[Marxism] The Banquet of Seaweed

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

*****   A few days later I was discussing the Paris encounter [with
Amir al-Rikaby in June 2003] on the phone with an old Iraqi friend,
Faris Wahhab.  A socialist during his student days, Faris had left
the Ba'ath party together with other dissidents and joined an
independent Marxist group.  He, too, had turned up in London as a
stateless exile, but in the early seventies.  He was helping edit an
Arabic magazine, _Arab Revolution_, and that was when I first met
him.  Later he was compelled to leave Britain and we lost contact
with each other.  He went to Algeria.  Subsequently he was forced to
seek exile in the Far East.  It was Faris who informed me that Amir
al-Rikaby was one of the heroes of Haidar Haidar's novel _The Banquet
of Seaweed_.45  Set in the east Algerian city of Anabe (Bonne) during
the late seventies, the novel is a reflection on Arab politics and
the defeat in Iraq.  The two principal characters in the novel --
Mehdi Jawad and Mihyar al-Bahilly -- are both Iraqi communist exiles.
Mihyar is a fictional portrait of Rikaby.  The trauma they have
suffered has affected them in different ways.  Mehdi, who has been
there longer, has now realized that Algiers is not unlike Baghdad:
'The city is beatiful, surrounded with forests and sea, but like any
Arab city it is dreary, ruled by tyrrany, hunger, bribery,
corruption, religion, hatred, ignorance, cruelty and murder.'  Mihyar
is still hopeful that the Algerian masses will move forward again.
His vibrancy leads to a long dialogue between the tow men on
revolution: one crushed in Iraq and the other triumphant in Algeria.
Both men have been physically defeated, but their disagreements
reveal that their spirit has not been destroyed.  And in this novel I
discovered elements of the story that Amir al-Rikaby had not wanted
to discuss on that beautiful June day in Paris.

A few pages into the novel (p. 19), the two exiles stumble across each other:

As they saw each other, Mihyar al-Bahilly began to shout excitedly.
   'What the devil . . . is that really you?  Here?  No one told me.
Which devil-inspired stars brought you to this corner of the globe?'
   The two men hugged each other.  It was a celebratory hug, filled
with joy and relief.  After the warm embrace a silence.  Then Mehdi
Jawad spoke.
   'We meet again at last.  This time to inject a Marxist note into
the Maghreb.  You take care of the Ideology and Philosophy and I'll
take the Language.'
   Inside the cafe, Mihyar was elated.  The location thrilled him.
He sits sipping his coffee as he smokes, his eyes shine with a sharp
light.  He speaks:
   'We are now in the sacred land, the land where the Arabs surprised
themselves with a revolution.  Oh man, the revolution of the million
martyrs.  When I landed from the plane I went on my knees to kiss the
soil.'
   'Your political temperature hasn't returned to normal, Mihyar,'
said Mehdi.  'Tell me something.  As you kissed the earth were you
sure the blood did not smell completely rotten?'
   'Stop this cynicism,' replied Mihyar.  'One day soon we shall
visit the graves of the revolutionaries and all the places where the
battles were fought.  I tell you the Algeria of the Revolution is
like a luminous beacon in the darkness of the Arab humiliation.  I am
as happy as child who meets his mother after a long absence.
Imagine!  I am in the heart of the memories of this revolution.
First, I was appointed to teach at the Institute of the Children of
the Martyrs.  Second, I found lodging in the house of a widow who
lived with the revolutionaries in the mountains.  She was with Taher
Al-Zubairi himself.'
   Mehdi Jawad interrupted his friend sarcastically.  'And thirdly,
in order to complete your revolutionary purity, I think you should
marry this revolutionary widow and achieve your dream of
revolutionary unity with her.'
   Questions began to explode from Mihyar.  What is the situation of
the Iraqis here, Arab missions, Algerian society, culture. . . ?  He
did not wait for Mehdi to reply.  Occasionally he replied himself: he
explained the conflict inside the revolution and the power struggle
that eliminated Ben Bella, he gestured in admiration of this fallen,
betrayed revolutionary: 'Ben Bella is the father of socialism.  I saw
in him the Arab Castro, I felt he was moving towards Marxism.  This
Boumedienne cannot be trusted, a military man, isolationist, an
Islamic head and African feathers, but his heart is Algerian.
Occasionally he wears Arabic customs, I am of course talking about
the authority, but the people here make miracles. . . '
   'You are still infected by the rays of the Saints.  I worry that
you will burn yourself out.'
   'We have to be like this in these times.'
   'But why tackle all the questions at once.  There is plenty of
time to clarify our ideas.  The Revolution and the people here are
more complex than you imagine.  People are different when in battle
and after the battle.  Slow down a bit, little brother.'
   'We should find a way to contact the revolutionaries. I know the
banned Altaliaa [CP] Party is operating underground.'
   Mehdi Jawad was patient.
   'Your intentions are nobleand your head is filled with memories,
but after you have been here for a while, you will understand what
Albert Camus meant when he said, "With them I am a stranger and to
get rid of this alienation I go and stare at the sea."'
   'No,' said Mihyar.  'It is not like that.  Camus was neutral,
alienated because he was French.'
   'But those you dream about have been turned to stone.  Terror did
that.  People here have become as mute as a granite mountain.  Later
you will detect this terror on their faces.  I know.  I tried before
you came to break through this granite.  It is impossible.'
   'Why?'
   'Suspicious.  They do not trust anybody after their ordeals; the
revolution has entered its menopausal stage.  Your imaginary comrades
are in Europe and Paris now.'
   'Europe?  What the hell are they doing there?'
   'It seems they have moved their revolutionary project to Paris.
They have set up some sort of "Exiles association" similar to
nineteenth-century communists after the failure of the German
revolution and the victory of Bismark.'
   'Strange!  But the battle is here.'
   When he uttered the sentence, 'But the battle is here,' he seemed
disturbed.  His face was like a cloudy sky.  He lit a new cigarette
from the old one, ordered another black coffee and sighed.  Mehdi
Jawad wanted to tell him that in the age of exile the sun rises from
the east and the west, but before he could say anything Mihyar
frowned and announced, 'O what a sad age!'
   This was a man infected by a craze of revolutionary wars, an
intellectual still thrilled by Blanqui, the glory of the Commune, the
raid on Santa Clara and the Arms, the Arms -- who ever had them would
have God's word on earth.  A small band of brave men will set history
on its feet, and thus began Mohammad then Ali bin Mohammad in the
vicinity of Barah and then Abu Taher Al-Qurmati, and Che Guevara and
then Mihyar Al-Bahilly.  He was from Basrah from a mid-Euphrates
religious dynasty and the old Bahillys and the Imam Hussein bin Ali
-- the dynasty that carried its blood in their hands with its white
coffins on its body and walked to its fate with death its only
victory.
   When he waged the armed struggle with Khalid Ahmed Zaki and the
doomed guerrilla war in the marshes, he was under the illusion that
he was continuing the heritage of bloody martyrdom, perpetuated in
the many passion plays that are performed in the morning or evening.
This was the scream from the past to break out anew in the twentieth,
thirtieth or the fiftieth centuries, breaking all the walls of the
age of despotism, hunger, mass genocides for the benefit of people
beaten and humiliated and buried under the beastly authority of the
Caliphs, princes, dummy generals, and the parties that capitulated.

Later in the novel (p. 133) there is a moving description of Khalid
Zaki, who makes an appearance in the novel under his own name.  Amir
al-Rikaby must have talked at length with the novelist, when the
tragedy was still strong in him and he needed to talk as one does
after the death of a loved one or the break-up of a relationship or
some other emotional trauma.  And the novelist captured the moment.
He recorded in his own way, with his own nuances, but I recognized
the portrait of the man I had met so often in Shavers Place.

Ever since he [Khalid Ahmed Zaki] entered Iraq secretly from London,
where he was a member of the Bertrand Russell Foundation, the
Rightist leadership [of the ICP] was nervous of this adventurist, a
Guevarist infected with the ideas of the European new left and the
excitements of the Tupamaros and the guerrilla wars of Latin America.
    A gentle, sweet, and splendid human being.  When you see him for
the first time, he could easily be a romantic prince from old Wales
or medieval Spain.  When he grins, he blushes in a feminine way
leaving a large rosy patch on his pristine white cheeks.
   What brought this man from the foggy streets of London to this
strange time in Iraq?  Mihyar Al-Bahilly is asking himself all this,
but as he stares at the childlike face, he sees its other side and
realises how often the appearance hides the reality.  During his
acquaintance with him he did not study as carefully as he should have
the fine details behind the smooth white skin.
   In the heart of the Middle Euphrates, and while crossing the
Marshes, enduring the mud, the fatigue, and the beats of terror,
Mihyar al-Bahilly will realise what brought this gentle romantic to
banish caution and come to the lone kingdom of earth.
   He will hold the body in his arms, a body pierced with bullets,
its blood clots mixed with mud, and he will call on him to rise
again.  Deep inside Mihyar's soul there is a sorrow for the words
that sprang out from him when he disagreed with Khalid, accusing him
of retreating and saying that he was against suicidal death.
   Khalid Ahmed Zaki, with the awareness of a revolutionary who lived
through the hollow experience of the peaceful democratic line that
brought catastrophe to the party, he would present his theoretical
document which emphasises the replacement of a political circus by an
armed struggle, starting from the marshes.  He would call on the
political leadership to be the vanguard of this struggle.  He would
then go on to define an action plan that relied on the countryside
without neglecting the cities, pointing out the necessity of unifying
all other progressive sectors.

I began to understand Amir al-Rikaby.  Perhaps, there are some things
in life too painful to be recorded by history and which are best left
to fiction, which can sometimes be more honest than history.  The
encounter in the southern marshes during which Khalid Ahmed Zaki lost
his life in 1968 barely rates a footnote in the numerous books on
Iraq.  Why should it?  It was only one death amongst many.  No blame
attaches to the historians.  But it was different for us who knew and
cherished him.  We recognised that something terrible had happened.
The loss was incomparable.  His intellectual capacities, practical
abilities, and human qualities were much needed in the decades that
followed and even more so today.  It was an awful tragedy, a life
prematurely truncated, a departure that symbolised the defeat of an
entire generation.  Mudhaffar al-Nawab's latest poem is
incomprehensible outside this context.46

The radical colonels and communists and independent armed factions,
and Maoism and Guevarism, and everything else -- the entire shipload
had sunk to the bottom.  And now, rejoicing in its downfall, were the
old enemies, the cutthroats of the Ba'ath, their hands already coated
with the blood of their opponents.  They were preparing to do what
the communists had shrunk from when the moment was ripe [in 1958-9]
-- to seize power and this time on their own.

45  This novel by a Syrian writer -- _Walimah li-A'Shab al-Bahr_,
Damascus, 1998 (6th reprint) -- was written over twenty years ago and
recently (2000) was reprinted as a classic by the Ministry of Culture
in Egypt.  Its republication provoked an outcry from Islamists, who
claimed there were blasphemous passages, etc.  The novel was
withdrawn.  Sabry Hafez produced an excellent essay on this incident
for the _New Left Review_, 'The Novel, Politics and Islam' (_NLR_ 5,
September/October 2000 [available at
<http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR23908.shtml>]), which was widely
translated and discussed.  Far from being blasphemous in any sense
this was a powerful historical novel, 'a broad panorama of the
failure of the Arab revolution, complex in structure and epic in
scope'.  I had no idea at the time this was published that the novel
contained references to Khalid Zaki or that a central character was
based on Amir al-Rikaby.  The English translation of the passages
quoted is by Faris Wahhab, who wants me to inform the reader that he
is not a professional translator.  This is a statement of fact.

46. See Chapter 2, pp. 38-39.
[Would you ever forgive a lynch mob
Because they pulled your stiff corpse
From the gallows?

And never trust a freedom fighter
Who turns up with no arms --
Believe me, I got burnt in that crematorium.

Truth is, you're only as big as your cannons,
While the crowds who wave knives and forks
Simply have eyes for their stomachs.
O my people in love with our homeland,
I'm not scared of barbarians gathered at our gates.
No, I'm afraid of the enemies within --

Tyranny, Autocracy, Dictatorship.]

(Tariq Ali, _Bush in Babylon_, London and New York: Verso, 2003, pp.
94-101)   *****
--
Yoshie

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