The Tobacco Keeper Read online

  8 February 1963: A coup d’état initiated by the Baath and nationalist leadership overthrew the regime of Abdel Karim Qasim. Fierce popular resistance led by the communists continued for several days. Abdel Salam Arif became President of the Republic, while Abdel Karim Qasim, together with Fadhel Abbas al-Mehdawi and Taha al-Sheikh Ahmed, were executed. There followed mass killings of communists, including the leader of the Communist Party, Salam Adel, who died under torture.

  At the end of February, Haidar Salman was smuggled into Tehran and from there to Moscow, where his wife Tahira was waiting for him. The painter Nahida al-Said was executed by hanging.

  25 August 1964: Haidar Salman began teaching violin at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he became acquainted with leading Russian musicians. Rumours circulated concerning an affair with the Russian pianist Ada Brunstein.

  1965: He took part in the Jacques Thibaud competition in Paris.

  1966: He participated in the Leventritt Competition held at the Carnegie Hall in New York.

  5 June 1967: Start of the Six Day War, which resulted in the occupation of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, the Golan Heights in Syria and the Palestinian West Bank. Haidar Salman stopped performing with the New York Symphony Orchestra in protest against this aggression and returned to Iraq, thereby ending his affair with Ada Brunstein.

  17 July 1968: A Baathist coup d’état in Baghdad installed Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as President of the Republic and Saddam Hussein as his Deputy. The ousted President, Abdel Rahman Arif, was exiled to Turkey.

  In May 1968 the communists declared an armed struggle and led the revolution of the marshlands in southern Iraq. The uprising failed, however, and the Head of the Central Leadership of the Iraqi Communist Party, Aziz al-Hajj, was detained. He gave a detailed confession that led to the arrest of all members of the Politburo. During that same year, the Baath Party executed large numbers of politicians on charges of conspiracy. A group of merchants was publicly executed in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on charges of espionage, amid the shouting and clamouring of the crowd.

  1 February 1974: Haidar Salman’s son Meir emigrated from Israel to the United States. He became a naturalized American citizen and joined the Marines.

  1979: The year of the Iranian Revolution. On 1 February, Khomeini returned to Qom while the Shah left Iran for good. During that same year, Saddam Hussein led a secret coup and seized the reins of power after Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr had relinquished all his posts. This was followed by a Baathist massacre of all leaders that had no allegiance to Saddam Hussein.

  4 September 1980: The Iran–Iraq war began. Iraqi citizenship was withdrawn from all citizens with Iranian affiliations, who were deported to Iran after having their property confiscated, while many young men were killed. Haidar Salman was deported with his wife Tahira after his assets, his house and his property had all been confiscated. The Iraqi authorities deposited him and his wife by truck close to the Iranian border. His wife Tahira, who was in poor health, died at the border, while his son Hussein was detained in jail in Baghdad as part of the operation to detain all Iraqi young men of Iranian origin. Some of these men were killed while others were deported to Iran.

  1981: Haidar Salman was witness to the repercussions of the Iranian Revolution especially the conflict between the liberals and the radicals. Rumours circulated that he had an affair with Pari, the daughter of his host in Tehran, Mohammad Taqi. On 3 November, Haidar Salman travelled to Damascus on a forged passport in the name of Kamal Medhat. The name belonged to an Iraqi merchant who had died in a car crash in Tehran and who was the second husband of a wealthy Iraqi woman living in Damascus, called Nadia al-Amiry. Her first husband, who was Syrian, had been killed during the civil war between the Baathists and the Muslim Brotherhood.

  1982: He entered Baghdad under the identity of Kamal Medhat Mustafa, born in 1933 in Mosul to a merchant family that traded between Mosul and Aleppo.

  5 March 1983: His wife Nadia al-Amiry gave birth to their son, Omar. In that same year, Kamal Medhat joined the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, which turned him into a star. He became particularly famous after playing ‘The Martyr’ symphony with Walid Gholmieh. He developed into a well-known and well-liked artistic figure in political circles, particularly to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Gossip had it that he had an affair with a cellist in the National Symphony Orchestra, Widad Ahmed, who was responsible for strengthening his ties with the regime at that time. He was also rumoured to have had an affair with a woman with a reputation, a failed pianist called Janet.

  26 November 1986: Kamal Medhat played a fantasia, including a beautifully performed cadenza, at the presidential palace in front of Saddam Hussein and a number of political figures.

  8 August 1988: The Iran–Iraq war ended. A year after this, his son Omar went to live with his maternal aunt in Egypt.

  2 August 1990: The Iraqi army invaded Kuwait and declared the establishment of a transitional government. On the eighth of the same month, Iraq issued a decree annexing Kuwait as its nineteenth province.

  17 January 1991: The second Gulf War began. The US-led coalition forces began to expel the Iraqi military from Kuwait. On 24 January, the land campaign began.

  On 26 February, Saddam Hussein accepted UN Resolution 660 and withdrew from the city of Kuwait, which coalition forces then entered.

  Nadia al-Amiry, who had been ill, died. There was talk of an affair between Kamal Medhat and a rural servant girl called Fawzeya.

  1991–2003: Kamal Medhat lived in Baghdad under the embargo imposed on the country. He witnessed poverty, disease, war and the decline of the arts. Although he withdrew completely from public life, he continued to compose.

  20 March 2003: The US launched the third Gulf War to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power. On 9 April, US forces entered Baghdad. In a dramatic scene, the statue of Saddam was toppled. Kamal Medhat’s son Meir, now a major-general, arrived in Baghdad with the allied forces.

  2004: His son Hussein returned to Baghdad from Tehran, along with Shia political forces and joined the political system. His son Omar also returned to Baghdad from Cairo in opposition to the US occupation and to the whole political process in Iraq.

  5 March 2006: Kamal Medhat was kidnapped by an armed group in mysterious circumstances. On 3 April, his body was found near the Jumhuriya Bridge in Baghdad.

  This is the brief biography that I prepared before leaving for Baghdad to write his story. I prepared it for one character, although I could have created it for three. A complete report on his life was published under the name of John Barr, the well-known journalist at US Today News, which I had ghost-written. With the escalation of the conflict from 2004 onwards, it became impossible for foreign reporters to get into Baghdad. Newspapers, news agencies and TV and radio stations therefore decided to remove their crews to nearby Arab capitals, such as Amman, Damascus and Beirut. There, an Iraqi reporter would be commissioned to prepare reports that would not be published under his own name but under the name of one of the well-known reporters at the newspaper, news agency or TV station. This was intended to give readers the impression that the agency had a presence in Baghdad despite the dangers and hazards. The ghost writer, who undertook the whole assignment, simply got the money.

  At this point we return once more to the game of assumed names and blurred identities. The person who changes his name is that of the tobacconist as he appears in Pessoa’s poem. As for the ghost writer, his existence becomes dependent on that of another. There is, therefore, a basic difference between the ghost writer and the tobacconist, for while the latter assumes three or more personalities, the former lends his identity to another, in all likelihood a Westerner. Here we find what may be termed colonial textuality, which is a kind of absorption or extraction based on the total erasure of another being’s existence and the creation of a vacuum. In order to explain how I constructed my report, I would like first to explain how I came to work as a ghost writer for those agencies.

  II />
  Ghost-writing: an imaginary paradise or a journey into the unknown?

  In the early nineties, right after the ceasefire that ended the second Gulf War, I was demobbed from the army. I spent the whole summer unemployed, living with my family in our old house in Al-Karradah. I translated various poems from English and French that were never published. During that time I also tried and failed to write a long novel about my experience as a soldier and the dangers I’d faced during the war. In spite of the many drafts and manuscripts that I produced, they all seemed so worthless that I couldn’t find it in myself to continue.

  During that period, the orange trees in our garden were in bloom and the olive trees were laden with fruit. From time to time, I went to the Al-Hindiya Club where I swam in the clear water beneath the trellised roof. The blue water under the bright summer sun of Baghdad took my breath away. In those months following the war I didn’t leave Baghdad at all. To make up for this, I used to visit a very rich friend of mine who was in the habit of throwing wild parties in his little house, with dozens of young women and men, and plenty of foreigners, all partying till the morning. I would go home at dawn, tottering drunkenly through the narrow alleys, and climb my stairs high on fun and summer.

  I was unaware, at that time, of the huge numbers of people who were dying as a result of torture, poverty or politics. I was totally engrossed in myself, in my friend’s parties, in the women I got to know, and in the priceless stories I wanted to write. By pure chance, however, I was introduced at one of those wild parties to a German activist of Iraqi descent called Katrina Hassoun. She was a reporter for the well-known German-language Swiss newspaper from Zurich, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. She was also working as a researcher for human rights organizations and was a regular visitor to Baghdad in the nineties.

  That evening at my friend’s house, we stood together drinking white wine beneath a small green-glassed arched window. The music soared and the river breeze was fresh and soothing while Katrina spoke to me about the demands of her work in Baghdad, and particularly her dealings with the authorities. I wasn’t really listening or showing much interest; I was just pretending to listen, for in those days I couldn’t have cared less about such things. I didn’t even pay attention to the news that was published or broadcast every day, although I was fully aware of the ever-deteriorating political situation in Baghdad. But the most significant turning point in this whole little episode occurred when Katrina Hassoun, whose Arabic wasn’t very good, offered me a paid job as her interpreter. Seeing as I had no work at the time and my novel was at a standstill, I accepted her offer. My objective was, first and foremost, monetary.

  At the house that she was renting on Al-Saadoun Street, I met groups of disabled veterans, former communists who’d been jailed and tortured, women who’d lost their husbands and mothers who’d lost their sons either in war or in prison. Their stories hardly made an impression on me. I listened to them as though they’d taken place in some faraway land. None of this was really my concern, for I was only the interpreter. I stood by the window, watching silently until the last visitor left.

  One day, on my way back from work, I was arrested by the secret police. They asked me for the names of people who’d visited the activist and what they’d talked about. All of a sudden, I found myself implicated in affairs that I’d tried all my life to steer clear of. My understanding of the situation in my country was fairly poor at the time, for I was too busy drinking wine, smoking a variety of cigarettes and getting to know women of every sort to really bother about people’s suffering. From that point onwards, however, I began to take a real interest in what was going on and wrote press reports for this activist under various pseudonyms. I chose foreign names, naturally, in order to be above suspicion.

  It was from Katrina Hassoun that I heard for the first time about Fernando Pessoa’s Tobacco Shop, the poem written by the third of Pessoa’s characters. Katrina even suggested that I use ‘the Tobacconist’ as my pseudonym. As I was beginning to lose all my rights, both moral and financial, she then proposed that I work as a ghost writer, which meant I would write important stories on Iraq to be published under the name of a well-known journalist, while I would be paid handsomely.

  For me the distinction between the tobacconist and the ghost writer is clear. Regarding the tobacconist, as Fernando Pessoa has said, two creatures co-exist in the soul of each one of us. The first is real, appearing in our visions and dreams, while the second is false, appearing in our external image, discourses, actions and writings. The ghost writer, in contrast, is a kind of negation, an abstraction. He represents a form of colonial discourse that is based on appropriation and rejection.

  Months before she left Baghdad, Katrina Hassoun had introduced me to a correspondent for US Today News, a woman of Lebanese descent called Aida Shahin who became a close friend at the time. She commissioned me to write features that were off-beat, or at least unfamiliar and unusual, and I produced a great number of excellent stories for her. Among these, a piece on the English detective novelist Agatha Christie’s time in Baghdad got noticed. She had visited and lived in the city in the forties and fifties. I tracked down the houses she’d rented and the guest-houses she’d stayed in with her husband, Max Mallowan, the famous archaeologist. I described the streets she’d written about in her novel They Came to Baghdad, the trains she’d ridden on her trips to Aleppo or Turkey and the places of entertainment in the Rusafa neighbourhood where she’d spent long summer evenings. This story encouraged the paper to give me further assignments, particularly about the foreign artists, writers and Orientalists who’d visited Baghdad and about the homes on the Tigris built by those Westerners during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

  So I continued to work in secret for this newspaper, as well as for other foreign papers, until I got to know Françoise Lony, a well-known French journalist and correspondent who also directed documentary films. I made her acquaintance in Baghdad during the period of the sanctions, when Baghdad was making headlines and attracting reporters from all over the world. They were all drawn by sympathy for a nation that was suffering from the violence of the regime as well as from international sanctions. I worked with Françoise on a number of documentaries while continuing to use an assumed name at her request. Our work included a film that we produced together on ancient Iraqi monuments. We were harassed in all sorts of ways by the authorities, in spite of the fact that my publicly acknowledged work with Françoise had absolutely nothing to do with politics. Our films were concerned with the antiquities of Babylon, ancient crafts of the Middle East or Babylonian musical instruments. During this period she always called me by my assumed name, and I almost forgot my real name, which I never used.

  After a while, Françoise began to feel threatened in Baghdad and was in fear of her life and of mine. So she asked me to accompany her on a trip to Tripoli to shoot a film about Libyan monuments, entitled Treasures of the Coast. For six months we travelled together and worked continuously between Tobruk and Zawara. For two more years we shuttled between Damascus, Beirut and Casablanca. Those trips were as much for love as for work. I spent the best times of my life with Françoise Lony.

  Françoise was a truly exceptional woman who radiated charm and sexiness. All the men of the media were greatly attracted to her. She was a natural in the art of seduction and was never reluctant to embark on a stormy love affair. Sexual pleasure, passion and the pursuit of society had far greater appeal for her than the romantic yearnings to which I was prone in those days.

  Instead of concentrating on our work or the films we were producing in various locations, Françoise dragged me into a whole new world. We’d already made a substantial amount of cash from a hugely successful film called Street Women, about prostitution in the Middle East. It was shown at many big film festivals and aired on several European TV channels. It was then that she took me on a wild, stormy trip to Morocco. It was early summer and we went to the coastal resorts. I cannot explain the madness t
hat overcame us. We felt that the Moroccan cities we were visiting had thrown open their gates to us, welcoming two carefree young people who longed to live in complete hedonistic abandon. Our next stop was Casablanca which, at that time, was on the verge of turning into an erotic myth: Sodom, as Françoise once described it in one of her reports, a home to vice and depravity. We were both on the brink of an abyss, as day after day we immersed ourselves completely in sensuality, pleasure and amusement. We haunted theatres, bars and swimming pools, and wallowed in sex, alcohol and evenings that lasted until the small hours.

  As so often happens in collaborations founded on amorous relationships, my work with the French journalist came to an end when the love ended. We separated quickly. She returned to Paris; I no longer had any idea where to go. Travelling back to Baghdad was impossible, and I had no work or friends in Casablanca. Suddenly Aida Shahin came forcefully back into my life. Having learned that she was back in Beirut, I wrote a long letter to her address there, asking her to find me a job and a place to live. Her work was outstanding and she was still working as a reporter for US Today News.

  Two weeks after arriving in Beirut, I moved into Aida Shahin’s apartment on Al-Hamra Street. She was an exceptionally gifted photographer but a mediocre reporter. Her most prominent trait was her kindness, although this soon faded in the face of other, negative, qualities. She talked a lot, was always complaining, and had a penchant for criticizing and nitpicking. A rocky, on-off relationship developed between us. I should also mention one of the positive things she did for me, which was to get me more work at her newspaper. She also arranged a job for me at one of the Gulf TV companies, which gave me the opportunity to travel to many places around the world as a news analyst.