Read Online Rain over Baghdad: A Novel of Iraq by Hala El Badry - Free Book Online

eyes caught an ad for camping in al-Wadi al-Jadid, captivating desert with a picture of the sun setting over that great sea of desert sand reflecting an orange color that acquired a deeper red hue at every bend of the dunes surrounding the oasis.
    I asked Hilmi Amin as he was describing the drawings of Hasan Fuad, the painter, on the walls of the detention camp cells in al-Kharga Oasis, “Why don’t you write your memoirs so that we might know what happened to Egyptian communists?”
    He said, “I wrote an autobiographical account of what I experienced in the oases detention camp. Parts of it were published in al-Zahra magazine.”
    I said, “Many men in the Egyptian national movement wrote memoirs about the July 23 Revolution and Egypt’s underground political parties before the revolution. We’ve ended up getting conflicting pictures and the truth is lost.”
    He said, “The truth is never lost. The only problem is that each of them wanted to be the hero, so he would tell the story with himself as the focal point. But even that is useful because others can respond and correct the narrative. The best of what has been written has been the account given by Ahmad Hamrush, because it is documented and real truthful effort has been expended in telling it, even though I have minor differences with his stand and account.”
    I said, “How about my recording an interview with you about your life? That would be useful. Then we can transcribe the tapes and one day we will have material for a book that would be helpful for the youth who don’t know this history.”
    “Ok. Let’s start tomorrow.”
    Our morning schedule changed. We started setting aside one hour every day to record Hilmi Amin’s life. We started in a very traditional manner about his life in the city of Alexandria and how his family moved there from the south of Egypt looking for work. They settled in the neighborhood of north Ras al-Tin close to the harborand customs, where his father, and later on his brother, worked. He was the middle son of five boys. His brothers stopped going to school after middle school but he went on. He worked on the waterfront throughout the summer to finance his education. His mother gave him a gold chain (her shabka), which she had held on to against the vagaries and treachery of time, to pay university expenses, but he got a tuition scholarship because of his good grades. In his youth he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, then left them and joined HADITU (The Democratic Movement for National Liberation) as soon as he enrolled in the university. Egypt at the time was seething against British colonialism and he joined the resistance. He fell in love with the girl next door, Ismat, and they planned to get married after graduation. His mother objected since Ismat’s father, a distant relative of Hilmi Amin’s family, died, leaving the family without a breadwinner. Hilmi’s father thought it was his responsibility to support them. So he married Ismat’s mother in secret even though his wife suspected the relationship but couldn’t be certain. When Hilmi wanted to propose to Ismat formally, his mother angrily told him that Ismat was not suitable for him and that he should propose to an educated woman, a doctor or a teacher. But the engagement took place anyway. Then he was arrested in 1954 with members of the HADITU movement who were split about their position vis-à-vis the 1952 revolution. They took them all to the military prison and a rumor spread among the detainees that they would all be sentenced to death. When his father came to visit him in jail, he told him, “Cash my salary from the customs department and spend it on furnishing Ismat’s house and marry her off to the man who proposed to her. I am no good for her. I’ll be moved from one prison to another. I love her and I wish her the best.” He did not tell him that he was awaiting a death sentence.
    The father said, “Ismat will wait for you for years, if you want.