Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad

  Bee Rowlatt is a former showgirl turned BBC World Service journalist. A mother of three and would-be do-gooder, she can find keeping her career going while caring for her three daughters (and husband) pretty tough, even in leafy north London.

  May Witwit is an Iraqi expert in Chaucer and sender of emails depicting kittens in fancy dress. She is prepared to face every hazard imaginable to make that all-important hairdresser’s appointment.

  Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad

  BEE ROWLATT AND MAY WITWIT

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  First published 2010

  Copyright © Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit, 2010

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the authors has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-141-93472-3

  To Ali: for his indispensable support

  For Justin and the girls: every day you make my life better

  Preface

  This was never meant to be a book. But when you read it, you’ll see how it had to become one, regardless of any embarrassment I might feel about its intimate contents.

  I made contact with May in 2005, completely at random. She was just another person at the end of a phone line in my busy working day. I never imagined that we’d become friends, our worlds were so different. But as a relationship developed, the intimacies that we shared took on a huge momentum in my life.

  Writing the emails became compulsive. I wanted to share the personal moments in my life with my friend, someone I came to call my sister, never thinking that anyone else would read them.

  I can’t help but feel a degree of horror now that the book is being published. The only consolation is that my private revelations are quite meagre next to May’s story – and so, in tribute to her courage, here goes.

  Bee Rowlatt

  When I answered that phone call, Bee was a journalist through whom I wanted to expose my country’s misery. I wanted the whole world to see the unreason and injustice of the decision to invade Iraq and shatter our lives – how the simplest daily chores became far-fetched objectives. I never realized at the time that my life would change through a friendship that exceeded race, age, time and place.

  May Witwit

  Contents

  2005–2006

  2007

  2008

  2005–2006

  17.01.05

  Hello

  Dear May

  Thank you for agreeing to be available for interview. As I said, I’m a producer for BBC World Service radio, on the news programme The World. I’ve been phoning around all week trying to make contact with various English-speaking Iraqis to interview in the run-up to the elections at the end of this month, so I was very happy to find you!

  Would it be OK if I called you on Thursday? Most people I have spoken to say they are nervous about the elections and possible violence on the day. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Perhaps you could tell us about everyday life in Baghdad at the moment as well? Hearing you talk about trying to do your hair in a city of power cuts – ending up with it half curly and half straight – made me think that life must carry on behind the street fighting and explosions on the news. I can’t imagine what it’s like, and I’d love to hear from you about how you manage.

  I wonder if you would mind telling me more about your family and your background. It’s not easy for people over here to discover the voices of ordinary Iraqi people whose lives are tangled up in the big news stories. In any case I will email you again, so that I can keep up with your plans.

  Take care.

  Very best wishes

  Bee

  26.01.05

  Hi, Bee

  I received your email and was delighted – it has been ages since I’ve been in contact with anyone from Britain.

  Since you asked, here is a little more about myself: I am the eldest of three, two girls and a boy. We were born in Iraq – in 1959, 1962 and 1964. My parents, both pharmacists, travelled in 1960 to the UK to complete their studies at Queen’s University in Belfast. My parents taught at the College of Medicine and my father was soon promoted to become the head of the chemistry department. Being a devoted scientist he got cancer from working with carcinogenic chemicals. My mother did all she could, but he died just before Christmas 1970, in London.

  After his death, my mother (only 33) decided to study for her PhD and was accepted at Chelsea College of Science and Technology in London. But she wasn’t very comfortable there. We moved several times before we eventually settled in Dennistoun, in Scotland. After she got her PhD we moved back to Iraq, late in 1975.

  Life here, as I told you, is a mini hell. As you know, I teach English literature at Baghdad University. I think it helps my students, because it transports them to another culture, another life, and another world. The world of Jane Austen is so far removed from our daily terror of bombs and violence.

  I hope that all is well at your end of the world. Iraqis here want to vote, and are looking forward to the day of the elections because they really do believe that it will make a difference. I’m not that optimistic, but still I hope that it will turn out right.

  Hope to hear from you soon.

  Best wishes

  May

  10.02.05

  Election day

  Hello, May! It was good to hear from you again. Thanks for letting the programme contact you. I wasn’t in that day, but I understand they were very happy. It looked like election day would be trouble. But the news on the actual day was quite inspiring; I couldn’t believe how brave people were and that eight million voted. It always makes me think about people here, who are often too lazy or indifferent to vote. If only they knew what other people go through to do it!

  Everything is fine here. In fact, I took some time off after the elections to catch up with normal life. It was good to have a break – the news can be hard to escape when you’re up close to it all day. I have two small kids so I only work part-time now, but sometimes it’s hard to switch off.

  Here in the UK everyone’s caught up in the earth-shaking news that Prince Charles is to marry his girlfriend Camilla. News reporters are wondering whether the British public approves or not (given the enduring fascination with Diana). I never know whether to be reassured by stories like this: you think, ‘Well the world can’t be so bad after all.’ But then you think, ‘Do people really care about THIS?’ Of course, we all follow Iraq on the news. But it’s hard to imagine ordinary people caught up in the scenes on TV. I sometimes
try to imagine what life would be like if the conditions in Baghdad were suddenly imposed on London.

  Spring is nearly starting here and there are a few buds poking out of the soil. It’s still cold but it feels like spring is on its way.

  How is your teaching going? Are your students coping with the ‘regime change’? I wonder what things are like now, compared to before the invasion.

  Hope you are well.

  Bee

  17.02.05

  Before and after

  Hello, Bee

  Things seem no better after the elections, but we do hope that the situation will improve. It’s not so easy to try and foresee things; it’s a bit early and there are conflicts among the winners themselves. We’ll have to wait and see.

  I was thinking about your questions and the comparison between ‘Now’ and ‘Then’. You ask what it’s like to teach at an Iraqi university. So let me try to describe it for you: classes start at 8.30 and continue to around 1.30. Before the invasion we used to have evening classes but now it’s no longer safe, and public transport is not available after dark. I don’t take classes before 10 a.m. because I adore my morning rituals and love to take my time when showering and having breakfast and drying my hair (this is my most important part of the day). I hate to rush things or be in a hurry, no matter what. And if the situation requires hurrying (as it sometimes does) my whole day is ruined. Besides, my brain doesn’t function properly till after 10 a.m.

  Teaching at the College of Education for Women is quite different from my other teaching experiences when I taught mixed-sex classes. As you know, our society is sort of restricted when it comes to mixing between the sexes. Many families do not approve, and think letting male and female students sit next to each other is like pouring petrol on fire. But if parents are more open-minded, they will send their girls to mixed colleges.

  Young women in our college are treated like girls, and the department will send for the father or guardian if a student is absent or does not wear proper uniform. Sometimes a student who is very oppressed at home comes to college all covered up and wearing no make-up. Once she is inside she changes her clothes in the bathroom, puts on heavy make-up, removes her head cover and pulls her hair down. This is done without the knowledge of the family, and of course the procedure is reversed when it’s time to go home.

  Teachers have greater freedom, but there are limitations. In the old days before the invasion, trousers weren’t accepted. I remember when I had to meet the former president of the university to sign my appointment letter. The man looked at me and said, ‘Please don’t think that I am old-fashioned, but trousers are not really acceptable because you are going to set an example to the female students.’ I smiled at him and said cheerfully that I wouldn’t be wearing them again, explaining, ‘They have just been tailored to fit me and I thought that, since I was meeting you, I should wear nice clothes.’ He laughed and said, ‘You remind me of a teacher at medical college.’ And then he gave my mother’s name! I looked surprised and told him she was my mother, and he chuckled, saying, ‘Now I know whom you take after.’ (He was later assassinated, shot dead in his clinic shortly after the invasion.)

  Will have to run to make dinner now.

  Love

  May

  18.02.05

  RE: Before and after

  Dear May

  Sorry to hear about the university president. But it’s amazing to hear about daily life at your college. Could it be as though time’s going backwards for women in your country? In the West we tend to view Arab countries as oppressive towards women, but by the sound of your mum it can’t have been all that bad before the invasion. Unless she was considered unusual in being educated and working as a pharmacist? After your dad died, was she able to be independent and make a comfortable living from her work?

  I guess I’m partly interested in how it is for women in your country because my children are both girls. They are Eva, aged 3, and Zola, aged 2. Even at such a young age they are very different people. Having daughters has certainly made me think more about how societies treat women. It’s one thing when you’re bothered on your own behalf, but quite another when you worry about your own child and her prospects. I grew up thinking women could do anything and everything, but now it strikes me that if you have kids you realize you are constrained in one way or another. You have to sort of choose: shall I try to forge ahead with my career, or shall I try to be a perfect mother? (Or completely do my own head in trying to do both.)

  So that’s why I love to know about your mum, and your female students. Plus I’m basically a nosey person, so there you have it. I must dash now, but I hope that you’re well and that you can drop me a line soon.

  Love

  Bee

  21.02.05

  RE: Before and after

  Hello, Bee

  As you guessed, my mother was quite unusual for an Iraqi woman. She worked after her graduation from the college of pharmacy in 1957, and has continued to work ever since. I remember she had no time to cook or do the usual household chores when I was growing up, so we had a servant/cook for quite a long time. When one servant left we would get another, and for those periods in between my mother would order a whole week’s meals from a restaurant and put them in the deep freeze for us to heat up and eat! Most Iraqi women are very domestic, though. Housework here is regarded solely as a female duty that has to be carried out whether the woman wants to or not, and whether she works or not. I remember an old man asking me once whether I could bake bread or not, and when I said no, he eyed me worriedly, saying, ‘Women who can’t bake bread are not popular in the marriage market.’ I had been married then for 17 years so I laughed and said, ‘Yes, you’re quite right. I’m really suffering from this defect.’

  I think around two-thirds of women stay home to raise the family, but this is all changing now because of the high number of men that have been, or still are, killed and imprisoned. But unemployment has actually gone up since the US invasion. Ministries and administrations have been dissolved, leaving millions simply jobless.

  I think I would describe our family as educated upper-middle class. Not filthy rich, but you could say we are well off. Not many people in this category remain now. Most of them emigrated between 1991 and 2003, during the embargo years, and the rest have fled the country since the US invasion. I can’t say that they do not exist but they are a tiny and ineffective minority. Our old neighbours were mostly doctors, pharmacists, mayors, lawyers, army generals etc. Most of these people have either died or left the country, and the houses that once stood empty are now occupied, either by distant relatives or by people displaced from other neighbourhoods who are very different in their habits.

  The truth is that most of those still in the country cannot afford the expense of emigrating and have failed to get jobs outside Iraq, despite the hundreds of applications they have filled out. There are some middle-class types that also stayed, hoping to benefit from the present situation. They have shut their minds and souls to all that is logical, modern and cultured. One colleague, for example, totally changed her principles and loyalty after the invasion. When confronted she simply said that she had been oppressed and helpless in the old days, while in reality she was one of the regime’s most committed followers.

  Time to go now. I hope you are well in London.

  Love

  May

  22.06.05

  Hello again

  Hello, May! How are you?

  I hope you’re well. It seems like such a long time since the elections, and looking at the news over here nothing seems to be getting any better. The BBC is reporting a study that puts the civilian death toll since the invasion at around 25,000 – so shocking.

  It’s been a busy time here but I am having a good summer; we have a heatwave here in the UK and London looks so beautiful, it’s shimmering. It’s very hot outside and I can hear the rumbling sound of central London through our office windows. You will remember from your time
in Scotland that we British people take the weather very seriously as a subject: any change in temperature is greeted with shock and amazement, even if it’s only to be expected.

  I loved reading about your family. Mine is a bit patchy and hard to describe; my mum’s family is all dead apart from her sister in Canada. I know very little about the previous generations. I don’t really describe myself by class – if someone else feels the need to then that’s up to them. I grew up in a very small family unit. My father left when I was a baby so it was just my mum and older brother. I’ve since found out that we were pretty poor at the time, she was a part-time teacher while she brought us up and that was her only income. But my mum’s very clever and we had no idea that we were skint. I can now boast about our whacky upbringing: Mum bringing home and cooking squashed roadkill (pheasants and rabbits), weird hippy clothes that we wore, and strange family holidays. Schoolfriends teased me for not having a TV in our house, but of course all these things are very trendy now. (My mum and her boyfriend Dave now own a shop in York and live very comfortably in a gorgeous house in the countryside, so it’s safe to say they made it in the end!)

  I have better financial security than my mum had as a young mother. My husband Justin is also a journalist but works on TV (= better paid) and so he’s the breadwinner. When we first got together I was embarrassed by our financial arrangements. I stopped earning for a while when our first baby, Eva, was born. He was scrupulously careful to make me feel the income was shared, but even so I still remember the first time I bought a lipstick with ‘his’ money, and how strange it felt. Now I doubt my wages will ever match his so I have shed those early misgivings – consider it a housekeeper’s/mother’s/secretary’s salary if you will, haha!

  Even so I wouldn’t want the girls to be spoilt and not know the value of money. When they’re teenagers I’ll expect them to earn their own just as I did. And although our neighbourhood is one of London’s posh ones, which is all very nice, the girls have very little in the way of Stuff. You know – Barbie dolls, technology, trendy clothes and all that. A bit mean perhaps, but fortunately they’re still too young to have realized it.