The revolution of 14 July 1958 was over very quickly. There was no opposition from the army or police, and the Shammar and Dulaimi tribes did not sweep down on Baghdad to save the Hashemite regime as they had always promised they would. The king and most of his family and court were killed, along with many of the palace guards. The hated Crown Prince was crucified over the entrance to the Ministry of Defence, with his genitals stuffed in his mouth, and the veteran politician Nuri al Said was shot while making his escape dressed as a woman; his body was dragged through the streets together with those of several innocent American businessmen who had just arrived from the airport. None was found again. The British Embassy was sacked, and an elderly attache was killed, possibly by a stray bullet. A lot of Iraqis – ministers, senior army officers and civil servants, politicians, journalists – were rounded up and imprisoned in Abu Ghraib, some for a few days and others for many months, but on the whole it was a relatively bloodless affair, and after a few weeks of turmoil Baghdad settled down again to its usual summer stupor.
As for us in the British embassy, our wives and children were evacuated, while the business community took their usual summer holidays. Iraqis steered clear of their foreign friends, and diplomats were reduced to entertaining each other. The only exception was the Indian embassy which insisted on holding its usual national day on the embassy’s lawn, with the heavily guarded Beloved Leader Abdul Karim Qasim and his honchos on show for the first time since the revolution. A guard inadvertently let off his submachine gun, and the assembled guests, guards and waiters flung themselves to the ground or disappeared into the shrubbery. It was reported that some days later a bewildered Bulgarian attaché emerged from a first-floor filing cabinet and asked if the shooting had yet stopped.
Within weeks Iraq established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and a number of other communist states . Forlorn groups of bulky Slavs and other Eastern Europeans began to appear on the broiling streets, or in the souk negotiating dourly for bargains. Short of money and without transport, they seemed to move on foot in blocks of ten or twelve, and it was a standing complaint among Coca Cola sellers that one bottle had to be shared between three. To sceptical Iraqis, accustomed to trading with western countries, they introduced the ways and products of eastern markets, not always with outstanding success. At a trade fair one such product was exhibited in a mountain of tins misleadingly labelled CRAP.
One of the minor annoyances of the post-revolution period was the Popular Resistance Front (PRF) , a sort of juvenile Dad’s Army whose main duty was to police the curfew. As evening fell they appeared in clusters on the main streets, toting rifles that seemed much too big for them, and stopped passing traffic by sticking their guns through the driver’s window. Since the authorities were always changing the curfew hours, and the PRF punks were the last to be informed, there was some confusion. After a few weeks people began giving curfew parties that lasted from 6 pm to 6am, and an additional PRF duty was that of getting the hosts to keep the noise down. After a few months the accident rate from PRF friendly fire became unacceptably high, and they disappeared.
Among the novelties brought into being by the revolution were popular demonstrations organised by political parties which sprang into being after Nuri went. I reckoned it was part of an Oriental Secretary’s job to keep a finger on the pulse of political expression, so, dressed appropriately in jeans and a tee-shirt with a revolutionary slogan, I would plod along with the banner-waving rentacrowd chanting the prescribed slogans. When it was over I would slope back to where I had left my car and return to real life. I thought my luck had run out one day when the demonstration took an unexpected turn and overran my car, with me in it. I couldn’t see anything because of the press of bodies, but I could hear the crowd muttering “Haya siyasiyya, shu hadha?” (Diplomatic Corps, what’s that ?) as they read my number plate. Then I realised they had lifted up my borrowed Fiat 500 and were carrying me in the direction of the South Gate bridge. While I was trying to remember how to get out of a sinking car they gently deposited me beyond the main stream of the demonstration and cheerfully went to rejoin their companions: “fi aman Allah, ya haya siyasiyya”“goodbye, diplomatic corps”, they shouted in farewell.
Although there were moments of relaxation and amusement, the atmosphere was tense. Iraq was isolated from the outside world while foreign governments decided how to deal with the new situation, and the rumour-mill, fed by Nasserist news agencies in Cairo and Damascus, churned out ever more frightful and bloodthirsty stories. Lacking normal contact with Iraqi officialdom we were cut off from our usual sources of information, and found ourselves relying on the ambassador’s driver to bring us the latest word from the souk. Telephones only worked spasmodically, and the same was true of government offices, services or employees. The wave of Iraqi arrests continued throughout the summer, to be followed by show trials of leading supporters of the old regime in the autumn..
Most of the frequent rifle-fire could be ascribed to joie de vivre or PRF enthusiasm, but there were also unexplained fusillades, especially in the neighbourhood of the embassy, where they were probably quarrelling over the loot stolen from the ambassador’s residence on 14 July (in the ambassador’s words “nothing was ever recovered, not one teaspoon”). We were concerned for the fate of the considerable British community all over Iraq, since the revolution was directed as much as anything against British influence which had persisted since the days of the Mandate. Our fears were misplaced – apart from the elderly embassy attache no one was harmed, and for most it became a case of business as usual….
One day the Doura oil refinery, on the outskirts of the city, was set ablaze, and for 36 hours treacly black smoke was blown over us. But this was marginally better than the suffocating red sand that we had had for the previous week when the khamsin brought in the stinging, blinding sand from the desert. In fact, we were equally grateful for the revolution and the khamsin since each took one’s mind off the other.
Christopher Herdon.
April 2006
