The Baghdad Kite Runners (click)

 
Violette writes: ‘We slept on the roof all through the scorching summer which never seemed to end. And right in the middle of it, just when we felt we were on fire, came Tish’a-Bab, the Ninth of the Month of Av, a three-week period of mourning when, by chance, most of our own tragedies occurred. It was at this time that the boys of the city either made or were given kites to fly. I don’t know how they managed to fly them without a breeze, but they would go up on the roof at daybreak and sundown, and if you looked up, you could see several high in the sky. Some were especially colourful. They even played a kind of kite war.’

This is the lane in the Jewish quarter that led to the Alliance school. It shows the tradespeople Violette mentions (from left to right): the tcheraakh khashab – wood-turner – who worked a kind of lathe making poles for bannisters, spindles, chair legs and so on; Abul ’ambah (‘the pickle man’) who sold nothing but the snacks the children so much enjoyed – laffa ’amba, a pitta-like bread wrapped around some mango pickle;  Abul fiussah, the pressing man – today we’d call him the dry-cleaner, but one specialising in headgear, complete with copper moulds heated by a petrol burner. Standing on the right of the lane is the man with the sandouq el-welayaat: a magic lantern with  a scroll, which he turned while narrating a story about each picture, starting every time with ‘Shoof ’indak Ya salaam!’ (‘Look here, what a wonder!’).

About two days before Yom Kippur, the holiest of holy days, the shohet, the ritual slaughterer, arrived, going from house to house killing everyone’s chickens for the pre-Kippur dinner. The chickens were all over the place, running around and clucking ever louder as if they knew what was about to happen to them. For each member of the family there was a white bird: a rooster for every male and a hen for every female. (A pregnant woman merited two hens and a rooster.) Violette writes: ‘For the ritual, he then passed it to my father who held the chicken by the legs. For each one of us, Baba chose the appropriate bird. He circled my hen around my head seven times, reciting a small blessing signifying that, if I had been meant to die in the coming year, let the chicken die in my place, and let me continue to live a good life. After this prayer, the chicken could no longer go free. It was passed from hand to hand, back to the shohet waiting downstairs in the kitchen.’
 

Often, there would be the extraordinary sight of young country girls arriving from distant villages and heading for the Shorjah, the main market. Piled on their heads were towers of ’elba laban, wooden yoghurt containers that slotted together. Each load could weigh up to ninety pounds – over six stone, or forty kg – and they were often as tall as the girls.

This is the neddaaf,  known to everyone as the teeteepampa – an odd name which probably came from the huge bow he brought with him, just like the bows of wood and string small boys made to shoot arrows with. He was the mattress fluffer. First, he would undo its matted cotton and then proceed to fluff it by twanging the string of the bow, starting on the outer edge of the pile and working through it until it was all pristine again.  The buzzing sound it made was just like his name: ‘Tee-tee-pam-pa!’ 

The bride’s house was the focus of attention in the run-up to a wedding. Two or three days before the ceremony, all of her fingers and just one of the groom’s little fingers would be covered with henna for luck at the henni  party, when the inner circles of both families gathered. Following that, discreetly,  another more personal ritual would take place with the visit of the heffafa, who had come to epilate the bride, leaving her body hairless and smooth. The beautification process was efficient but painful, as she used nothing more than strong thread.

Troupes of female musicians – the deqqaaqat – sang and played tambourines at wedding parties for tips.

On the first Saturday after a wedding it was customary for the family to hold open house: the ‘Saturday of the Ladies’, or Sabt el-Nesswan. Hundreds of women, mostly curious strangers, each covered in a black ’abaaya to avoid recognition, would file into the house to peer at the bride dressed in her wedding finery with all her trousseau now on show for everyone to admire.

Violette writes: ‘For our water, we had the river, just as in biblical times. Every day, men called saqqas used to haul up water in goatskins and fill our hubb, a massive earthenware container. Due to Baghdad’s dry climate, water evaporated through its pores, cooled and then dripped gently into a clay receptacle to be filtered through muslin into pitchers and used for drinking and cooking. Another container held water that was to be used for washing. It was quite a business, with each household appointing its own trusted saqqa to keep the supply coming.’

Underground, in the sirdaab pantry, the family stored dozens of small jars of sherbet and silaan, or date syrup, each with its brand new hand-made lace cover. ‘We made our own sherbet in various flavours, from rose petals, orange blossom, apricots, peaches, pomegranates and many other fruits – and almonds,’ says Violette. ‘It was more like a cordial, which was diluted as necessary. Like the silaan, it was to last all year, for our own consumption as well as for entertaining.’

Ibn Brakhel was the man who came to make the date syrup, silaan. After soaking the dates overnight, he and his helpers squeezed them and poured the resultant muddy-looking juices into about five bags stacked one on top of the other, each bagful filtering through to become a clearer juice. The final result was poured into large round shallow trays that were then carried to the roof and left in the sun to dry and thicken into a honeylike substance. The problem was that the trays attracted all manner of insect life, buzzing around them and often getting stuck, to die a horrible death in the sticky mess. After some days, when the correct density of syrup had been reached, it was carefully ‘de-insected’ and poured into large pottery containers for storage.

Once a year a man would come down the river with an alembic still aboard his guffa and set up shop in the open space leading to the garden from the kitchen. The blossom of the orange trees and petals of some special pink roses Violette’s father planted were carefully collected and then distilled to make maay qedah and maay waghd – orange-blossom and rose water. The flowers would be placed in the still with some water, which was then heated. As it was coming to the boil, the distiller connected a pipe and the vapour condensed as it passed through and cooled, dripping into a bottle. The family had plenty of supplies for cooking (flavourings for desserts and pastries) as well as for the girls’ toilette.
 

The ’arabaana  was the horse-drawn carriage everyone relied on for daily transport. The most famous coachman was Sheykhan, celebrated for his long and pointed Cossack moustache as well as a ruder attribute which ladies of Violette’s background and standing were either unaware of (unlikely) or forbidden from talking about in public. It is described in amusing detail on the artist’s website  (PG rated).