sleeping pajama and held my blanket and said to the minibus driver: “Take me to her!”
The bus driver stopped his radio from all that religious shouting while I passed into deep sleep in the back seat. As we reached the river he said: “She said she would be by the river”. As I reached the river I found her gone leaving me a book on a seat near the river. As I was about to worry about where to find her, I found that she had stolen my worries.

(NANCY):

Strawberries cherries and an angel’s kiss in spring

My summer wine is really made from all these things

Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time

And I will give to you summer wine Mmm-mm summer wine

(LEE):

When I woke up the sun was shining in my eyes

My silver spurs were gone my head felt twice its size

She took my silver spurs a dollar and a dime

And left me cravin’ for more summer wine

Ohh-oh-oh summer wine

She left me an apple next to the book which was so funny and fruitful and it was time to ride my bicycles in rain. I ride and ride till I felt thirsty. They told me to go to the well next to that old church. A wise man was waiting for me with all his calm and patience. “It easy young man, just close your eyes and you would drink water!” and as he was departing with his malicious smile he added: “never open them till you are not thirsty anymore”. I stood in front of the well and closed my eyes. Her hand approached my mouth full of cold water, I drank from her hands, it was so sweat. When I opened my eyes, she was gone stealing away my boredom.

(NANCY):

Strawberries cherries and an angel’s kiss in spring

My summer wine is really made from all these things

Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time

And I will give to you summer wine

Mmm-mm summer wine

Tishreeb History

It was another Friday and Baghdad is not crowded again since it is a holiday and people are spending their time at home, so we chose to go for a walk. As we passed from Al Meedan Sequare and saw what they are offering to sell my friend commented: “as if a deranged memory”.
“What do you mean?” I asked. He explained while asking me to look at those things they sell: “look at these things…


… they look as if a symbolism to a deranged memory. As if somebody is trying to remember his history but things are in a mess!”.


What my friend said was so right and I decided to take pictures. We then headed to Um Kalthoum café and took a cup of tea hoping that this dose of tea mixed with Um Kalthum songs might brought us back to something that can hold about our history. Um Kalthoum was singing her slow calm repetitions symbolizing what may time means to an Arabic, something that goes round and round slowly while you’d better sleep after eating your lunch and drinking a cup of tea with a cigarette whose smoke gather up under the ceiling while all the dust is falling down to the ground in silence if you don’t snore, and in a hypnotizing manner if you do snore.

We reached Al Mada institute and there was a symposium about Abu Gati’a (Abou Ga4i3), that simple farmer who started to have a program in the radio and gained big reputation since the people liked what he was saying a lot at those old days (in the 50s I think) then he started to write in that paper that belongs to the Iraqi Communist Party, that famous line that me, nor my friend, had ever heard about. We didn’t know who is Abu Gati’a. I remembered that in spite of the efforts I made I will still know a very little about my country, and wondered what if I didn’t make any effort at all, then what I have known?

Well, we walked in the commercial centre of Baghdad and it was in a mess. We passed near in Al Shorja, behind Al Souk Al Arabi (Shorja is the commertail centre of Baghdad and Al Souk Al Arabi is mainly for clothes) and I noticed that we were between the old mosque of Al Khulafa and Al Latin Church. I remembered that there was a stork living in an old church in Baghdad and that when I was kid I was very interested in knowing about him. I smiled while telling my friend about it. I wondered if it is the same church.

We passed by Soog El Ghazil (a market were animals are sold) and I remembered that about a year before an explosion occurred here and they have accused two women with mental illness to commit that suicide bombing so I left my smile behind me again. It seems that you cannot hold your smile for some continuous time in Baghdad.

Suddenly a two rows red bus passed us and that was something strange because I didn’t see such an old bus since long time. I remembered my father who used to take me in a bus like this one to Al Sadoon Street and I loved to press that red bottom to emit that buzzing sound which means that we need the bus driver to stop in the next station. My father would ask the driver: “my son wants to ring the bell but we don’t want you to stop, ok? He just wants to ring it!”. “ok” the driver would say with a smile. My father would hold me high so that I reach the red bottom and “Ding-Dong”, wow!! “Again!” I would say while I am going down away from the red bottom to feel suddenly that I go up fast and “Ding-Dong”, wow!!
We walked and walked till our legs started to complain from us. It was at that time when I saw it, that big building with that statue holding a flame, as if victories flame, at the corner of the building. I took a picture for it once and asked my neighbor about it and he said: “ohh, it is the cinema, Cinema Roxy, one of the first cinemas in Baghdad if not the first of them, beautiful picture. Don’t loss it!”

My neighbor then told me that he was once taking a photo to an Iraqi flag which was torn and dirty. A strange man stood in front of him and asked sarcastically: “YOU LOVE IRAQ?”
My neighbor answered that man: “Let us say that I love reporting things, so that people would come after me and knew what was going on here. Now look man stand little to the right because I am going to take a picture of you next to the flag. I love reporting as you know.”

We laughed. I didn’t ask him if he took that photo to that man or not. We just laugh and eat the Tishreeb Bagella (=kind of an Iraqi dish) he prepared for us.

Those people that I adore

A painting by Sabti Al Heeti symbolizing Al-Sayyab poems, on the sun he wrote Al-Sayyab famous lines:

"The sun is nicest

in my country

And the darkness
Even the darkness in my home is sweeter

Because it embraces Iraq"





31 Dec 2009


A dreamy night walk in Al Rasheed Street


Salima Basha Murad took her left hand out holding a big white veil and started waving for me before she stopped her Oldsmobile and said: “I have taken off my veil and took a new hair cut, look how beautiful is my hair!” she moved her head from side to side very fast once to look at me with great proud and eyes that caught me from my yellow shirt and drew me towards her kingdom while people around us were just passing by paying no attention to this strange unexplained incident in this full moon night at the very end of 2009. “They got creative coiffures here. Do you want a hair cut?” as she ended her question a rush of about 31 men screaming “we are the ever fast changing raging days” and 12 obese breathless sweating women screaming “we are your boring months” came running towards me holding their scissors. Muayed Neama (the well know Iraqi cartoonist who was assassined) came and took a huge breath in, then blew them away. He rescued me and I was about to thank him when I saw his eyes glistening as if there are some hidden tears behind his glasses. He smiled to me and put his hand on my shoulder while handing me this




At the same time of that miraculous incident, Fuad Al Tikarly went out from one the nearby cafes and said: “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you as my friend Sartre had said”.

Salima whispered while she quieted her engine: “you are not lonely anymore babe” I smelled her perfume and it was not threatening at all. She smiled a childish smile. I saw a green dot between her front teeth. That was strange and I thought for a while that she is just a girl in her 12th anniversary and her legs weren’t tall enough to reach the break and the accelerator pedals. “Come in!” she ordered me as an old friend and I sat next to her in her wide Oldsmobile.
Well I was right about her being a child. She was very short and wearing a childish rosy bride dress and her legs were not reaching to the pedals. “What is this?” I asked her while my smile departed my heart like a drop of black oil from an old engine “your feet don’t reach the pedal and you are wearing a silly rosy dress”.

“My right foot reaches the accelerator pedal but I cannot reach the breaks. This is to your bad luck young man (malice in her eyes) and my wedding dress is no rosy, it is white but the rosy streets lights are reflecting on me…” she took a pause and looked at me with her smile and that same green spot on her teeth then added with singing some unknown tune: “streets lightssss… reflecting on meee… and yooooo”. That was so silly and funny to a degree that I even laughed, how strange. Sometimes I get annoyed from my laughter especially when it means some success to some others, that I don’t like, jokes, but some jokes are irresistible unfortunately.

“A Bedouin that sells Jibin Arab (a type of Cheese) in our quarter every early morning advised me to take off my veil and come to Al Rasheed street at night and to eat a half shish of kebab with fresh celery then to come in front of that bar you like and wait for you to come out and take you there”. A malicious silence position she took waiting what I may say. “At last I know that what was between your teeth was celery” I said while she burst into laughter.

Off course I didn’t believe her, especially that she seemed drunk from the way she moved her hands. “Did that Bedouin advised you to drink Arak (=kind of alcoholic beverage) too?” I asked. “This doesn’t need an advice you boy!!” she laughed while she parked her car near the river and we went upstairs in that big house where she opened a drawer and handed me a book saying “somebody had forgot it here”. She stood in front of me waiting for me that I leave as I deduced. I was so tired and little lost so I said: “I want to sleep”. She looked right at her bed, then at me. She looked little down and put her right hand on her lips thinking. I felt I should not have said that. She gained again her age and now she is tall and old and wearing something dark colored and her face was getting older and older when she said finally: “sleep here I would spend the night downstairs” and as if I was knowing that that would happen I went to my bed and slept.



Ya hala ba7bab galbi
Oh welcome, you that my heart loves

Rou7i raddat min shifitkum
My soul had came back to me since I have seen you

4abat ayam el talaki
How blessed are these days that we meet

min ba3ad ma faragetkum
We meet after parting

Ya hala ba7bab galbi
Oh Welcome, you that my heart loves

A song of Salima Murad with picture of my walk with the people that my heart loves








1st Jan 2010
A real walk in Al Mutanabbi



I woke up the next year and took a minibus to Al Meedan. I sat near an old man. When we approach Al Utafiya (a quarter in Baghdad) he touched my shoulders and said: “Just for the history, here, look there” he pointed by his finger to nearby palms and old buildings “just there was the house of Abu Buneya the famous Baghdadi merchant and his neighbor was Al Sadr house who was a member of the government by then, and I was just a child below 10 years of old and was living in Al Shawaka. Bait Abu Buneya were selling that summer a new kind of ice cream named “Eskimo”. I went with other kids walking from Al Shawaka to here, to his house, he gave us wagons full of ice, and inside it there were the ice cream, he told us if we like to go and sell them to people and then gather the money and bring it back to him, he would give us some money. I took a wagon and saw it full of ice cream, so I ate 2 pieces thinking that he would not notice that. At the afternoon, I came back to his house and I knew that he had counted the pieces he gave me and he made me pay for the 2 pieces I ate.” The old man laughed then continued: “we were bunch of kids and we were tired and wanted to wash so we headed for the house of Al Sadr cause we heard that he got a big garden and a big water pipe that irrigate his garden. The guardian of his house didn’t let us in but Al Sadr came at that same time from his car and he criticized his guardian angrily and let us in to wash. We washed with our clothes on, but as we reached our houses in Al Shawaka walking in the burning sun of Baghdad summer we got dry.”

We reached Al Meedan and went out from the bus, the old man greeted me saying: “such beautiful old times” then he departed to that corner near the main Baghdad public library, in front of the ministry of defense and started pissing.

I headed to Al Mutanabbi Street.

I had asked Naim Al Shatri before 2 weeks about Khudair Meeri’s books and he told me that Meeri himself had gave him one of his books entitled “Honey and madness days” and that he would found it for me next week. But Naim Al Shatri didn’t remember me and asked me to wait for another week and he said: “consider the book is between your hands”.

I went to Al Mada institute to find them making a symposium on Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab with some symbolic paintings about his life and poems by a painter named Sabti Al Heeti, and a lecture about his life by many lecturers but the most vivid and memorable was of Al Fareed Sama’an who had many shared memories with Al-Sayyab.

A painting celebrating the famous poem "The Blind Prostitute" with some lines from the poem written:

"And you are prostituting to buy

what fills the lantern

from Iraq oil

to illuminate a gleam that you

don't see"

I went for a second walk and heard a reporter asking Al Fulfuli library owner who sells among his books some old pictures of Bagdad a clever question: “Do you think if you sell some photos of nowadays politicians that people would buy?”. It was a funny question.

While I went in my way back I saw Naim Al Shatri who forgot me surrounded with a friend of him named Saif Al Deen Al Jarrah by a bunch of people while they were saying some famous parts of famous poems from Al Mutanabbi to Al Jawahiri. Nearby and I saw somebody selling scissors in the ground. They were not threatening at all the people kept listening to poetry.

I wondered if the last night was a reality or dream while I was leaving. Suddenly I saw the book Salima Murad gave me last night “Autobiography and memories, Fuad Meesho, the engineer and the musician”. I held the book and kept walking behind those people that I adore.

Streets of Philadelphia

Again, with the souls of hundreds of Iraqis leaving their bodies not due to a cause but because of some ignorant politicians locked into their narrow belonging, again, with those souls still coloring skies with some red and orange lines I passed the desert between Mesopotamia, where wine was made for the first time and Philadelphia, the place where Jesus had been baptized. Jordan is such a country that law is respected to a degree that I missed. From the border between us and them I knew that I am entering a respectable country. The taxi man who took me to Wist Al Balad (=centre of the city) refused to take money saying that I am his guest. The hotel manager told me that he loves Iraqis and introduced me to that Iraqi who aided me to exchange money with the best price, find the type of food I needed, and a kilo of Jordanian apples and gave some advices about what to do and what not to do. His advices proved to be the best as time was passing by in Philadelphia.


I was bruised and battered I couldn’t
tell what I felt I was
unrecognizable to myself
I saw my
reflection in the window I didn’t
know my own face oh brother
gonna leave me wasting away
in the streets of Philadelphia

On the exam, I was asked about Baghdad, and what mental illnesses do we have the most. We talked about PTSD and resilience. The wave of speech went little far to touch the shores of some hidden feelings when I was asked at the end of the exam: “Now would you go back to Baghdad?” I was planning that I take a plane to visit my family after those years but my family didn’t manage to send me the papers I need for the visa. “Yes, I would go back tomorrow”. I left the exam room and headed for the bath room cause I thought I needed total isolation from others. I locked the door on me for few minutes, enough to go out with my faked smile.

I walked in the avenue till my legs
Felt like stone and I heard
Voices of friends vanished and gone
At night I could
Hear the blood in my veins
It is black and whispering as the rain
On the streets of Philadelphia

The next day from the exam my colleague wanted to go to the hospital where we took our exam and ask for the results. He wanted me to go with him but I didn’t want to. “It is too early, they won’t tell us the results only after at least few days” I said but he insisted to go. I told him that I want to visit the Roman Theatre. He took a taxi, I went walking. People were not that different from Baghdad, but the view of buildings on those mountains was unusual to my eyes. I liked how most of those building were built from stone. On the turning away from that main street I saw her, a vagabond with long black hair chasing the children that were calling her bad names. I reached the Roman theatre to see Philadelphia (=old name of Amman) and Hercules temple above that mountain, Amman with all her historical charm.


Ain’t no angel gonna greet me
Just you and I my friend
My clothes don’t fit me no more
I walked a thousand miles
just to slip the skin

My colleague came from the hospital annoyed that they didn’t give him any result, and annoyed that I didn’t accompany him. He started ventilating his worries and suppressions on my ears which were getting filled every about 15 minutes so I take them off, my ears, and empty them in the streets of Philadelphia to get them filled again with complaints about how much life is difficult and unfair. He even asked me finally before we turn with the street: “is it fair that an old man die in his bed from starvation?” I didn’t want to hear that story. But he insisted: “is it fair tell me?”. “No it is not” I said while we walked near that same vagabond who was now smoking Najela and giggling. As we turned left we saw police, two cars stopped at the centre of the street and a man lying on the street covered from head till lower legs, his feet were looking at us. He seemed dead. As I noticed that, I felt for a fraction of a second that I may fall on the ground. I took hold of myself and walked while my companion found it interesting to stop and watch. I went to the hotel alone and lie in the bed wondering what to do in this cold evening.

Night has fallen I am lying awake
I can
feel myself fading away
so receive me brother with your
faithless kiss or will we
leave each other alone like this
In the streets of Philadelphia

At night my companion came to my room and said that he is “sorry for being insensitive this evening” and he offered that we go to a mall he had visited a year ago in the centre of Amman. We went and it was huge and wonderful. We walked in all its parts and enjoyed its peace and quietness. We took dinner while we were having a nice chat finally.

Flavor

Since 2003, there was an implicit accord between us, my generation of Iraqi youth, that what they had told us about our history in school is not accurate. After 2003 we started to be exposed to some new theories and facts about our country, about our history, about our identity.
I can say that the most of the “new facts” about us were coming from ignorant extremist. An Iraqi would know suddenly that his neighbor since ages must be his enemy, a fact based on religious purposes, but that neighbor may seem nice and respective. Hate would be postponed and replaced by some suspicious waiting.

“The Jewish Market Quarter” by Jamal Abdul-Razaq Al Bedri is not a novel, like the cover says, but is an autobiography of the writer who was born in Samarra early in this century in a Muslim family. He told us about his mother friend “Sit (=Teacher) Najeya” who is also their neighbor. Every time she visited them she would bring candies to the children who liked her very much. Sit Najeya and her family suddenly said one day that they would leave to Baghdad. They went in 1951 and never came back. They went to Israel because they were Jewish.

The book didn’t tell us about the cause of the leaving but it is clear from other references: “Al Farhood” and the governmental new law of withdrawing the Iraqi nationality from all the Jews.
Maybe the book was described as a novel because of its lovable non-systematic narration, something more close to a novel than to an autobiography. The book tells us many things that were really a revelation for me like the origin of the name “Samarra”. They told us in our schools that it is the abbreviation of “Surra Man Ra’aa (= who saw it became happy)” and that it was built by an Abbasid Khalifa. But the writer goes more deep in history and stated that the Abbasid Khalifa who is said to built Samarra to make it as his capital didn’t built it actually from nothing. There was already there an old city inhabitant mainly by Christians and Jews. He move to it, made it larger, and made it as his ruling capital. The book told us also that Shem, son of Noah was born in that same place and from his name came the name of the city since in Arabic he is called “Sam”.

I felt that what he says is strange, I googled the origin of the name of Samarra and found that it is ancient in origin, and came from the Aramaic language, and there are many theories about its meaning and root.

The writer told us also about the founding of an original Torah by German group of excavation in Samarra in the 1930s, a version which belongs to 2000 years ago.
The writer told us that he is a Sunni Muslim, but at the same time, his city of origin, contains the graves of two of the Imams of the 12 imams of Shia. His childhood had been spent around those big monuments and his prayers and Quran reading was done under their domes (Those are the same domes that were exploded in 2006).
The writer got some interest in the history of Jewish people and he told us that he believes what Hertzel said in his book “the Jewish State” in that the Jewish people are like salt and the world cannot live without them, is true.
The book is written with love, here is a translation of some part of it:

“….and there is nothing strange about that since the holy Quran tells us in three quarters of its suras (=chapters) about Moses, the Israelites, and the Jews. When I meditate about that fact I saw it is in resonance with the water to ground ratio, three quarters of water, and one quarter of land. And from this point of view I understand the relation of Moses the prophet and the Jews with the sea.. since the sea contain the salt which protect its water from getting rotten”.

Decades after Sit Najeya family left, the writer and one of Najeya’s son, Yousif (=Joseph) met. The second half of the book tell us what happened to Najeya family.
It was a pleasure to see that “new facts” about us are being told by some few educated men filled with love and acceptance. Iraq is still under the influence of the some bad cooks who forgot essential elements and Iraq is getting more and more tasteless. Hope Iraq would gain its original flavor someday.

The book is published by
Dar Al Hikam Publishing and Distribution in 2004 in its first edition

"Khidr Qad and the Olive-green Era" a novel by Naseef Falaq

The king with the goat ear got the habit of killing any barber that cut his hair for him so that people would not know about his ears. The last barber was imprisoned in the king’s castle but they let him only to have a walk in the king’s castle garden. In his walk he told the ground. Reeds grew up from the ground. A shepherd came one day and they asked him to cut the reeds away. The shepherd made reed-pipes from them and sold them. Every time one of the villagers plays with the reed-pipe, the pipe would sing: the king got ears of a goat. The king made a speech to his villager: “all honest people must got goat ears”. Since then and the villagers got goat ears.

That was the synopsis of Khidr piece of theatre he made while he was a student that drove troubles after him. That day of the act he had to jump over the wall of his college and run away. He was not able to go back to his college unless he sign on a paper stating that he would never write a piece of theatre. He started to write small notes and insert them in his big wooden table of writing that he made for his self. He made some secret hidden area in the table where he can insert papers. They would not go out unless by breaking the table.

It seems to me a nightmare becomes reality
The last days of the paradise are gone for you and me
We're living in the crossfire
And we'll be killed at first
Why cannot people that we made the leaders of the world
Understand that we don't wanna fight
Understand that we are mush too young to die
Understand no one will survive
Understand that we love our life

Khidr was a student in Baghdad Beaux Art Academy. He cannot kill somebody. But the regime wanted him to join the army, it was war with Iran and all men of his age must fight. He left his table to his friend Kareem and told him about its secret. He took two books with him to war, one of Albert Camus “The Plaque” and the other of Taher Ben Jalloun “The Sacred Night”. He spent most of the time in reading to the surprise of his different bosses who all punished him. He was shifted to Baghdad big prison and was tortured there till they thought someday he had died. They put him with the dead cadavers. He farted. Somebody heard his fart and came and rescued him from being buried alive.

He loved Sallama who refused to marry somebody but he. But they took him again to the front of the war. She decided to wait but her family found her a man and forced her to accept. She ran away to her widow aunt in the south who runs her farm by herself.

Khidr, seen as of no benefit, had been sent to serve in a mountain in the north as a guardian of the Iraq- Iran border and to report any Iranian troop that may cross the border. Khidr, one night, took his two books and run down the mountain and crossed the borders to Iran.

Can I trust the meaning of the life line in my hand
Which is as long as exciting hundred years
I could be a lucky man
But I'm living in the crossfire
Of a time that starts to burn
Why cannot people that we made the leaders of the world
Understand that we don't wanna fight
Understand that we are mush too young to die
Understand no one will survive
Understand that we love our life

He didn’t like Iran though he spent some years till 1991. The regime invaded Kuwait. They started to be defeated by the coalition forces and Khidr thought that they are getting weaker. He crossed the border again, back to Iraq and joined the armed men from the south who were fighting to liberate the south of Iraq from Saddam’s regime and were heading for Baghdad. Khidr joined them but he forgot the fire arm they give it to him. Suddenly the coalition forces withdraw themselves, Saddam’s regime starts again taking by force the cities of the south killing everybody who fight or may fight. Khidr was caught easily. They started kicking him till they thought he died. His body had been taken with other dead bodies in a big car and they started digging a big hole in the ground. A shepherd with few goats and a dog was watching from a distance. They put them in the hole and was about to start to bury them. Somebody saw the shepherd. No witness is allowed. They brought her by force and threw her in the hole. Sallama fall on Khidr. They looked at each other but before they can identify each other soil started entering their noses, mouths, and eyes. They were buried together.
Kareem still doesn’t know that Khidr is dead but time is going and there is nothing about him. Kareem broke the table and published this book, a novel named: “Khidr Qad and the Olive-green Era”, written by Naseef Falaq.

The song is by Scorpions and called “Crossfire” form the Album “Love At First Sting 1984”
The painting is by Faisal Laibi and named “The Funeral” 1976.

Anxious Journey

It was said that this song is about a war. Some specify more and said that it was about Vietnam war. But I have put it some way from its proposed contest, this post is not about war, it is more about a journey. It seems that writing a post while hearing a song over and over again is working for me But it is not always linked together, sometimes the link get loose, and words flow like the resolution of a grey clowd into a budding tree. This is my trip, to and back from, Damascus. I went there to take my final year written exam in psychiatry.




Us and Them


And after all we're only ordinary men


Me, and you


God only knows it's not what we would choose to do



I was in my spaceship wearing my oxygenated human-contact-proof helmet playing some kind of mental solitaire in the waiting space to take a bus to Syria. An elderly lady wearing a necklace with a cross, entered to the waiting area with a slow pace, with all her historical charm, slimness, short hair, and walking stick talked to me. I didn’t hear. My helmet is noise-proof. She held her stick up high in the heavens and with the weight of all the different Gods that people once dreamt of she centered the tip of her stick on my contact-proof helmet and break it like breaking a cover of a nut for her grandson: “young man, take this prescription, bring me this drug from a nearby pharmacy, I cannot walk anymore”. I went roaming around and around and the pharmacologists were giving me paranoid looks since that prescription got opioids in it. I went to her back without the drug. “Sorry, they don’t have it”. She took the prescription and for 12 hours of the road from Baghdad to Damascus she kept giving me sandwiches, candies, and nuts.

Forward he cried from the rear


and the front rank died


And the General sat, as the lines on the map


moved from side to side



Al Saleheya explosion was a black dot that didn’t dry I held on the back of my head. I tried not to touch the back of my head. On the day of the explosion I was going to that same area but I quitted. I was still at the street when I heard a sound of explosion. I thought it is so near. All people started looking to the direction of the sound. After one minute we heard another one. We looked down and walked in our way, each one to his way. I took a bus to my home. The radio was off. We were silent. Two men came up in the bus and told us about the site of the explosion. We sank in our silence. On the night of that same day of the explosion, I decided that I should send her a message telling her how much I like her, and that I want to be her friend. In Syria, almost all the taxi men asked me about the cause of the explosions and what is going on. I knew no more than them.

Black and Blue


And who knows which is which and who is who


Up and Down


And in the end it's only round and round and round



In the exam there was a question about Digoxin and whether it causes confusion or not. I wondered for some few seconds and then wrote: “yes, it causes confusion”. Then came another question: “by what mechanism?”. Oh God, and what the hell I know. Ask him, ask the Digoxin why he causes all that confusion and by what mechanism I am little tired for this. They told me that it was me who asked to be examined. “Really?”, I said “I cannot remember, my memory is tired, I want something to drink please”. Godot opened the door of the examination room and offered me a walk in Damascus.



Haven't you heard it's a battle of words


the poster bearer cried


Listen son, said the man with the gun


There's room for you inside

Damascus was rainy but Godot put a rule if I want to stay with him then I must go silent for a while. We walked till we reached Al Hamedya market. He stood and looked at me. I knew he was examining me: will I chose to enter the market or walk by the old walls.
I walked by the wall. He followed me with a smile of victory. By the wall we saw that statue of Salah Al Deen Al Ayoubi. Godot stopped and started talking: “Al Ayoubi was born in Iraq, went to Syria, then Egypt. In Egypt he had to enter the war with the crusaders. Many Egyptians are Christians and they were not sure what to do. Should they fight with Al Ayoubi against the crusaders, or should they welcome their brothers in religion. Al Ayoubi said his famous saying to them: “Religion is for God, and nation is for everyone”.”
“Godot,…” I said and looked in his eyes seriously. He held his breath. “Get lost!” I said. He disappeared at once while I was trying to fixate my attention and to maintain my concentration in resolving some other questions. With time, I felt I am more into the game of answering questions. With time, my divergent squint into a convergent one.

Down and Out


It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about


With, without


And who'll deny that's what the fightings all about



I took the bus back to Baghdad. Gladys Matar took it with me and told me that story of that valley of the Ash she thinks worth to talk about. People living there were called “the Grayish People” and their society was “Unsuitable for Adults” as she said, and she seemed to liken it to a circus, as the circus was mentioned in each chapter of her narration. They were having constant war without a clear cause with people who came from the desert who finally invaded their city, the Grayish Valley. The invaders were of a different religion. She told me about Thu Al Hak (=Of the Right Justice) who is shy, suspicious, and impulsive. Who loved an ex-prostitute and married her. Told me about their city sultan who every time he overtopped the pulpit and starts talking, a crowd of dinosaurs invade the city in a chaotic running shaking the earth beneath them and swaying their bodies. She is good in some parts of her narration but I was lost in some of her circumstantialities and tangentialities. While she was talking I remembered some of my dreams and wondered about their meanings. She kept talking her thousand and one night while I slept in the chair of that bus. I woke up with a neck pain. She was still talking. “Gladys, listen”, I said while she stopped talking stunned, “your novel got some unnecessary details and some of them are misleading, you called your novel as “Velvet Revolution” and there is no Velvet, nor Revolution, and somebody had put Delacroix painting of “Algerian women in their apartment” on the cover of your novel but why?”. I said that to her in some anger. I got the sense that I was rough on her, in spite of the fact that her narration is one of the few Arabic female narration that doesn't feel "female". I felt I should show her some respect. But I added with some calm and a smile while my eyes were looking at the desert from the window of the bus: “Woody Allen got a film named Shadows and Fog, it is of the same theme of your novel”, then I looked at her and said while my smile turned into laughter: “but it is much better”. She stood up, pulled her shirt down with anger and went to the desert alone leaving me to my neck pain and fading smile.




Get out of the way, it's a busy day


And I've got things on my mind


For want of the price of tea and a slice


The old man died

I reached Baghdad to know that I failed to pass the Iraqi board exam. I was so tired so I preferred to take a deep sleep and spent some time in yawning. My friend phoned me and asked me about the result of my exam. “I failed” I said. The other day he phoned me again and said: “Sami I decided to give you a present because you failed.” We went by a taxi, the taxi man was talking too much. We went back home by two new bicycles. I reached home very tired. I took a very hot water bath that washed the dead leaves from my growing tree.





"Velvet Revolution" is a novel by the Syrian Gladys Mattar.

Jack Abboudi Shabi, between an Eggplant and a Squash

".... and he told me have you drunk Shabi before? yes it was own by them, it was their family name, such a long time... he looked sadly at his wife. She was smiling widely..."

I don't know how much my neighbour was right in his recall of Baghdad history. What I was sure of was that Jack Abboudi Shabi was very famous and known to all the elderlies that I have mentioned his name to. His mention to my neighbours tempted them to tell me more about their old Baghdad and their peacful quarters. They would argue with each other on tiny details

"... the bakery shop was next to the barber and you are the one who got dementia, not me...what was his name?....that one with that nice car..."
"... what are you talking about... barber and a car and what else?....a love story?.."

Al Mada Paper had re-published an interview with Jack Abboudi Shabi, the Iraq first psychiatrist. It was originally done in 1957. Al Mada paper published weekly a bulletin entitled "Iraqi Memory" and is given freely to any one who buys a Mada Newspaper. It is available to be downloaded freely on its site: http://almadapaper.net/

Thank you Al Mada, you are one of a kind.

With the doctor that lived a half century with the insane

By: Saeed Al Rubaie

I entered Doctor Jack Abboudi’s hospital (house of Al Rasheed) and I had intended to ask many questions to him, but he started to raise a question and answering it there after, the questions he raised and his answers were up to the point and as I hoped it would be.

Treating disease by a disease
Words started flowing fluently from the doctor’s mouth and I found it difficult to follow him writing everything he was saying. He talked comprehensively about history of psychiatry in Iraq and abroad especially he had had a scholarship to the UK in 1932 hence he said:
At that time there was no true treatment for mental illnesses in the world but on type of treatment of the General Paresis of the Insane which is the resut of brain infection with siphilus and that treatment was injecting the patient with the microorganisms that causes Malaria, causing malaria in the patient, increasing his temperature hence cured from his original disease, then malaria is treated thereafter, hence it is treating one disease by another.
While other treatments were concentrating on putting the aggitated patient in a small room lined by soft tissues so that he won’t hurt himself if he hit the wall, or he put in a hot bath continuously, or he is tied by the strait jacket.

Sheikhs and the water of squash
The doctor came back to Iraq in 1934, and the patients, were under the mercy of Sheikhs like Al Tuayjuri and Sheik Gumar, who were treating their patients with violent hitting, because they believed that the illness is caused by a Jenni inside the patients body, and they were using what was called as “water of cheese” and it is a big dose of milk mixed with a laxative, and there was another widely used treatment and it is the “Squash oil” which was used after the patient head is shaved totally and then oiled, and the believe was that Squash is cold and hence decreasing the heat of the head, while the eggplant is hot and it causes the mental illnesses.

Advences in treatment
In the year 1935 some medical journals started publishing articles about new treatments among which was treatment by seizure, a seizure was induced in the patient by injecting epileptogenic substance and soon there was evidence that it helps in treating acute depression, mania, and schizophrenia.

Other treatments
In the year 1936 another treatment was discovered and it was by insulin coma in which the patient is injected with insulin that is used normally to patients with diabetes. The patient is injected with huge amounts till his body contains no more carbohydrates and he would be in a vegetative state, then he would be given glucose intavenously, and this operation would be repeated 30 times, after which the patient condition improves and he regain insight.

After the appearance of these new treatments, doctor Jack thought about going to the UK to get the experience of applying these new treatments because it wasn’t a good idea that he starts applying them from merely reading journals, but with the coming of professor Hoff to Iraq in 1938 doctor Jack cancelled his idea of travelling abroad and they started together to apply the new treatments in Iraq.
There were many other advences in psychiatric treatments in Iraq since then and the doctor thought about opening a new treatment centre and it was opened in 1943, in which over 3000 patients were treated.

Cutting brain fibers
In 1964 an iraqi doctor named Najeeb Al Yakoubi had done the first operation in brain in Iraq and in all the Middle East and that was by cutting the nerve fibers that connect the emotion centre to the brain cortex hence abolishing the effects of aggitated emotions on the brain and mind and doctor Al Yakoubi is still doing this operation to the treatment resistant patients.
And lately new tranquilizing drugs were discovered in the USA and its use is widely spread these days like the spead of using Aspirin.

New association…
Doctor Jack Aboudi then opened a subject rarely opened by other doctors and that was when he started talking about the Associations and Organizations that is present in great number in Iraq and they are about many physical diseases and social problems and the doctor raises a question why don’t we in Iraq start an association of mental illness prevention? Since the Iraqi law has stated how much mental illness recognition is important to the criminal laws and the government had recruited a psychiatrist as a member in the court of the adolescents but still there are no efforts to prevent mental illness.

Faking madness..
Till now it was doctor Jack raising questions to himself and answering them thereafter. Now I have asked a question:
How can you differentiate between a really mad one and someone who is faking. The doctor smiled wide and answered:
Some fake madness when they are confronted by a crime of homicide since the patient with mental illness is not guilty. Since the person who tries to fake does not know much about the types and classification of the mental illnesses he would act different roles from different illnesses and he would exagurate things and act as if a mentally retard hence if asked what is the sum of one pluse one he would answer eight.
And that way we would know who is faking.
In rare cases we inject the person with a drug making him loosing control over his deliberation and hence his faking.

Women more affected
I asked him another question:
Who are affected more with mental illnesses men or women?
He answered: women… due to social causes related to culture and tranditions, and in many times the women is affected by a mental illness during pregnancy and delivery.

Al Usboo’a magazine
1957

That was my translation. Forgive me for my ever lasting bad english.

A Kiss to Mankind

I decided to took a rest, opened the T.V. on the BBC ARABIC channel where there was a document about some religions and beliefs of some tribes living in Philippines. They were really strange. The man making the travel and documenting for us is a Christian feeling so estranged, and sometimes he passes us the feeling of how funny their beliefs were, in spite of the respect he is trying to show. The document then started to go south to tell us about the aboriginal people of Australia. He left the aboriginal people after seeing how they put their children in a smoke they made from setting fire in some herbs so that their children become stronge. He left them to go to Sydney. What he saw there made him look so serious.

I hesitated to buy his book. Malik Al Mutalibi is a well known poet, university professor, and a literary critic that writes in a very classic Arabic. I don’t understand most of his writings but that old man of that small library near the garage told me with his husky voice: “you should have it, it is a pleasure to read”. He rarely says that to me. I looked at the book and it is so elegant and with a clever cover and what a title: “the Abandoned Excavations of the Unconscious”.
In the minibus, I didn’t enjoy the first chapter which was a letter to both Gunter Grass and Kenzaburo Oe telling them about Iraq. I didn’t like the beginning much.

I put the book aside for some days.

I went back to the book in an afternoon. Malik Al Mutalibi tells us in one of his excavations about that Mandaean teacher they got at school in Al Mushrah (a city in the south of Iraq in the governorate of Umara\ Meesan). Malik Al Mutalibi was a student making a speech to welcome the visit of minister of interior to their school:

“
- God send our prophet Mohammed to Quraish in Mecca to invite them to Islam. Few believed in him, most did not at first. The apostates tried to abort his mission. The apostates…
- Are there apostates in Al Mushara (asked the minister of interior)
- Yes!

The minister of interior looked then looked at me with a waiting smile:
- Yes?
- Yes
- Now?

I shook my head with: “yes”.
- Who?
- Al Sub’ba (= the Mandaean)

On the next day the English teacher who was a Mandaean was upset. I raised my hand and asked him:

- How can we say minter of interior in English?

He sulked. Took some time then turned to the black board and wrote in bold letters: MAN KIND. I copied that in my copybook. After years, I understood what he meant.”

The trip went to Australia and suddenly the face of the man making the travel changed. He looked serious while looking at the Mandaeans making their baptizing in Sydney. They told him with the most kindness about their beliefs and about John the Baptist among other things.


They were having a marriage and the BBC was invited. In spite of my sadness that such peaceful people are away from their land, I felt happy for the peace they found in that far continent. Love and Respect for you Mandaeans.



Pictures taken from the T.V. (the first is taken from the Mandaeans marriage and is of the kiss of the new husband and wife , the second a young lady making some explanation about her religion, and the third is a scene from the mariage). The words in rosy color are my trial to translate some of the lines from Malik Al Mutalibi latest book: "the Writing Memory: the Excavation of the Abandoned Unconsious".

What is Art For?

“O village songs,
You kinship bridge between generations!
Nation hides in you
Its threads of destiny,
And its arms of victory.
O village songs,
O guardian of memories.”
Adam Mickiewicz

I was just a teenage and he was tall and old and he chose one day to sit next to me and I felt so happy for that. He asked me: “what book are you reading these days?” I liked that kind of question. I opened my mouth proudly to say: “a Russian novel of… (I forgot the writer) entitled the white dog with the black ear”. I was surprised by his sarcastic smile which was turned a little by little into a sardonic smile and he told me with anger that I should read something worthy!!
During my life, I have faced recurrently the question of why do I read novels, and why do I hear music. What is art, in general, is for. And what do I gain from it.

Have seen the film “the pianist”? How the Nazis occupied Poland and what they did to the Jewish population there in World War II? That was the main theme of the film, but what was in between the lines? What was the soul of the film?

Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jewish pianist survived till a Nazi soldier found him wandering in aplace he should not be. Clearly, the fate of the pianist was to be killed. A question slipped from the lips of the Nazi like a slow black serpent about to kill:

- Who are you?
- I was a pianist.
- Play something, the Nazi said challenging.

Szpilman answered him by Chopin’s Ballad no. one. It is music. A human thing. It is why animals feel small next to human. It is beauty mixed with smartness, wisdom mixed with childhood. It is communication travels through space and time summarizing our history into a sweet song. It is why animals feel small next us, it was why the Nazi felt small next to Szpilman:

- What will you do when it is all over? Asked the Nazi.
- I’ll play the piano again. On the Polish radio.

So what do we gain from art. We gain our dignity. We tell our story. We share existance. We pass by the reason of why we are humans, and what we are doing here, on this earth.

Photos taken from the film, music is Chopin's Grande Polonais Op. 22 which was played in the film in two scenes. Mickiewicz is a Polish poet and the lines above were tranlated by Kudri Kalachi to Arabic, and by me, to english cause I didn't found it in English and I don't know the name of the peom these lines taken from, so pardon me.