City of Oranges by Adam LeBor

Author:Adam LeBor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2006-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

In the summer of 1962 Hasan Hammami moved to Baghdad, where his father Ahmad had been living since 1953. Hasan was now a married man. He had returned to education in the mid-1950s, enrolling at Nottingham University to study engineering. In the university coffee bar he met a pretty and vivacious young woman called Barbara Paulson. Hasan and Barbara fell in love, and after a year together they decided to get married. Both families were opposed to this, recalls Hasan. ‘They said it would not work, no matter how much we loved each other, because we came from such different backgrounds, cultures, religions and societies.’ Hasan’s brother Hussein even wrote to Barbara in the name of his parents, a letter known as ‘Dear Barbara’ in the family folklore, outlining their fears over the couple’s compatibility. The ‘Dear Barbara’ letter did not work, but almost fifty years on, the marriage is still a successs. After graduating in 1959, Hasan returned to his old employers, Aramco, and he, Barbara and their young daughter Fawzia moved to Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. A second daughter, Rema, was born in 1960. But Aramco had not changed its employment practices, and Hasan’s salary was a mere twenty per cent of that of his American colleagues. Hasan left Aramco for a position with Procter & Gamble, managing a detergent factory. He was posted to Baghdad for his training. ‘There I could renew my relationship with Father. The evenings he spent with us were precious, and he formed a special attachment with his granddaughter Fawzia.’

Iraq in the early 1960s was an unstable and dangerous place. In 1963, the country’s leader General Abdul Karim Qassim was overthrown in a military coup. The new government included members of the revolutionary Baath Party. Four years earlier a young Baath Party member called Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate General Qassim, but failed and fled to Egypt, where he then studied law. Saddam returned to Baghdad after the coup, and the days of fear began. ‘The Baath Party began the process of taking over the country. They started to purge anyone opposed to them, especially Communists, anyone who had been to Russia, or even anyone who was suspected of being anti-Baathist,’ recalls Hasan. Baath Party thugs came to the factory, threatened Hasan, and posted signs on the walls: ‘The land belongs to the farmer and the factory to the worker’. Hasan threw them out, but they returned. For several nights Hasan received threatening telephone calls, before discovering that the thugs were concerned that some of the workers might be sacked. Hasan reassured them that nobody would lose their jobs. Special customs permits were quickly issued, impounded goods released and the factory was soon up and running again.

New problems soon arose. Hasan and Barbara’s passports were confiscated. Barbara was accused of being a spy for Britain, Hasan for Saudi Arabia. The accusations were not serious, but rather primitive attempts at extortion. Still, it was with relief that the family boarded their flight for Amman once the year-long posting was at an end.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.