Jacqueline was an enlightened intellectual with mastery of both English and French and a law degree from the Sorbonne. Her views were totally communist. While in Paris, until her return to Damascus, she’d continued to work closely with French communists. For reasons unknown to me, she had no close ties with Syrian communists, but did sympathize a great deal with Iraqi communists, perhaps because, unlike other Arab communists, they had created armed militias to overthrow the regime. Jacqueline firmly believed in the culture of the coup and was convinced that change would never happen without armed struggle. This was how she came to look after a huge number of Iraqi communists, especially artists and journalists.
At her house I always met a bunch of correspondents. Some of them had been working in Baghdad and had fled, while others were based abroad but visited Damascus from time to time. Another group regularly seen at her house comprised film directors, painters, poets and political writers. But the most favoured group of all, one that was never absent from these meetings, consisted of guerrilla fighters or members of Al-Ansar, the communist forces that had taken refuge in the mountains of Kurdistan, where they fought against the Baathist and government forces with the aim of toppling the regime. The narrative of this period of history is certainly interesting.
The truth is Jacqueline didn’t see me as a great journalist or literary star. But she, and her husband, believed that what I was doing was far greater than anything that those useless foreign journalists with little understanding of the region could ever achieve. Neither Jacqueline nor her husband had much confidence in the West or in Westerners, least of all in journalists in general and American journalists in particular. Their suspicions probably originated in the old communist ethic that they sustained for so long. Nevertheless, this never really affected them and they were not at all fanatical, especially Jacqueline, who was completely different from anyone I knew. She was never depressed, pessimistic or venomous, and was always kind and amiable. Moreover, she never got involved in the intrigues that some journalists engaged in.
In that modest apartment on the upper floor, where Jacqueline and her husband lived, you could always find a crowd of journalists, correspondents, actors and directors, Arab and foreign, of all races and creeds, including Americans. Both Jacqueline and her husband were friendly with everyone and offered them all possible assistance. The apartment, which I visited regularly, was so crowded that sometimes you couldn’t find a place to sit. Within this amazing social melange, projects, reports and films would be negotiated. Foreign journalists lived almost exclusively in Beirut, Damascus or Amman, and sometimes in Iraqi Kurdistan. They might want to write news reports on kidnappings, sectarian conflicts, violence against women, anonymous murders, urban warfare or the US Army. So on their way to the Middle East, they might spend an evening or two at Jacqueline and Hanna Mugharib’s apartment. It was there that I met journalists looking for a ghost writer. After concluding a deal, I’d be sent to carry out what was required for the report: taking photographs, conducting interviews, gauging public opinion and even meeting politicians. I was recompensed handsomely for my pains. For me, it didn’t matter that the report would appear under the name of some other journalist, newspaper or news agency. Jacqueline, however, didn’t like this one bit.
Nevertheless, it was Jacqueline who introduced me to them and it was thanks to her that I received many such assignments and became well known for doing a good job. The biggest news agencies and television networks would commission me to write features and short analytical pieces. They didn’t want me to provide news stories or reports, as most correspondents did, which they had their own stringers for. They needed more than that, and started giving me serious assignments that greatly increased my income. I dressed elegantly and drank beer at the most lavish restaurants. I also had numerous male and female friends. And from time to time, foreign newspapers and news agencies sent me on assignments to Baghdad.
Whenever my news reporting assignments dried up, Jacqueline would give me various jobs. These were mostly handling the affairs of Iraqi intellectuals who’d fled their country, finding them housing with friends, solving their other problems or, for those who so desired, smuggling them to Europe to become citizens and residents.
Jacqueline had vast experience in such matters. In the past, especially after Saddam’s clampdown on leftist movements at the end of the seventies, she used to help fugitive communists, either by finding them refuge in Damascus or Beirut or, with the militants among them, by preparing for the revolution that would make Iraq the first communist country in the region. She helped many of them flee the hell of Baghdad, using two methods. Firstly, she would secure them regular jobs and salaries at Palestinian liberation organizations in Beirut. The Palestinian media in particular absorbed large numbers of them. Secondly, she would help some of them receive military training to go to northern Iraq, to hide out in the mountains and join the Al-Ansar communists’ fight against the government forces.
Although Jacqueline had been jailed in Syria several times for her underground, conspiratorial activities, she never divulged even a single piece of information that might harm any of her Iraqi communist comrades or Al-Ansar fighters. During that period, the communists were at loggerheads with the Baathists, a conflict that had reached its peak during the Iran — Iraq war. As the communist movement became more militant, it was clear that its various wings were following the Syrian line in their struggle against Saddam. When Iraqi fugitives were unable to take immediate refuge in the mountains on account of the strict siege imposed by Saddam on Kurdistan, they would flee to Syria as a permanent transit point. They often carried a special card that enabled Jacqueline to identify them as communists. Only then would she be willing to offer them housing assistance. In the absence of a card, she would be suspicious that the newcomer was a spy planted by Saddam’s secret service apparatus. She often spoke about contacts who later turned out to be spies.
After 2003 Jacqueline’s programme underwent drastic changes. She turned from being the protector and supporter of communists to being the protector and supporter of journalists and writers, especially a year after the US invasion of Iraq, when they began to feel the brunt of the violence themselves. She disclosed to me some of her intricate plans involving Iraqis and asked me to help her carry them out. So I helped her by booking rooms in miserable hotels where we would cram journalists and photographers two or three to a room, according to the requirements of the situation. We once convinced a hotel receptionist to allow us to squeeze ten journalists into a single room. If the receptionist was Egyptian, our task would be much easier, because Egyptians were always sympathetic to the poor and needy and were constantly willing to facilitate humanitarian missions. We sometimes ran out of money or couldn’t find places for them to stay, so Jacqueline would welcome them into her own apartment. Sometimes, when there were too many people staying in her apartment, she would go somewhere else with her husband, until lodgings were arranged for the newcomers.
The lifestyle at Katania House was so Western that you even forgot you were in the Middle East. There were young Iraqi and Western intellectuals, both men and women, living under the same roof. Music blared from the courtyard of the house: pop and rap, old and new, as well as classical music such as Wagner, Chopin and Verdi. In their rooms you’d find the latest publications in Arabic and other languages. There were new paintings signed by young artists and films whose directors and casts sat and laughed with you while lounging in bed. Almost every evening, everyone would bring a favourite drink and a dance party would begin to the music. Katania House was the destination of many young Iraqi intellectuals, the second generation of fugitives from the hell of Baghdad. While the first generation had fled Saddam’s hell and the dictatorship that was now over, the second generation was fleeing terrorism, militias, occupation and religious censorship. Where the first generation had danced to the music of the Beatles, Cliff Richard, the Shadows and the Doors, and talked about armed revolution and the socialist state, the second generation danced to rap and hip hop, the songs of 5 °Cent, Eminem and Fergie, while debating democracy and human rights. There were also plans to emigrate to Europe, with Iraqis moving, wave after wave, to join their friends there. But they remained attached to those who stayed behind, especially in Damascus. So Jacqueline tried hard to make life easy for those who loved Western culture, music and a life of liberty.