Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family

by Tamara Chalabi

Overview

“It’s an admirable endeavour to have Iraq addressed by someone who is in so many ways able to approach it from two worlds. . . . Tamara Chalabi has the stuff, in every sense, that is needful to undertake this.” —Christopher Hitchens

In the tradition of Jung Chang’s Wild Swans and Bhutto Benazir’s Reconciliation comes Tamara Chalabi’s unique memoir of returning to her family’s homeland, Iraq. In this epic story of one daughter’s journey through the annals of her family’s tumultuous history, Chalabi’s powerful voice and piercing vision illuminate her country and its people as never before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061240409
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/31/2012
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Tamara Chalabi holds a PhD in history from Harvard University. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Slate, and The Sunday Times, among other publications.

Table of Contents

Maps x

Family tree xiv

Chronology xvii

Prologue xxv

Book 1 Fallen Pomegranates

December 2007 3

1 Duty Calls: A Busy Day for Abdul Hussein (1913) 5

2 Stacking Rifles: Hadi and the War (1914-1916) 23

3 All That is Good Will Happen: A Marriage Prospect (1916) 35

4 Sugared Almonds and Jasmine: Bibi and Hadi's Wedding (1916) 46

5 A Giant Broken: The End of the Ottomans (1917-1918) 58

November 1999, Beirut 69

Book 2 Replanting Eden

September 2005 73

6 Cafe Chantant: The British in Baghdad (1918) 77

7 Rebellion: Fighting for Freedom (1919-1920) 86

8 A New King for a New Country: From Mesopotamia to Iraq (1920-1921) 95

9 Fesanjoon, a Royal Luncheon: Faisal Visits Kazimiya (1921) 102

10 Banished: Out of Kazimiya (1922-1924) 108

11 Accidents of Nature: The Baghdad Boil (1925-1926) 117

12 In Between: A Home Between Two Cities (1926-1929) 126

13 Stolen Hopes: A Young Life Lost (1928-1929) 136

14 Bursting Energy: Hadi's Growing Empire (1931-1933) 142

15 Prison: Uninvited Guests at a Feast (1935-1936) 149

16 Carefree: Growing Up in the Golden Age (1936-1938) 161

17 A Dark Cloud: The End of a Generation (1938-1939) 173

18 A New Home: The Shadow of Death (1937-1939) 179

October 2006 185

Book 3 A Dangerous Garden

May 1993 189

19 Mountains and Floods: Domestic Changes (1939-1941) 191

20 Blood and Salons: Mounting Tensions (1941) 202

21 An Education Overseas: Mixed Fortunes (1941-1945) 212

22 Love in Strange Quarters: Of Marriage and Other Unions (1946-1947) 223

23 The Girl on the Bridge: Anger on the Streets (1947-1949) 229

24 Precious Things: Towards a New World (1950-1951) 235

25 Storm Clouds Gathering: Family Feuds and Revolution (1952-1956) 245

26 Defiance: A Crisis and a Key (1956) 255

27 Revolution: Slaughter of a Family (1958) 260

February 2005, Sadr City 279

Book 4 Fields of Wilderness

December 2007 283

28 Lost Lands: Seeking Shelter (1958) 285

29 Migration: Precious Cargo (1958) 289

30 Hunger Pangs: Yearning for Home (1958) 296

31 Arrivals and Departures: The Importance of Contacts (1958-1959) 298

32 Escape to Nowhere: The Threat of the Clown Court (1959) 308

33 A Temporary Home: Visits to the Park (1959) 312

34 Return to the Shrine: A Life by the Sea (1959-1963) 316

35 Of Carpets and New Blood: The Emergence of New Patterns (1967) 325

36 The Ruins of Kufa: A Coup and a Birth (1968-1972) 333

37 Civil War: A Shattered Sanctuary (1975-1981) 338

38 Creased Maps: A Move to a Different Land (1980s) 343

39 Lessons in Humility: The Loss of Everything Precious (1980s) 350

40 The Mortality of Gods: Burials of the Banished (1988) 357

41 The Lost Talisman: When Everything is Taken (1989-1992) 363

42 A Question of Identity: In Search of a Way to Be (1990-2009) 370

30 January 2005, Election Day in Baghdad 383

Epilogue 385

Glossary of Iraqi Terms 389

List of Illustrations 397

Acknowledgements 399

Index 403

What People are Saying About This

Christopher Hitchens

“It’s an admirable endeavour to have Iraq addressed by someone who is in so many ways able to approach it from two worlds. . . . Tamara Chalabi has the stuff, in every sense, that is needful to undertake this.”

Editorial Reviews

Thankfully, Late for Tea at the Deer Palace is not Ahmad [Chalabi]'s book. It is a book about a bygone era—that of his parents, Bibi and Hadi, and his grandfather—an absorbing social history of Iraq that weaves the story of the influential and agile Chalabi family into Iraq's passage from part of the Ottoman Empire to monarchy to revolution…This is a work of exile literature, beautifully written, rich with human detail as only personal family histories can be, and minimally marred by an occasional excess of nostalgia.
—The New York Times

Linda Robinson

A wealthy clan weathers Iraq's turbulent history in this intimate retrospective. Chalabi, daughter of the controversial Iraqi political figure Ahmed Chalabi, recounts her family's journey from WWI through its exile after the 1958 nationalist coup. Her grandfather Hadi was one of Iraq's richest and most prominent men, and high politics swirl in the background as Ottoman and British imperialists, Arab nationalists, Sunnis, Shiites, Communists, and a transplanted monarchy jockey for power. But Chalabi tells the story mainly from the viewpoint of Hadi's wife Bibi, a feisty, progressive woman, complete with cigarettes, who chafes against the constraints of traditional Islamic femininity. Chalabi's novelistic treatment--full of arranged marriages, household melodrama, and big, steaming feasts--paints a rich panorama of Iraqi domestic life as the nation evolves toward a hopeful, modern future, until the coup (Chalabi's account is gripping) turns it onto a darker path. The author's political chronicle is sketchy--we don't really learn why Nasserite mobs wanted to kill the Chalabis in 1958--and her brief memoir of later years grinds some of her father's axes. But her family portrait is most telling as a glimpse of a contented, prosperous Iraqi normalcy that might have been. Photos. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

A gripping and well-told saga. . . . An eye-opening account of the family’s long history at the center of Iraq’s royal court.

The Nation

An absorbing social history of Iraq. . . . A work of exile literature, beautifully written, rich with human detail as only personal family histories can be.

The New York Times Book Review

A sweeping, enchanting memoir . . . Late for Tea at the Deer Palace deftly combines elements of history and memoir, but shines most when the author lets the characters’ stories tell the history of Iraq.

The Associated Press

One small way to rebuild a country after war may be to hold a picture of its true beauty, which is what Chalabi does.

The Los Angeles Times

Chalabi reconstructs her family’s past in novelistic scenes that demonstrate impressive scholarship.

The New Yorker

Fascinating. . . . Chalabi is a natural storyteller. . . . There are absorbing vignettes that describe everyday life in Iraqi high society as it has never before appeared in English. . . . An often beautiful and vivid but tragically belated book.

Ann Marlowe

It’s an admirable endeavour to have Iraq addressed by someone who is in so many ways able to approach it from two worlds. . . . Tamara Chalabi has the stuff, in every sense, that is needful to undertake this.

Christopher Hitchens

The daughter of controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi and a Ph.D. historian writes here about Iraq, a country she barely knew—the Chalabis went into exile in the 1950s—yet she felt drenched in its rich scenes through the tales of her exiled relatives. Her family has shaped her sense of a place called Iraq mainly through memories and folk stories. Chalabi elegantly narrates her family history, merging it with that of Iraq, from the Ottomans all the way to the birth of the modern state and her family's exile. We see the prestigious and rich Alchalibi family, who played political and administrative roles for decades in Iraq; we witness high lifestyles, gossip, women's voices, picnics with the royals—and the exile. Through this memoir, Chalabi tries to reinvent Iraq, claim it as her own, and defy the sense of estrangement that weighs heavily upon her. She visits Iraq for the first time, after the fall of Saddam, to find it a broken place wrapped with the dust of wars, so unlike the place lavishly introduced to her in the stories of her uprooted family. Verdict Through this vibrant literary memoir, readers learn about Iraq's history and a notable family's experience of the country, no matter how far away. Recommended for general readers.—Sadiq Alkoriji, South Regional Lib., Broward Cty., FL

Library Journal

A pleasantly informative memoir of an Iraqi family from the twilight of the Ottoman Empire before World War I to Baghdad today.

Historian Chalabi is the daughter of Ahmed Chalabi, America's candidate to replace Saddam Hussein in 2003. Her controversial father occupies a modest position in a history that opens in 1913 Baghdad with her great-grandfather, Abdul Hussein Chalabi (1879–1939), a powerful local figure. Caught in World War I, his area suffered badly; afterward the British assembled present-day Iraq from former Ottoman provinces. Abdul became a government minister while his son, Abdul Hadi (1898–1988), expanded family holdings before maturing into a leading nationalist after World War II. Hadi's increasingly Western-educated children were rising to prominence when, during the vicious 1958 military coup, mobs and soldiers murdered the royal family and leading officials. Their property confiscated, most Chalabis fled. As Iraq endured repeated brutal coups ending with the 1979 accession of Saddam Hussein, the family reassembled in Britain, Lebanon and the United States, joining the growing exile community. The author skims over events since 1990, but readers may blink to read that America's 2003 invasion surprised Iraqi opposition groups, and their offers of help were firmly declined. Besides delivering affectionate biographies of dozens of 20th-century antecedents, giving the women equal time, Chalabi provides an extensive, wide-ranging account of Iraqi history and culture through the eyes of a prominent family emphasizing the nation's often grisly politics and the persistent, catastrophic rift between Shia and Sunni Muslims.

Propelled by a rich narrative, this is one of many books that would have proven helpful to American leaders before they decided to invade Iraq.

Kirkus Reviews