61
Naked, the boy ran to his room, hurtling up the stairs. He was mortified to pass his mother standing in front of her bedroom on his way. He quickly covered himself, rushed into his room, and slammed the door shut behind him. They were even now: he had seen her naked, and now she had seen him naked. Still he couldn’t forget how she had stood motionless as he was running up the stairs naked before her.
The philosopher’s childhood certainly provided sufficient material to make a serious existentialist out of him. A single document stated that the al-Sadriya philosopher was deeply influenced in both his philosophy and conduct by Edmond al-Qushli. It was the only document of those I found, either among those the lawyer Butrus Samhiri had shown me when I visited him in his office, those owned by Hanna Yusif which he gave me at our first meeting, or even the important papers that were held by Sadeq Zadeh. Edmond al-Qushli, the assiduous Christian, who worked first as a translator for an Indian company then as a teacher at Frank Aini School, lived with his grandmother Adileh in the district facing Mahallet Jadid Hasan Basha in Baghdad. In the fifties he was considered an existentialist, in the sixties a Trotskyite. When he was young, people referred to him as ‘Edmond son of Adileh.’
One wonders why Abd al-Rahman became the preeminent existentialist philosopher in Baghdad while Edmond al-Qushli turned his back on existentialism completely — he even fought against it. It is possible that Abd al-Rahman was a victim of a Trotskyite plot organized by Edmond al-Qushli, with the help of the great bourgeois of the time, Faraj Khaddouri. But in offering this theory we would face another hurdle: How did a proletarian Trotskyite join with a comprador bourgeoisie against an existentialist of the sixties, a descendant of an aristocratic family that had been in gradual decline from Ottoman times, to the monarchy, and later under the republic?
62
It is well known that Edmond al-Qushli became acquainted with existentialism at the end of the forties reading the Egyptian journal al-Katib al-‘arabi edited by Taha Hussein. This contradicts the rumors spread by Iraqi philosophers of Abd al-Rahman’s generation who claimed that they carried existential thought into Iraq. But Edmond had read Abd al-Rahman Badawi’s translations of Arnold’s writings and some of Sartre’s articles on the subject long before the sixties. In the fifties, specifically in 1953, he became very attached to Suhail Idris, the existentialist Arab thinker and friend of Sartre’s. He brought existentialism to Iraq from Paris in his suitcase, as the Iraqi existentialists like to say.
Edmond fell in love with Aida Matraji, who was the Arab Simone de Beauvoir in the fifties and the sixties. He had two photographs hanging on his wall in his grandmother Adileh’s house, one of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and, on the opposite wall, a photograph of Suhail and Aida together. He considered Aida more beautiful than Simone de Beauvoir and Suhail Idris more handsome than Sartre, because Sartre was short and Suhail was tall. And while Sartre saw matters with one eye, Suhail regarded them with two. He also confided to his existentialist friend Sarkun Saleh — who was introduced to existentialism around the end of the Second World War, in the Waqwaq café in Antar Square — that he loved Aida because she was honorable, whereas Simone de Beauvoir lived her life as many Frenchwomen did and had known hundreds of men before she slept with Sartre. This explained why, according to him, Arab existentialism is greater and more honorable than French existentialism.
Edmond al-Qushli might also have been influenced by the Baghdadi journal al-Fikr, published by an Iraqi painter with the help of his mother, Hajjeh Zakiya Abed. The journal closed down when she died. It was the same journal in which Naim Qattan published a news item copied from the French press about a conference Sartre had given in Paris. The place was so packed that the police had to intervene to get help for those who fainted in the crowd.
Naim Qattan was introduced to existentialism through readings in French. One of the important documents that Hanna Yusif gave me, however, stated that Edmond al-Qushli was too young in the forties to be interested in philosophy. But it’s a fact that he was influenced by one of his friends who used to frequent the Waqwaq café (it might have been Sarkun Saleh himself) and became familiar with existentialism through the journal al-Katib al-‘arabi, where he read Arnold’s translated articles and those of Abd al-Rahman Badawi.
63
Edmond used to go to the Waqwaq café every day, sit on the wooden couch covered with mats, drink tea, and smoke. The café was always crowded and warm. He would sit close to the large glass windows overlooking the street to watch the passersby while listening to the sounds of classical music — Bartók, Debussy, Rubenstein.
Other café habitués were Husain Mardan, who always sat at a remote table in the corner. He would usually be joined by Boland al-Haydari and Fuad al-Takarli, and the three of them would read from a small book of Husain Mardan’s. Their physical appearance conjured a state of neglect that reflected their fascination with existentialism: they wore cheap clothes and didn’t shave. Desmond Stewart was a habitué of the Café Brazil. To the great delight of all, he was usually surrounded by young men listening to his translation of excerpts from Sartre’s work.
64
Edmond al-Qushli became acquainted with existentialism before the al-Sadriya philosopher, but there’s not a shred of proof that he influenced Abd al-Rahman, especially insofar as Edmond rejected existentialism decisively sometime around the end of the fifties or the beginning of the sixties. The two men met during the philosopher’s return visits to Baghdad after his departure for Paris to study. It was after he learned of the affair between his cousin, Nadia Khaddouri, and the philosopher that al-Qushli rejected existentialism, colonialism, and capitalism. He thought up a new concept for rebellion, because he was neither moved to existentialism by the resistance nor satisfied by it, finding the philosophy to be effeminate, cowardly, quiet, and defeatist. Nadia distanced herself from him because her family had moved up in society and become part of the merchant class. Abd al-Rahman managed to win her because he was rich and belonged to the aristocracy, and Nadia’s father was more interested in money than religion — what use was existentialism in this case? Edmond wanted a revolution, and this couldn’t be an existential revolution because existentialism is not revolutionary. He wanted a sweeping Trotskyite revolution that would involve confusion, destruction, demolition, tearing away, and uprooting. There would doubtless be a revolution, one that he would lead. The first house he would destroy would be that of the bourgeois Abd al-Rahman, then the Khaddouri’s. He would then proceed to annihilate one house at a time, one floor at a time. He would tie the members of those families with ropes, load them onto donkeys, and parade them before the people. Thanks to the revolution, he would be able to win Nadia, control her, and make her submit her to his sexual desires. He’d rape her, and it would be a Trotskyite rape. He’d win her over in an original way. He wouldn’t say to her, “I adore you,” but rather, “You’re my revolution. You’re the reward of those who struggle against colonialism, capitalism, and reactionaries. You’ll be mine because you belong to me. You do not belong to the feudalists and the aristocrats.”
This was the revolution that Edmond wanted to launch and which he planned, a revolution far removed from nausea, nihilism, and estrangement. But Nadia ended her relationship with Abd al-Rahman. He gave up on her and went to Paris, where he married a Frenchwoman, a relative of Sartre. The revolution toppled the Khaddouri family, and Nadia was attracted to the Trotsky of his time. He married her after the revolution, but he didn’t rape her. Instead, he felt that he was being raped. This is how Edmond the Trotskyite befriended the bourgeois Khaddouri and both rallied against the philosopher of al-Sadriya.