But never far beneath the veneer of gaiety bubbled the bitter conflict of Iraqi politics. Iraqis could not seem to make their peace last long. Since Jafar’s death many years before, Iraqi governments were plagued by violent overthrow, and political coups continued to wrack the nation’s modern history. This tumult affected every Iraqi’s life. During her childhood, Mayada was moved back and forth between distant homes, as her parents were forced to heed political tensions and migrate for the safety of the family.
After the 1958 coup, in which the entire Iraqi royal family was massacred, Mayada’s family moved to Beirut. The family’s 1961 return to still-tense Baghdad was quickly cut short, and Nizar took his wife and daughters back to the safety of Beirut.
Although Iraq was mourned, life in Beirut was good for a time. The family lived in a roomy apartment on Hamra Street over the Al-Madina Pharmacy, next to a French chocolate store named Chantie. The chocolate aroma drifted through the building and into their apartment, so that Mayada and Abdiya’s youthful memories were wonderfully flavored.
Mayada was only six when a more serious problem arose. Her mother one day unexpectedly pulled Mayada aside and presented her with a beautiful pearl ring. She told her that she was to keep this ring until her mother and father returned from a long trip. As the oldest sister, she was to watch over Abdiya and keep her safe. Mayada was frightened. She stared into her mother’s rich brown eyes, fearful at this unexpected turn of events. She wondered why she was being left behind. Even Grandfather Sati could not lift Mayada’s spirits when she and Abdiya and their two nannies were left with Sati. Frequent rains curbed their outdoor activity that year, and Mayada spent long, lonely hours fingering that pearl ring while she peered past the balcony, aching to see her parents return.
It was years before she knew that a diagnosis of colon cancer in her forty-year-old father had spurred her parents’ lengthy trip. Nizar’s greatest fear was that he would leave his young children without a father, as he had been left without his own father, Jafar—who had also been left without his father, Mustafa. Nizar even began to express his fear that there was a curse of early death for the Al-Askari men.
Although the family was happy in Beirut, their passion for Iraq had never cooled. Hoping that the days of drama were over, they packed their belongings and returned to Baghdad in late 1962. Within days, the family had resumed the good Baghdadi life, and Nizar felt his spirits lift for the first time since 1958. Then, the winds of fortune shifted again and disaster struck on February 8, 1963, when the Baath Party seized control of the Iraqi government. Although the family survived without personal injury, the military seized some of Nizar’s private property. Nizar was not a cowardly man, and he confronted the Baathist leaders. He insisted firmly that his property was not available for the taking. Although they assured Nizar that the situation was temporary, their tone was unwavering. They let Nizar know he had no rights to his own property, and he understandably worried that Baathist promises of fair play were nothing but lies. Surrounded by armed men and wanting nothing more than to live for his daughters, Nizar accepted what he could not change.
In the Nizar Al-Askari household, illness eclipsed the importance of politics when Nizar’s colon cancer returned. He struggled to live, but in Room 52 at the Nun’s Hospital in Baghdad, he realized that his time on earth with his wife and daughters was quickly running out.
Nizar’s three girls, as he called them, surrounded his bedside at every opportunity. His determination to live extended his time, and Mayada and Abdiya came to visit him every afternoon after school. When he was near death, he was allowed to go home for a while, where Mayada assisted the nurses with his injections and medication. But Nizar soon returned to Room 52, where he died one morning after graciously thanking the nurse who held his vomit pan. Mayada and Abdiya were in school when their mother sent word of their father’s death. In the principal’s office, Mayada stood shocked. The pain was so acute that it felt as though her father had fallen dead unexpectedly.
Now in her delirium in Baladiyat’s cell 52, Mayada thought of Fay and Ali. She did not want them to lose a parent like she had lost her father. She called their names, “Fay! Ali! Come to me.”
“Mayada! Mayada! Can you hear me? Open your eyes, Mayada.” Samara leaned over Mayada’s face and softly dabbed it with a wet cloth. “Mayada. Wake up.”
Mayada’s tongue lightly explored her lips. A strange taste lay in her mouth—something like burned wood. She felt someone lift her head and place a glass against her lips. She sipped a few swallows of water. She was confused. Where were her children? She didn’t know where she was. She opened her eyes and saw a multitude of female faces pressing forward, staring kindly at her.
“Mayada. This is Samara. You are back with us. In cell 52.”
Still confused, Mayada mumbled, “Who are you?”
“I am Samara,” the woman hovering over Mayada murmured with a faint laugh.
Mayada opened her eyes a second time. “Samara?”
“Yes. I am here, little dove.”
Mayada groaned as she shifted. She was sore all over. “What happened? Where are Fay and Ali?”
Samara shared a worried look with Dr. Sabah.
“You are alive. That is the only thing that matters. You are alive.”
Mayada looked up once again. Many worried faces stared down at her. She saw Dr. Sabah and Muna and Wafae and Aliya and Sara and many others. But her stomach plunged when she remembered that she was a prisoner at Baladiyat.
“What am I doing on the floor?”
Samara whispered, “You were taken from us—for a short time. But you are safe now.”
Dr. Sabah and Muna sat down beside Mayada. Wafae and Aliya and the other women crowded in close.
Dr. Sabah asked, “What did they do to you?”
“I don’t know,” Mayada answered honestly. “My head aches. My arms hurt.” She cautiously touched her leg. “Everything is sore. I cannot remember what they did.”
Dr. Sabah examined Mayada, checking her face and arms and legs. “Look at this,” she exclaimed to the gathered women. “The flesh on her right earlobe is depressed, as is her right big toe. They gave her the electricity.”
“Anything else?” Samara asked Dr. Sabah, worry quickening her voice.
“Nothing that I can find. Muna?”
Muna gently lifted Mayada’s feet and examined the bottoms. “Her feet were not beaten. That is good.”
Samara touched her cheek. “As bad as it was, you were treated lightly.”
Mayada began to weep. “I remember something now. I was kicked in the stomach. And I was slapped in the face.”
“Her cheeks are red,” Muna acknowledged with a gentle brush of her hand.
“Someone kicked me,” she said with a sob.
“Do you have the taste of wood or metal in your mouth?” Aliya asked.
“Wood.”
“That is the result of the electrical shocks,” Aliya said with certainty.
“Help me raise her head,” Dr. Sabah said to Muna.
Their gentle hands dampened the back of Mayada’s neck with a cold cloth. Dr. Sabah then laid the cloth across Mayada’s forehead. “This will help your headache.”
Slowly, Mayada began to remember the nightmare of the electrical torture. She trembled with small sobs. “I cannot take this torture. I will die in Baladiyat.”
“Shhhh.” Samara patted her hand. “Listen to my words. I know what I am talking about. You will be released sooner than most. You are a special case.”
Mayada didn’t believe her, and wept louder.
“Mayada, I want you to think of this. Your torturer was careful. Not one mark was left on your body. They did not beat your feet—or your back. They can deny everything you accuse them of. I have no doubt: They have received orders to be light with you.”
Mayada was sick of dashed hopes, and she refused to be consoled. “I will never see my children again. No. Never again. My children will be without a mother.
”
Samara’s face showed patience. “Mayada, you have a degree from a university. I have a degree only in Baladiyat. I know this place. I know these men. You will be released soon—as soon as the orders come down. I feel it in my bones.”
Mayada remembered something else. “I think I was tied from the ceiling and rotated on a fan. Then they put me in a tire and rolled me around the room,” she sobbed.
Samara continued to comfort her. “No, my sweet. Those ghastly things occurred only in your nightmare. Your body is clean of any torture but for a kick and a few slaps and the electricity. You went into a delirious state after you were returned to us. This delirium happens to most of us. Especially in the beginning.” Then she grinned widely. “Besides, few of us would fit into a tire.”
At any other time in her life, Mayada would have laughed. She was indeed too large to fit into an automobile tire. She must have been hallucinating.
Muna confirmed, “I was tied by my arms when I first came here. And spun around from the ceiling. My arms rotated right out of my shoulders. It was weeks before I could lift either arm.” She raised both of Mayada’s arms to prove her point. “See, your arms are uninjured. You were not hung from the ceiling.” She paused before giving Mayada a sweet smile. “And we all thank God for that.”
“And I was hung from a hook and beaten. I can see this did not happen to you,” Dr. Sabah verified with a light touch on Mayada’s face.
Mayada looked slowly from one shadow woman to the other. Every face was worn with worry—for themselves, for their children, for the lives they left outside Baladiyat, but also for Mayada’s well-being. She had never met such kind women. And despite the fact that each woman in cell 52 had been treated more harshly than she, none of them begrudged Mayada her better fortune.
Samara insisted, “Now, you must eat a few bites of bread, then take a spoonful of sugar. The bread will help to erase the wooden taste from your mouth, and the sugar will relieve the weakness that still lingers in your limbs.”
Before Mayada could respond, everyone was startled by the opening of their cell door and the sudden appearance of three guards. A tall, skinny man with a bushy mustache whom Mayada had never seen called out in a small voice that piped out of his nose, “We are here for Safana.”
Muna jumped to her feet so quickly that her shiny brown hair bounced up and down. She looked toward the back of the cell with alarm.
Mayada was unable to turn her head to search for Safana’s face, but she knew that Safana was a young Kurd, in her late twenties with a dark, smooth complexion marred by black circles under her eyes. She was very short and stout. Safana had been arrested with Muna, and the two women often wept on each other’s shoulders. Both women had worked in a bank before being arrested. Mayada knew little else of Safana, but had often wondered about her story.
Safana stumbled from the back of the cell, her fist in her mouth, tears welling in her eyes.
Muna asked fearfully, “And me?”
The tall skinny guard stared at Muna, his lips snarling back from his teeth. “Only one goose to cook today,” he piped in his nasal voice, before snatching Safana by her short arm and pulling her from the cell.
Muna’s beautiful eyes swam in tears. When the cell door closed again, Muna crumpled onto her bunk, crying bitterly. “Safana is only a witness. She has done nothing. Nothing.”
Mayada looked at Samara with a question in her eyes.
Samara raised herself into a sitting position. Mayada noticed that the effort had caused sweat to bead on Samara’s upper lip. Samara had not yet fully recovered from her own torture session.
“Be careful and don’t exert yourself,” Mayada said gravely, thinking that with this escalated pace of torture, cell 52 would soon house only wounded women.
Samara wiped the sweat from her face with her hand. “Poor Muna and Safana are nothing but witnesses in a bank embezzlement case. The bank’s director general was a thief.”
“They are not even accused?” Mayada asked.
“No. Let me tell you the complete story. Then you will understand.”
“Please speak slowly.” Mayada warned her, “My head has not yet cleared from the electricity.” This was true. Mayada still suffered from ringing in her ears and her head.
“I will.” Samara looked down at Mayada’s spoon lying on the floor, still half-filled with sugar. “Eat that. Then your head will clear.”
“I cannot.”
“Okay, then.” Samara carefully lifted the spoon and licked it clean before she began the sad tale.
“Our sweet Muna came from a poor family that got poorer still after the disaster of 1991. Her father’s house is in Al-Horiya Al-Uola. Muna attended public school and university and graduated at the top of her class. In school, she met a very nice young man, though he was from a family as poor as her own. The two of them fell in love, but her father resisted their union. He wanted something better for her. But Muna was in love, and she convinced her father that the couple, armed with a pair of university degrees, could carve out a prosperous life. So the father finally agreed.
“Muna married and moved in with her husband in a little house close to the Kharkh side of the Tigris, in a neighborhood called Al-Rahmaniya. It was densely populated, with one house built right next to the other. But Muna and her new husband were very happy. When investment banks began to open in Iraq, Muna was so smart that she was quickly hired.
“Now, as for our harmless little Safana,” Samara said with a deep sigh. “Safana, as you might have guessed, is a Kurd with a Persian background. She’s never married, and she is an only child. Safana and her mother live in the poor area of Habibiya, not far from the main Secret Police building. Her father died during the war with Kuwait, although he was not a soldier. So Safana and her mother tried to run the little food shop that they had inherited from him. Mind you, Safana was a student at the same time. So she went to school during the day and managed the store until bedtime.
“But after the sanctions were laid on, they could not afford to stock the store, so it stood empty. But Safana was also smart, like Muna. She had studied economics and commerce at the University of Baghdad. She couldn’t think of marriage, because all she did was go to school, study and work in the store. And without a father or any siblings, she knew she would be responsible for her mother, who had been sickly for many years.
“Safana got lucky and found a full-time job at the same bank where Muna worked, although they didn’t know each other before meeting there. Safana was happy, because she would finally have enough money to buy food and medicine for her dear mother, who was by that time an invalid. She wore diapers, like a newborn baby. Every morning before work Safana fed her mother, cleaned her, changed her diaper, placed plastic under the bed and left her mother a lunch snack on the table beside the bed. After work, Safana rushed straight home to tend to her mother’s needs.
“Safana worked so hard and well at her new job that she was promoted to department head at the bank, which was a happy, happy day for her.
“Meanwhile, our Muna has gotten pregnant. She and her husband are so excited that they decide that she will take the full maternity leave, to stay with her baby as long as she can. She has her baby, a little boy they name Salim. Muna is home with Salim one day when the neighbor rings her doorbell. She tells Muna that bank officials are on the phone, and that she must take the call immediately. Muna’s husband is still at work, so she runs to the phone, with Salim swinging in her arms. The person on the line is the security officer at the bank. He tells Muna she must come in, that some important documents are missing. Muna tells the man she has no one to leave her baby with, but he insists. He tells her to bring the baby with her. A worried Muna rushes to the bank with Salim.
“When Muna arrives, there sits Safana and two other men she has never seen. They all sit in the security office, where the officer tells Muna to take a seat. Muna and Safana will be taken to the headquarters of the Secret Police, he tells her. Muna senses
something terrible has happened, and she begs the man to tell her what is wrong. He refuses to explain. She asks if she can deliver her baby to her mother and father. The man rebuffs her plea, telling her the baby will go with her. She begs to use the phone, and the man says no. Muna is allowed to do nothing but sit and cry.
“Safana’s hands are tied behind her, but they allow Muna’s to be free, so she can hold her little Salim. Then without a word of explanation, the three poor souls are brought here and dumped into our cell. I was here when they arrived, and both women were even more frightened than you, Mayada, on the day of your arrival. A week later, the interrogations started. That is when Muna and Safana discovered the truth. Both were asked to give a full account of their director general at the bank. Both women told what they knew, which was basically nothing. He was a kind boss to both of them. The truth of the matter is that the director general had written himself a check for 15 million Iraqi dinars [around $7,000 in 1998]. He had been stealing money from the bank for several years. When Muna and Safana said that he was a good man, and failed to say he was a thief, they were beaten. Of course, neither had a clue that he was a thief, or they would have said so.”
“Oh, God, where does this end?” Mayada asked.
Samara leaned close and her voice came as a whisper. “That is not the worst thing. The story gets much sadder. After a week of imprisonment, Muna’s little Salim starts crying all the time. Muna had been smart—she had taken a big supply of milk to the bank—but this was soon gone. We gave little Salim sugar water for a few days but it began to make him sick. That poor baby screamed night and day. Finally the guards came in one morning and told Muna to hand over her baby. Of course, Muna put up a fight. They hit her with an electric prod and she fainted. When she hit the floor, the guards grabbed little Salim and rushed out the door. We haven’t seen her baby since.”
Mayada gasped, “Do you believe they killed the baby?”