The Last King of Baghdad
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Chapter
1: A Palace of Whispers
The morning sun of early summer Baghdad cut
sharp, golden shafts through the tall windows of the royal study, illuminating
a universe of silent, swirling dust motes. They danced in the still, cool air,
each a tiny world oblivious to the polished mahogany and priceless Kirman
carpets below. To King Faisal II, they were a welcome distraction. He leaned
over his desk, a vast expanse of gleaming wood that felt more like a barrier
than a workspace, and traced the sea route from Istanbul to London on a crisp
new map.
He was a young king, just turned twenty-three,
with the fine, gentle features of the Hashemite line and eyes that seemed to
hold a permanent, thoughtful melancholy. In the quiet solitude of his study, he
could almost feel like a young man. The crown, a metaphysical weight he had
borne since childhood, felt lighter here. His focus was not on the dispatches from
the Ministry of the Interior or the latest report on oil revenues—papers that
lay in a neat, untouched stack to his left—but on the itinerary for his
upcoming trip. Turkey first, a matter of state, a meeting with President Bayar.
But then… London.
London was not a matter of state. London was a
matter of life. It was where he would meet his fiancée, Princess Sabiha Fazile
Hanımsultan. In his mind, she was a vibrant, laughing image, a promise of a
world beyond this palace of whispers and shadows. He imagined walking with her
through Hyde Park, the air cool and damp, a world away from the searing heat
that already baked the city outside his palace walls. He imagined conversations
that were not about parliamentary factions or tribal loyalties, but about
books, music, a shared future. The thought brought a rare, unguarded smile to
his lips. This trip was an escape. It was the beginning of his own story,
separate from the one written for him by his grandfather and the British.
The soft click of the door latch broke the
spell. The heavy oak swung inward, and the King straightened instinctively, his
smile vanishing as if it had never been.
Crown Prince 'Abd al-Ilah, his maternal uncle
and the former Regent, entered the room not as one entering a king’s study, but
as one surveying his own domain. He was a tall man, impeccably dressed in a
Savile Row suit, his movements precise and confident. He had guided Iraq
through Faisal’s minority, and in the five years since the King had come of
age, his hand had remained firmly on the tiller of the state. He paused, his
gaze sweeping the room before it settled on his nephew.
“Faisal. Daydreaming again?” His tone was light,
almost jocular, but it carried the familiar, grating edge of paternal
condescension. “Or are you planning your invasion of England?”
Faisal felt a familiar flicker of heat in his
cheeks. He gestured to the map. “Just reviewing the itinerary for the trip,
Uncle. The Foreign Ministry sent the final schedule this morning.”
“Ah, yes. The trip.” 'Abd al-Ilah walked to the
drinks cabinet without asking, pouring himself a small glass of chilled water.
The study was the King’s, but the uncle’s casual ownership of the space was
absolute. “Nuri is convinced the meeting in Turkey will solidify the Pact’s
northern flank. He believes it sends a message to Nasser and his Soviet
friends.”
He said the name ‘Nasser’ as if it were a foul
taste in his mouth. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president, was a spectre
that haunted the halls of al-Rihab Palace, his voice a constant, crackling
presence on the radio waves, preaching a gospel of Pan-Arab nationalism that
was poison to the Hashemite monarchies.
“I am sure it will be very productive,” Faisal
said, his voice sounding thin and formal to his own ears. “I was more concerned
with the London leg of the journey. Princess Sabiha’s family has asked for
details about the reception.”
'Abd al-Ilah waved a dismissive hand, as if
swatting away a fly. “Protocol will handle it. That is what they are for. We
have more pressing concerns than canapés and floral arrangements.” He took a
sip of water and fixed his gaze on the King, his expression suddenly serious.
“I had a rather… spirited discussion with Nuri this morning.”
Faisal braced himself. The political tension
between his uncle, the Crown Prince, and Nuri al-Sa'id, the powerful,
long-serving Prime Minister, was the grinding engine of Iraqi politics. They were the twin pillars of the regime, both
staunchly pro-Western, yet they were rivals, their differing ambitions often
clashing behind the closed doors of government.
“He is becoming difficult,” 'Abd al-Ilah
continued, pacing slowly before the large globe that stood in the corner. “He
sees enemies in every shadow, but the only shadows he looks for are cast by
Moscow. He dismisses the rot from within. The communists in the slums, the
Ba'athist agitators in the universities, the whispers in the army barracks. He
thinks a new dam and a firm hand are enough to keep the rabble in line.”
Faisal remained silent. He knew his role in
these conversations: to be a sounding board, a silent recipient of his uncle’s
political frustrations. To offer an opinion would be pointless; it would be
ignored, or worse, patiently explained away.
“He believes our alliance with the British, the
Baghdad Pact, makes us invincible,” 'Abd al-Ilah scoffed. “To half the country,
it makes us a target. A client state. They listen to Nasser’s radio, and they
believe it. They see the new cars and the new villas in al-Mansour, and then
they look at their own hovels, and they blame us. They blame the West. They
blame you.” He gestured vaguely towards Faisal.
The King’s hands tightened into fists beneath
the polished surface of his desk. He wanted to say that perhaps Nuri was right,
that development and stability were the answers. He wanted to say that perhaps
if the oil wealth trickled down faster, the whispers would cease. He wanted to
say that his name was invoked on the streets because his uncle and his Prime
Minister had wrapped the throne so tightly in the Union Jack and the American
Dollar that the people could no longer see it as their own.
He said none of these things.
“Nuri will manage it,” Faisal offered quietly.
“He always does.”
“Yes,” 'Abd al-Ilah conceded, his irritation
subsiding into a familiar, weary arrogance. “He will. But it is tiresome. I
have to fight him on every forward-thinking project, every bold move to secure
our dynasty’s future.” He drained his glass and placed it on a silver tray with
a decisive click. “Do try to look engaged in Turkey, Faisal. Read the briefs.
Ask an intelligent question or two. It helps appearances.”
He turned and left, closing the door softly behind
him. The silence he left in his wake was heavier than before. Faisal stared at
the closed door, the feeling of impotence washing over him like a physical
illness. He was a king, the ruler of a nation at a pivot point of history, yet
he had just been instructed to ‘try and look engaged’ like a schoolboy on a
field trip.
His eyes fell back to the map. To London. To the
smiling face of a princess he barely knew but who represented everything this
palace was not. He leaned forward, his world shrinking back to the comforting
certainty of shipping lanes and flight paths, the only journey he felt he had
any control over at all.
The heat from the great cast-iron stove was a
physical presence in the palace kitchens, a dry, oppressive blanket that
smelled of roasting lamb, simmering stock, and the sharp, sweet scent of
cardamom. This was Abigail Raziqia’s kingdom, and here, she was the undisputed
monarch. A sturdy woman in her fifties, her Turkish accent was still thick, but
her commands in Arabic were swift, precise, and instantly obeyed by the small
army of sous-chefs, scullery maids, and servants who scurried across the tiled
floors.
While the King dreamt of a life outside the
palace, Abigail’s entire life was within it. She had been with the royal family
for years, a fixture of quiet competence. She knew the King’s preference for
simpler foods, a taste that often frustrated her culinary ambitions. She knew
the Crown Prince demanded his coffee brewed to a precise, almost tyrannical
standard. She knew the rhythms of this place better than anyone, and lately,
the rhythm was off. It was a subtle thing, a discordance she felt in her bones.
“Hana, more wood for the bread oven, quickly
now,” she ordered, not looking up from the intricate lattice she was weaving
from dough atop a large pie. “And someone tell me why the delivery from the
market was two hours late this morning.”
A young servant girl, her face flushed from the
heat, wrung her hands. “They said there were… troubles, Mistress Abigail. The
roads were blocked near the Sarrafiya Bridge. Soldiers everywhere.”
An older man, the head steward, leaned in, his
voice a low conspiratorial murmur. “It was another protest. Against the Pact.
My cousin’s boy was there. He said it was vicious this time. He said the police
were not just breaking it up; they were breaking heads.”
A sudden silence fell over the kitchen, broken
only by the hiss of the fire. These were the whispers that now defined their
days. The palace was an island of opulent tranquility, but the sea of Baghdad
was growing rougher, and they all felt the spray. They heard it in the
gossip of the guards who came in for tea, in the hushed conversations of the
ministers’ drivers, in the rising price of sugar and flour in the markets—a
problem the royal budget could ignore, but their own families could not.
“They say it is Nasser’s doing,” the steward
continued, polishing a silver platter with nervous energy. “His voice is on
every radio in every coffee shop. He calls the Crown Prince a British puppet.
He calls the King a… a child.”
Abigail shot him a sharp look. “We do not repeat
such filth in this house. The King is a good boy. He has a gentle heart.” She
said it with a fierceness that was both a defense of Faisal and a warning to
the others. Talk was dangerous. The walls had ears, and the loyalty of some of
the younger palace staff, boys from the poorer quarters of the city, was an
unknown quantity.
But she knew the steward was right. The city was
on edge. A new word seemed to be on everyone’s lips: THAWRA. Revolution. It was a word that made her blood
run cold. She had seen enough of history’s upheavals in her native Turkey to
know that when revolutions came, they were rarely gentle.
A young guard, no older than her own nephew,
came into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water, his rifle slung over his
shoulder. He looked tired and anxious.
“Is it true, Jamil?” Abigail asked him quietly,
her voice softening. “The troubles this morning?”
Jamil nodded, not meeting her eyes. He drank the
water in three quick gulps. “It was bad, auntie. They were students, mostly.
Shouting slogans. But there were others. Men with hard faces. They were
organized.” He lowered his voice even further. “The talk in the barracks… it is
not good. The officers are not happy. They say we are being prepared to fight
for the British and the Americans, not for Iraq.”
Abigail placed a hand on his arm. “Be careful
what you say, boy. And more careful who you listen to.”
He just nodded again, his young face a mask of
worry, and hurried out.
Abigail turned back to her pie, her hands moving
with the practiced ease of long habit, but her mind was churning. A gentle king
who dreamt of escape. A powerful prince who saw enemies everywhere but perhaps
not the ones closest to him. A city simmering with a rage stoked by a voice
from across the desert. And an army whose loyalty was beginning to fray.
She looked at the lavish preparations around
her—the mountains of rice, the platters of glistening lamb, the delicate
pastries destined for the royal table. It felt like a feast on the edge of a
volcano. The aroma of spices and roasting meat filled the air, rich and
decadent, but underneath it all, Abigail could almost smell the scent of
something else, something sharp and metallic, like a distant, approaching
storm. It was the scent of fear.
Chapter
2: The Spark from the Nile
The air in the long, concrete barracks at
Habbaniya was thick with the triple scent of male sweat, dust, and the faint,
metallic tang of gun oil. Outside, the Iraqi sun beat down with a white-hot
intensity that bleached the sky and turned the distant horizon into a
shimmering mirage. Inside, under the slow, rhythmic sweep of ceiling fans that
did little more than stir the heat, a group of junior officers sat slouched on
wooden chairs and metal cots, their khaki uniforms dark with perspiration. They
were bored. It was the deep, corrosive boredom of soldiers with no war to
fight, a state that could curdle into resentment as easily as milk left in the
sun.
Colonel Abd al-Karim Qasim stood apart from
them, near the open doorway, his lean frame silhouetted against the blinding
glare from the parade ground. He was a man defined by a kind of ascetic
stillness, his uniform immaculate despite the heat, his face a study in
disciplined neutrality. He observed the scene not as a commander, but as a
scientist observing an experiment. The catalyst for this experiment sat on a
small wooden table in the centre of the room: a large, battery-powered Philips
radio.
From its speaker, a voice erupted, a voice that
seemed to possess a physical force, a voice that travelled across deserts and
borders to seize the imagination of a generation. It was the voice of Gamal
Abdel Nasser.
Static crackled around the words like an angry
halo, but the voice itself was pure power, a torrent of carefully crafted
rhetoric delivered with the passion of a prophet.
“…and they ask us why we choose the path of
dignity!” Nasser’s voice boomed, rising in indignation. “They, who sat in their
palaces while foreign masters drew lines on our maps, who sold our resources
for their own comfort, who draped themselves in foreign flags and called it
stability! They ask us, the people, why we demand our birthright! I say to
them, the age of pashas and kings is over! The age of the people, the united
Arab people, has begun!”
A murmur of assent rippled through the young
officers. Some sat up straighter. One lieutenant, a young man with fire in his
eyes, unconsciously clenched his fist.
Qasim watched, his expression unchanging. He was
not listening to the message with his heart, as these young men were. He was
dissecting it with his mind. He analyzed the cadence, the strategic pauses, the
masterful blend of religious allusion, nationalist pride, and class resentment.
Nasser wasn't just giving a speech; he was forging a weapon. The 1952
revolution in Egypt, the toppling of the bloated King Farouk, had not been a
simple coup d'état. It had been a narrative, brilliantly executed. It was a
story of national humiliation redeemed by military virtue, a story that
resonated powerfully in the barracks of every Arab nation still shackled to a
monarchy.
“They call us radicals for wanting to build our
own factories!” Nasser’s voice thundered on. “They call us extremists for
demanding that the wealth of our lands should feed our own children! They ally
themselves with the old colonial powers in their pacts and their treaties, and
they call it ‘defense’! But who are they defending? They are defending their
own thrones from the will of their own people!”
The lieutenant muttered, “He speaks the truth.”
Another officer nodded in sharp agreement.
Qasim’s gaze remained fixed on the radio. He
respected the power of the tool. He admired the skill of the man wielding it.
But he was not a disciple. Nasser’s grand vision of a single Arab nation, a
Pan-Arab imperium stretching from the Atlantic to the Gulf, was, to Qasim, a
beautiful but dangerous illusion. An illusion that replaced one foreign master
with another, a king in London with a president in Cairo. Iraq, in Qasim’s
coolly analytical view, was not merely a province of a larger Arab dream. Iraq
was a nation unto itself, a complex tapestry of Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians,
Turkmens, each with their own history, their own grievances. To ignore that was
to build a foundation on sand.
The speech reached its crescendo, a final,
soaring call to arms for Arab unity and defiance. When it ended, replaced by a
burst of patriotic music, the barracks was silent for a moment. The spell was
broken, but the emotional residue lingered in the thick air. The young officers
began to talk at once, their voices excited, energized. The boredom had been
burned away, replaced by a dangerous, unfocused purpose.
Qasim turned from the doorway and walked out
into the searing, unforgiving sunlight. The experiment was conclusive. The
catalyst was potent. Now, it needed to be harnessed, controlled, and pointed at
the correct target. He had an appointment to keep in Baghdad.
The Al-Zahawi cafe was a cavern of cool, brown
shadow tucked away in a bustling side street off Al-Rasheed Street. The air
inside was dense with the aromas of brewing coffee, sweet tobacco from the
hookah pipes that bubbled intermittently, and grilled meat from a nearby stall.
It was a place where men came to escape the sun, to talk politics, to argue
about poetry, and to watch the world go by through the large, grimy windows. It
was a place of the people, a world away from the manicured lawns and silent
marble halls of al-Rihab Palace.
Qasim sat at a small, sticky table in the back
corner, a glass of strong, sweet tea untouched before him. He had been waiting
for twenty minutes, a delay that did not appear to trouble him in the
slightest. He simply sat, perfectly still, a man conserving his energy, his
gaze missing nothing: the grocer across the street haggling with a customer,
the government official climbing into a British-made car, the two policemen who
lingered on the corner for a moment too long.
Then the doors of the cafe swung open, and a
jolt of pure energy seemed to enter with Colonel Abdul Salam Arif.
Where Qasim was still and contained, Arif was a
man in constant motion. He was handsome, charismatic, with a neatly trimmed
moustache and eyes that flashed with a restless fire. He strode through the
cafe, clapping a man on the shoulder here, exchanging a quick, laughing word
there. He was a natural leader, a man who drew people to him, while Qasim was a
man who commanded them from a distance.
He reached the table and pulled out a chair with
a loud scrape, dropping into it and leaning forward eagerly, his voice a
conspiratorial whisper that was still loud enough for the next table to hear.
“Karim! Did you hear him? Did you hear the Lion
of Cairo today? By God, it was as if he were speaking directly to me! Directly
to us!”
Qasim took a slow, deliberate sip of his tea
before answering. “I heard a man who understands how to use a radio, Salam. A
very powerful tool.”
Arif’s face fell for a fraction of a second, his
enthusiasm punctured by Qasim’s cool response. “A tool? Is that all you heard?
I heard the heartbeat of the Arab Nation! I heard our future! ‘The age of
pashas and kings is over!’ Did that not set your blood on fire?”
“My blood is not easily set on fire. It is a
poor state for a soldier to be in,” Qasim replied calmly. “But I agree with his
conclusion. The age of this particular king is over. His throne is a British
antique, and his uncle polished it with American wax until the Iraqi people
could no longer see their own reflection in it.”
Arif’s enthusiasm returned, mollified by their
shared purpose. “Exactly! It is rotten to the core. A foreign body in the heart
of our homeland. We must cut it out, Karim. We must do as our brothers in Egypt
did. One swift, clean stroke. The army is the only instrument sharp enough to
do it.”
“I agree,” Qasim said, and his simple agreement
seemed to carry more weight than all of Arif’s passionate rhetoric. “The
monarchy has blocked every other avenue for change. It has made repression its
primary policy. It has, by its own actions, made a military coup an
inevitability.” He leaned forward slightly, his eyes locking with Arif’s. “The
question is not whether we should act, Salam. The question is what we are
acting for. What comes after?”
Arif leaned back, a broad smile on his face.
“What comes after? Glory! Unity! We purge the British lackeys, we tear up their
self-serving pacts, and we join hands with our brothers in Egypt and Syria. We
join the United Arab Republic! We create one nation, under one flag, a fortress
of the Arab people from the ocean to the Gulf! Imagine it, Karim! Nasser in
Cairo, and us, his partners, in Baghdad!”
Qasim listened patiently until Arif had
finished, his dream hanging in the air between them, shimmering like the heat
outside. Then, Qasim gently pricked the bubble.
“And what do you tell the Kurds in the north,
Salam? That they are now proud citizens of the United Arab Republic? That their
language and their identity must be subservient to a dream from Cairo?”
Arif frowned. “The Kurds are our brothers, of
course. They will share in the glory.”
“They do not want glory,” Qasim said, his voice
quiet but firm. “They want schools in their own language. They want a fair
share of the oil revenue from their own lands in Kirkuk. They want to be
partners in Iraq, not subjects of a Pan-Arab state governed from Egypt. My
vision is not for a new province in someone else’s empire. It is for a new
Iraq. An Iraqi Republic.”
“An Iraqi Republic?” Arif’s tone was
incredulous. “You think too small, Karim! That is the language of the old
order, of borders drawn by Sykes and Picot! Nasser has shown us the way!
Identity is what matters! We are Arabs first!”
“And the peasant farmer in Diwaniya?” Qasim
pressed. “Is he an Arab first? Or is he a hungry man first? Is his primary
concern the political status of Syria, or is it the price of bread? Is it the
fact that his landlord, a friend of the Crown Prince, owns all the land and all
the water, and leaves him with barely enough to feed his family? These are
Iraqi problems, Salam. They require Iraqi solutions.”
The two men stared at each other across the
small table. The ideological chasm between them was suddenly stark and vast.
Arif’s was a revolution of the heart, a grand, romantic vision of a resurrected
Arab civilization. Qasim’s was a revolution of the mind, a pragmatic, almost
clinical plan to re-engineer a single, broken nation-state. One saw a people;
the other saw a population.
Arif was the first to break the silence. He let
out a long breath and gave a short, sharp laugh. “You are a cold man, Abd
al-Karim Qasim. You would use a surgeon’s scalpel where a warrior’s sword is
needed.”
“A sword is messy,” Qasim replied. “It cuts
friend and foe alike. A scalpel is precise. It removes the disease without
killing the patient.”
For a long moment, it seemed their nascent
conspiracy would die right there, in the back of a dusty cafe, a victim of the
irreconcilable futures they envisioned. Arif looked away, his jaw tight. He was
a man of action, of passion. He needed a cause, and Qasim, for all his cold
pragmatism, was offering him the one thing he craved: a path to that cause.
He looked back at Qasim, his eyes narrowed. “The
first step is the same, no matter the road we take after. The King must fall.
The Crown Prince must fall. Nuri al-Sa'id must fall. On this, we are united?”
Qasim nodded slowly. “On this, we are united. We
remove the disease. We can argue over the patient’s recovery later.”
Arif considered this. The ideological victory
could come later. First must come the actual victory. He extended his hand
across the sticky table.
“Then we are brothers in this cause. To the
end.”
Qasim looked at the offered hand for a moment
before taking it. His grip was firm, dry, and cool. “To the beginning,” he
corrected.
Their hands clasped, sealing a pact that would
shatter a kingdom. But in the space between their palms, the deep, invisible
crack that would one day splinter their revolution and their nation was already
formed.
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