The Tobacco Keeper (22 page)

‘Please forgive me. The events of the coup left me no time to call.’

No excuses could possibly convince her. She sobbed and sobbed, reproaching him for remaining in the country after the outbreak of anarchy. She begged him to join her in Moscow.

Moscow, he felt, would mean a real release from the state of depression into which he had sunk during the past few days. It would free him from the fear of death and torture, and would take him back to music, which brought so much joy and happiness to his heart. All he wanted to know at that moment was news of Nahida al-Said, who he was so anxious about. His hands and lips trembled with apprehension for her. But it was impossible for him to receive detailed news in Tehran. He spent two weeks filling in paperwork for his trip to Moscow, but because there were no direct flights from Tehran to Moscow on account of the Shah’s close ties with the West, he had to go via Prague or Budapest. There was also the SAVAK’s strict monitoring of the Iraqis living in Tehran, particularly those arriving after the coup. But finally he managed to evade them and left for Moscow, taking Hussein with him.

His wife trembled with joy as she stood wrapped in her fur coat. Her face was sallow and her body emaciated. As soon as she set eyes on her family, she cried out loud. The news from Baghdad had talked of bloodbaths.

Haidar took off his woollen coat and tossed it on the chair
opposite. He dialled Kakeh Hameh’s number. The latter’s voice sounded faint over the line, as though he were a prisoner. Kakeh Hameh told him that Nahida al-Said had been hanged at the hands of the insurgents. Hekmat Aziz and his wife had also been murdered on the escape route to Basra. Haidar’s hand shook so much that he dropped the receiver. He cupped his hands to his face and broke into bitter tears.

He wrote the following passage to Farida: ‘With the help of the Tudeh Party, dozens of people managed to slip across the border with Iran into Soviet territory. Some of those who tried to enter the Soviet Union via the Caspian Sea died from the storms that capsized their boats. It’s worth noting that some Iranian opposition organizations, realizing the nature of the coup, offered to shelter the fugitives. These included the Melli Iran Party, which was nationalist and was part of the National Front led by the late nationalist leader Dr Mohammad Mosaddegh.’

From Moscow, Haidar wrote a long and significant letter to Farida. This was dated 23 March 1963, that is, more than a month after his escape from Iraq. He mentioned many details and referred to several important events. He believed that his views on the people, the rabble, on populism, mob mentality, revolution and the culture of coups had been proven correct by the latest coup and by the insurgents themselves. In other words, one coup engendered another, which in turn caused yet another, ad infinitum. Then he described in great detail the frightful events, including the image of the murdered leader lying on the floor of the broadcasting building, dressed in the same yellowish khaki suit and looking exactly the same as the day Haidar had seen him walking among the frenzied masses who crowded around his car to greet him.

‘The faces were distorted by love and the mouths gaped open repulsively; the same faces that were disfigured by anger and indignation as they murdered, lynched and hanged in the name of the new revolution.’

One of the puzzling facts of Haidar Salman’s life was that Tahira and Hussein returned to Baghdad while he stayed on in Moscow. Three months after his arrival, Tahira returned with her son to the house in Al-Karradah. According to Kakeh Hameh, it was her father, Ismail, who asked her to go back to Baghdad. In the meantime, Haidar Salman spent all his time developing his musical skills, composing the symphony he’d been dreaming of and giving concerts in Moscow and the other republics. He played in a small music institute near his apartment. He followed a strict regime of practice that extended from the early morning until the evening. By working like a slave, he tried to avoid thinking about anything. He felt utterly devastated by the colossal events that were taking place, especially the image of Nahida al-Said’s hanging, which he couldn’t banish from his mind.

One day, the fat, middle-aged, Russian director of the institute stopped him in the middle of the corridor. ‘Wouldn’t it be better Mr Haidar,’ she said, ‘if you practised the more technically challenging works of Schönberg?’ To this he had no response, for he didn’t care whose music he played. He played incessantly and unthinkingly, without paying much attention to the composer. True, he developed his skills and prepared for a number of concerts in Moscow and elsewhere. But he was a fugitive from the events around him, which he could neither comprehend nor decipher. Work was a form of escape from the images that haunted him. One day, he left early to go home. He
walked slowly out of the building, buffeted by the wind. A large puddle left from the previous night’s heavy rain stood in his way. He skipped over it to avoid stepping in, without looking at the faces of the men and women coming from the building. He saw only their muddy boots, shabby trousers and wet coats. Before reaching the door to his apartment, he stopped in his tracks and lifted his head. The first phrase of the composition he wished to create leapt into his mind. Henceforth, he realized that he was looking for an untraditional form and was trying to avoid using old forms such as the sonata. He was looking to recombine the raw material of melody to inspire listeners and transport them to broader horizons. He was looking for an orchestral texture that was colourful and a harmonic language that was unique, employing counterpoint as an essential base in the harmonic structure, far from traditional forms.

On 25 August 1964, he began laying out the plan for his first composition. He’d already found a job at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, and was working from morning till noon. Instead of going home directly after work, he would go to the top of the hill, where lush, shady trees grew beside the walls of an ancient fort surrounded by large gardens. He lay down on the thick grass beneath the branches of poplar trees, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere and the cool breeze. He meditated and gazed at the beautiful houses that were ranged in neat rows. It was from this spot that he began to compose his own musical pieces. He was inspired to write a concerto that would start with an improvised melody (a cadenza) and would use the full orchestra, especially the string section. He jumped to his feet and went down the hill, as the first tunes took shape in his head. He walked
quickly as he listened to the distant melodies. Immediately, while still on the street, he began to write down the notes. But when he arrived back home, he felt too exhausted to continue. After taking a short nap, he woke up and began to work on the technical aspect of the concerto. He sat at the table thinking. He thought first of violin techniques but then realized that the strings could support the percussion instruments. So he began with the latter.

He told himself that the cadenza could replace the exposition of traditional works. It could be used to introduce new elements that would be delicate and tender. It could be created out of the harmony that distinguished Arab music. He felt elated as he discovered this world. He felt able to uncover the capabilities of the violin, this powerful instrument that was so close to the human voice, while preserving at the same time the character of Arab music.

He couldn’t banish the idea of linking contemporary art with traditional forms, perhaps because the idea of preserving and using the heritage was so strong in Iraqi art. He had become firmly convinced of this view years earlier, after a conversation with the sculptor Jawad Selim.

As they sat at a wooden table in the Waqwaq café that was established by Boland al-Haidari and Hussein Murdan in Al-Adhamiya, he heard Franz Liszt’s Concerto No. 1, which he loved so much. They each had a cup of coffee as they sat opposite each other. Jawad Selim, with his handsome face, sharp eyes and thick, black beard, told him in a low voice, ‘You can’t possibly introduce anything new without getting inspiration from the past.’

Jawad Selim seemed like a traveller of old, sailing across the oceans of the Sumerian and Assyrian heritage in order to produce novel ideas. Al-Sayyab was experimenting with the two-thousand-year-old metres of Arabic poetry in order to make
them compatible with the rhythms of modern life. So Haidar Salman diligently searched Arab and Islamic traditions. He wanted Arabic music to seep into Western classical music as stealthily and quietly as sand.

‘Stealthily and imperceptibly,’ he said to himself.

Was he looking for a moment of absence in his music?

There was no doubt about it. He wanted Arab culture to be present in Western or classical music. As he composed his pieces, he felt his fingers grow hot with the spiritual warmth of the desert. When he was in Europe, he felt that musical notes soared high like butterflies fluttering in the depths of the desert. He wanted melodies that would awaken the phantom of fertility in the blazing heat of noon. He wanted to produce music that was like the birth of creation and the trembling of life’s genesis.

Haidar tried to make music achieve the extraordinary feat of submitting the soul to artistic experience. He did not believe in heroism, only in art, for art was the search for goodness. Was moral virtue really capable of solving society’s problems? Was there a radical difference between morality and art?

He believed that art was virtue itself. He had no idea that this view would later collapse in Baghdad, under the destructive pressure of the people. He had innumerable questions, because he wanted his artistry to lead to the good of humanity. He looked for epicurean pleasure in music, like the second character in
Tobacco Shop
. He felt that he was creating something important, that creativity was for him a mystical act, a deep conviction that the work he was creating had a spiritual dimension.

Could he possibly deny the presence of a spiritual force in the work of art? Not at all. Haidar felt that he was embarking on the creation of something palpable, something that drew its power
from the music of the universe. At the beginning, he felt drawn to abstractions that were, nonetheless, strongly present and palpable. This was faith, no doubt. It was a belief that reconciled the different religions inside him: Judaism, which he had absorbed as a child, Christianity, which had seeped into his soul through classical music, and Islam, which became part and parcel of his inner self after his marriage to Tahira. God was One, although He appeared in various texts.

Haidar rejected Ada’s materialist interpretations of music. As they sat on the balcony of her house in spring, watching the trees change colour, he told her that he was trying to reconcile the various strands and tonalities of the three religions. He saw the presence of sand everywhere, the changes of colour and of natural phenomena. This was immortality itself. A piece of music represented partial immortality while music in total represented complete eternity.

He spent his evenings at the house of the Russian pianist, Ada Brunstein, located on a narrow street behind the Bolshoi Theatre. She had a large room on the upper floor, where a sofa overlooked the street, flanked by small windows that were permanently open. On the opposite side was a large window that overlooked the dense garden. Ada sat cross-legged on a second sofa to the left. On the mantelpiece above the fire stood a nightlight and a vodka bottle. Ada was a petite, blonde woman with full lips and a short nose. She spoke softly and was very happy with him. A world-famous virtuoso pianist, Ada was also cultured and fluent in several European languages. She would receive Moscow’s most important writers in her house, and it was through her that Haidar became acquainted with many of them.

As for how Haidar came to know Ada Brunstein, we only have
the account given by the Czech violinist Karl Baruch in his memoirs. He said that Haidar Salman had taken a cruise on the Baltic Sea. On the same boat was Sergei Oistrakh’s son with his pregnant girlfriend. After the son had disembarked, it became known that the girlfriend had run away with the Iraqi composer, Haidar Salman. The girlfriend was the pianist Ada Brunstein.

So Ada Brunstein was Haidar Salman’s new girlfriend. But did she have anything to do with his trip to Paris? That was something we could never ascertain. It was a detail missing from all his letters. Nor did Farida ever comment on it. But all events indicate that Haidar and Ada were closely attached at that time.

Why wasn’t Haidar Salman a faithful husband? He never once wrote about this, as though it were natural to be married and also have mistresses. Throughout his life he experimented with these relationships and sought to avoid unhappy endings. This was predicted by the character of Ricardo Reis in Pessoa’s collection
Tobacco Shop
.

But why didn’t the disgraceful incident on the boat affect his relationship with Sergei Oistrakh? That was something we never discovered either, as the man died in 1990. We couldn’t get through to any of his family members either.

Whatever the case, Haidar’s relationship with the pianist was common knowledge. In 1965 he travelled with her to Paris, where he took part in the Jacques Thibaud competition. It was his first performance in front of a Western audience – most of his concerts in previous years had been in front of Russian audiences.

On a large stage in Paris, Haidar Salman stood in total darkness except for the spotlight above him. The large audience appeared to him only as ghosts. After breathing deeply, he closed his eyes
and rested his bow gently on the strings. As the music soared, he felt the sounds flowing savagely but serenely along with the streaming of his soul. It rose above the wilderness and connected intimately with the Creator, expressing His true relationship with all creatures. Haidar felt that music was to be found in savage isolation while the soul grew within and rose higher and higher. As soon as the music stopped, he heard the applause in the hall. The lights came on and he could see the audience offering a standing ovation. Among those who applauding was the director of the Carnegie Hall, who later invited him to travel to New York and take part in the Leventritt Competition.