Karrada
THE MOVE to Karrada, well to the south of the city in open countryside, felt like living in the Garden of Eden. Karrada was the garden of Baghdad, with its date palms and orchards which the legendary Gertrude Bell (then working at the British High Commission) used to walk through, admiring their ‘ripe oranges hanging from the trees and the green barley springing under golden mulberry bushes’.
The move to the countryside brought such a dramatic change after the crowded conditions of Hennouni. The new qasr was truly palatial, on the riverbank a two-hour walk from the city. It was surrounded by palm groves and fruit trees, fresh air and scents of roses, orange-blossom, jasmine, and gardenias.
Instead of having to press past people
in cramped alleyways, it suddenly
seemed as if we were flying on a
magic carpet alongside the bulbul
songbirds that nested there and filled
the air with musical notes of
incredible beauty.
Everything concerning the construction of the qasr had to be shipped in by guffa, the curious round boat that pre-dated Noah, in everyday use on the Tigris for conveying men and material. But her formal education was delayed, due to the isolation of the new home. Going to school for her brother and two elder sisters meant riding, ‘three-up’, on a donkey; there was no room for a fourth.