Abd al-Rahman found talking to be both soothing and entertaining. Conversation kept him company and pleased him because words, as most of his companions discovered, are like thoughts in their potential to signify meaning. They conform to every aspect of awareness. This is so because the speaker begins the process of thinking the instant he utters a word. At that moment he’s enthusiastic and powerful — or perhaps he is a doubter or denier. Writing is different, a distinct form, far removed from spoken words. It distances itself from emotional reactions. It’s like masturbation. It represents a feel for the image but not the image itself, while spoken words are, at the very least, an agreement between the image and the object, between the moment and the reaction, the thought and the soul. When Abd al-Rahman speaks, he allows his words to float freely while he feels a kind of purification or numbness. The words he utters and the feelings he experiences evaporate. Thoughts that struggle in his mind fly away. This is how Abd al-Rahman used to talk, because spoken words offered him a true nihilism, not an approximation, a realistic philosophy rather than figurative thinking. In short, Abd al-Rahman was a speaker not a writer; he was a philosopher not a scoundrel.
Ismail Hadoub asked him one day, “What about Sartre? Why does he write?” and closed his eyes to await the philosopher’s response. Abd al-Rahman replied, also with closed eyes, and like a prophet, and said, “Sartre is one thing and we are something else. What is given to Sartre is not given to anyone else. Sartre writes to have his books translated into Arabic so that we may read them. Otherwise, pray tell, if Sartre did not write, how could we have heard of him? Sartre is something else,” he said as he was walking with Ismail Hadoub on a very cold winter night, down al-Rashid Street near the Haydar Khana mosque. They were soon joined by the turbaned men who emerged from the large wooden gates of the mosque. They crowded the narrow sidewalk near the metal ramp, decorated with Islamic designs and blue enamel. Abd al-Rahman crossed to the other side of the street once he spotted this swarm of white turbans, gray waistcoats, and black gowns. They all looked alike: each with a Quran and prayer beads in hand, with beards and quick, self-confident steps and stern looks. No sooner did they step down from the sidewalk, however, than a small black carriage pulled by two white horses stopped in front of them; a lady wearing the traditional burqa and black abaya stepped out. Abd al-Rahman and Ismail hired the carriage for a ride across the city before going to Dalal Masabni’s Grief Adab nightclub near the Roxy cinema.
They were both silent as they soaked in pleasure, taking in the streets lined with high-rise buildings and admiring the sidewalks canopied with eucalyptus trees. Behind the two men, the minarets and silent green domes of the mosques reached into the air. The streets were lit with kerosene lamps that guided pedestrians on foggy nights. They took in the scene unfolding on the sidewalks crowded with water pipes and waiters serving cups of tea to elegant customers in western dress. They had to walk close to the moss that grew in the mud breaking through the cracks of the asphalt sidewalks. Unveiled women crowded the cafés and groceries in the markets. Some sat on their doorsteps. It was a common scene at that time: the Royal and Roxy cinemas, the Mackenzie and Coronet bookstores, the Swiss café, Orosdi Back department store, Sartre, and Trotsky. Throughout that decade Abd al-Rahman was like a crocodile with tears constantly in his eyes. As he walked, his eyes would wander left and right, fixing on women with big breasts revealed by low-cut dresses. He stared at their soft bodies and golden legs, the denim skirts, the shiny umbrellas.
2
The philosopher of al-Sadriya was not short on despondent friends, but he needed a public post and had to write articles to introduce himself to society. He was handsome and appealed to women, and men were impressed by his elegance. He had money to spend on prostitutes. He was smart, funny, and, indeed, quite popular among the literary café-goers. At that time, it pleased society men to encounter a young Baghdadi who was capable of engaging the greatest western philosophers and thinkers, including Sartre. They took special pleasure in seeing him sitting alone in a corner, meditating on existence and its nihilistic nature. They enjoyed listening to his strange language, difficult and complicated, about existence by and for itself. For his part, he enjoyed his quick fame and prominence. He was proud of his social class, but he was a modest philosopher who had acquired some French manners: simple elegance, well chosen words, and mannerisms that were usually lost when he drank. He was hoping for a prominent position, real power, and resounding fame, but his awareness of his shortcomings had convinced him that a philosopher does not work, he philosophizes.
In 1957, on a visit to Baghdad while still a student in Paris, his father introduced him to Prime Minister Nouri al-Said, hoping to secure a position for him upon his return to the country, to serve as a philosopher in the cabinet of ministers. The brilliant politician took great interest in him and gave him a piece of advice he never forgot, “You are a philosopher, and you must continue to do your philosophy. Work would interfere with your activities as a philosopher. An office job is not for you, and you can do without it. Work is for creatures like us who are not capable of such noble and great thinking.”
Abd al-Rahman was relieved to hear these words. His father had placed him in a rather delicate situation, from which the prime minister had in fact freed him. His father, however, did not share his relief but, rather, was depressed, angry, and resentful; he was convinced that the prime minister felt threatened by his son’s genius. The prime minister, on the other hand, remarked in his memoirs of the year 1957 (a modest notebook that was in the possession of Mrs. Amna al-Said), that, “The honorable Shawkat Amin often burdens me with suggestions that, if I were to apply them, would turn the political situation upside down and destroy us. Today he brought me his son, the one we got rid of by sending him off to study philosophy in Paris. He suggested that we appoint him as the cabinet’s philosopher after his return from Paris. I explained to him delicately that appointing a philosopher to the cabinet would not bolster its survival. What’s more alarming is the fact that his son returned from Paris worse off than he was before he went. As soon as I heard the young man speak I became convinced that, without a doubt, he was crazy. If he is not crazy then I am crazy. By God, I wonder how these riffraff became aristocrats!”
The prime minister’s remark was certainly biased, out of place, and unfair, as he did not know that Abd al-Rahman, notable philosopher that he was, actually shied away from relations with influential people and prominent families. He even despised their way of life. He sought to promote a society that protected his imagination from pedestrian thinking. The aristocracy did not fit this requirement by any measure. Had he told the prime minister that he felt nauseated, surely he would have been met with ridicule and bitter sarcasm. Although he desired aristocratic women, he also loved to humiliate them. Had he married one, she would have been honored, but he chose to marry a western woman who surpassed them in manners and philosophy. He wanted to humiliate and ignore them and showcase his superior philosophical thinking. The women who surrounded his mother considered this cheating.