Giton)
THE RIOT.
Maurice Rowdon.
At the time of the riot in Baghdad I was working at
one of the colleges as a teacher.
It was called the queen
Aliyah College, and was for girls only.
Opposite, behind
an uneven wall, with the brickwork of its face exposed and
rough like a mediaeval building in Europe, was the College
of Arts and Sciences for men. And at the end of the road
there was one of the gates of the city, a wide S quare where
the buses stopped, with palm trees and a dusty road-surface,
and a kind of platform in the middle Where criminals and
sometimes political prisoners were hung early in the morning,
and left there hanging for three hours.
Nearly every year there was a riot of some kind among
the students, in the cold W ea ther, before or after Christmas,
according to the state of politics; sometimes the riot was
mild and sometimes violent.
The most violent one had been
after the S igning of a treaty with Britain, whe en Ernest Bevin
was foreign secretary. Since then they'd been fairly quiet.
But it was said that the city, and therefore the country,
couldn't go on for long in this state; there were too many
comnuntsts, too many Russian agents living in the tall,
squalid blocks of flats near the gate on the other side of
the city, where the better-class brothets were.
Students in the College of Arts and Sciences used to
read Lenin and Marx under the lids of their desks rather as


if they were pornographic.
There was a steadily growing
class of dissagisfied professional people Who wouldn't
tolerate Irag's connection with England much longer; the
treaty was represented as an act of slavery, only a voluntary
treaty on the surface; the ministers were looked on as
lackies of the British Embassy, and much odium surrounded the
person of the Prince Regent Abdullilah, who was later murdered;
he was said to have his finger in every big commercial deal
in the city, especially if it was a crooked deal, and to have
amassed an immense fortune by corrupt bargains with the govern-
ment over property and building contracts.
There were also too many poor people.
But they didn't
complain.
It was the students and the professional people
who resented and smouldered.
They hated the fat, illiterate
ministers and under-secretaries who kept them waiting in ante-
rooms. The son of the prime minister was also hated.
was said to be one of the lowest rakes in the country.
of all the things that were said about the people in
charge it was difficult to know what was true.
When later
these people were murdered, their bodies dragged through the
streets, it no longer mattered what the truth was; the only
important fact was that the anger had been allowed to accum-
ulate too long, and nothing could stop it.
During this riot, which wasn't a perticularly bad one,
I realised that I was looked on, hated and admired si imultan-
eously, as an Englishmen, not at all a friendly teacher from


a foreign land as I thought I was. It was my first
experience of being looked at with political hatred, that
is, a hatred which is blazing and fierce, quite without
mercy, yet in the strangest way without anything personal
in it. My own students, especially the ones who were close
to me, in my own class, were those who now looked at me most
venomously; the girl who had the reputation of be ing my
favourite student, and who against all precedent had come to
my hotel-room in my first term at the college to ask me all
sorts of questions about existentialism and Byron and life in
London and Paris, came up to me and hissed an insult in my
face.
The- other students took little notice of me---those who
worked mainly under other teachers. They seemed, blind to
me---their eyes looked vaguely past me when they turned in
my direction 9 silvery, with a damped flame, smoky. It was
a miscalculation on my part to be in the college at all on the
morning of a riot. Usually the day of rioting was known
beforehand; after all, there had to be some plan for a riot;
and the 'friendly' teachers, those who weren't identified with
the government or the British Embassy, were nearly always
warned. But this time there was no warning.
Even the
teacher who was famous for his Arab nationalisp didn't know.
Afterwards I was told that this riot was the most spontaneous
there had been so far; there really had been no plan.
It started during one of the classes.
I realised wha t
was up the moment I heard shouting outside, like a wail,
because this was the week in which rioting was expected more


or less.
I was sitting in my favourite classroom, which
looked out on to a quiet quadrangle where the sun blazed
down peacefully, making it book like a courtyard in the middle
of the desert, in one of the sheikh houses. Baghdad is
called 'the city of two springs', and the loveliest weather
is at the beginning and the end of summer, when the air is
sl ightly crisp and the sunlight extraordinarily dazzling and
clear.
Most of the girls came to the college in their abbas.
These were blackcloaks that steetched to the ground and went
over their heads like a hood, simply folded over, so that
they could draw it across their faces if they had to. Only
the old women of Baghdad, and then usually those of the poorer
classesh wore the veil proper, a piece of black cloth stretched
across the face just above the nose, leaving a slit for the
eyes.
The educated classes had dispensed with it on the
whole, and women covered their faces at will, if they went into
the streets at all. Not all the girls wore the cloak, even
those from the traditional families; the Christian Arabs and
the Assyrians never did, but came in ordinary western clothes.
The head of the college was a Turkish W oman, a spinster,
and her assistant a Canadian married to one of the governme nt
ministers, who was later imprisoned for some years by the
revolutionary government. The result was a slight element
of suffragettism in the college, though of CO urse it made
poor weather against its total opposite outside.
When the
girls took off their abbas and put them on hooks in the entrance


hall they revealed western clothes underneath---highheeled
shoes, tight jumpers, little trinkets and clasps, and most
of them wore lipstick.
The noisiest part of the morning was always the break,
when the long recreation-room was filled with girls, and
lemon-tea and Turkish coffee were served. At first I went
there every day but it always meant doing extra tuition---
a girl would always rush up to you with a problem. So by
the end of my first term I was having tea on my own, in a
little room reserved for the clerks and the bursar of the
college.
But the recreation-room was the more pleasant:
it had cheerful frescoes and little tables, and settees along
the wall.
After the first yelling started ou tside the head of the
college, a pale, quiet, sad-faced Homan, came round to each
classroom and told the girls to sit quietly in their places
and to by no means take pàrt in what was going on outside;
aayone who did would be punished.
She said this with narr-
owed, slightly fluttering eyes, her lips pursed, but clearly
she felt apprehensive. Her hand was shaking a little as she
closed the door again. Some of the yells outside were rather
blood-curdling, and the girls began to get up from their
places, taking not the slightest notice of me.
There was a
bustle in the hall outside.
It happened to be near break-time, and people began
drifting into the recreation-room. As yet there seemed to
be no violence outside.
The Canadian woman, hurrying past,


told me it would be better to stay in the college.
There
wasn't another teacher to be seen. Even the bursar wasn't
in his little office, nor were the clerks. It was a bright,
clear day, and the sun streamed through the tall wi indows.
There was no one serving tea. Even the head of the college
had disappeared.
There were only students and me. I began
to hope that they liked me---all of them.
The yelling outside increased, and then there was the
sound of smashing gladd. I went out into the narrow quad-
tangle that gave on to the street and saw that most of the
students of the college opposite were collected on the roof
and were dropping sizeable boulders down to stop anyone get-
ting into their college.
The police were collecting in the
road, which was otherwise quite deserted as I'd never seen it
before.
Tie students were slinging small stones and pebbles
down at them, and the police were moving about dexterously,
finding little areas of shelter, crouching down, their rifles
cocked and ready, though almost certainly they had government t
orders not to fire.
To one side, standing by an official
car, there was a police-officer directing operations. No
vehicles were to be seen.
The usual beggars and mules and
donkeys, the sun-bleached, creaking carts and old, cloaked
women gliding quickly along the pavements, were no longer
there.
I noticed that there were also girls on the roof
opposite; they were waving down to our girls, who seemed to
be taking the situation quite lightly.
But then the stones


started flying dengerously---the students must have spent
hours getting these armaments together on the roof, behind
a low parapet.
It seemed that the police were trying to
force an entry into the college from the side, in order to
clear it with tear-gas, and as they got nearer the building
in a flank-movement the boulders and S tones began flying with
a vengeance, making dangerous-sounding thuds on the sandy
ground. One of the windows of our college was suddenly
smashed, an a everyone ran inside.
The police pushed the
remainder of the girls back---and, s ince I felt exposed,
with my European appearance, I went back too; then the doors
were made fast.
I decided to go and sit in the recreation
room, and to look as unconcerned as possible, though I was
very frightened.
I reminded myself thatbon the whole foreign-
ers were left alone, but I knew there could be accidents.
I sat down on one of the settees and tried to look as if I was
reading.
Still none of the girls took any notice of me. It was
the negligence of people with absolute power. But at least
the doors were barred, and the girls themselves weren't
dangerous.
I was wrong. Something opened with a crash---
it might be a door or window---and I had the sudden impress-
ion of some one rushing into the hall outside in a frantic
way, then a babble of girl's voices. At first I saw no one
but then I was aware of a young Arab in the hall, hardly
visible because of the excited girls round him. I thought
at once that he might be followed by a horde of others---


that the police had lost control---and also I began to think
that I, as the : only Englishman in the building, might be the
target.
The young man seemed to push his way through the
girls---I noticed for the first time, as if I'd been deaf
before, that he was shouting at the top of his voice, with-
out stopping, while the girls made a strange kind of crooning
noise in sympathy, and I saw that his face was covered with
blood, his hair matted and disordered, and that his loose
shirt was torn.
He was trembling violently, and his teeth
and eyes made a striking impression on me in their whiteness,
because they contrasted so much with the rest of his dark,
bloody face. He then saw me---or seemed to---and started
coming forward quickly from the hall; I went absolutely still
with terror---my book was being squeezed tight between my hands,
and 1 S imply waited. He went on coming forward, his eyes--
if you could say they were concentrated on anything at all---
blazed into mine.
The girls followed him, and he walked
straight into the recreation-room to within a few feet of
me. I tried to smile---it erossed my mind in that moment
how ages of civil politeness could rise in one's blood in an
emergency---end his eyes showed absolutely no recognition
whatsoever. And all this time he continued to shout, his
teeth and eyes flashing. I wondered if he had a knife.
I was so transfixed with terror that I was aven not trembling
any longer, but as rigid as what I was sitting on, my book
clamped so hard between my fingers that it was hurting me. a
My breathing and my heartbeats seemed to be one rigid oper-
ation.


But slowly I began to realise that he hadn't seen me.
A girl was pulling him away---she wanted to bathe his Kound.
And within a few more seconds he was out in the hall again.
Relief wen t through my body like a slow wave, and I began to
wake up to distinet sights and sounds again---the brilliant
sunshine on the window, the girls' voices, the yells and thuds
outside; it was really like waking up in the morning.
The
young man's shouting ceased. A fewof the girls returned---
his speech seemed to have stirred them---and gave me some
hateful glances. The girl who'd once asked me about Byron
and existentialism pushed her face close to mene so that our
noses were almost touching and hissed in her broken English,
"How do you like it now, eh?" I smiled at her in an aimless
way and shrugged, and she walked out with a last biting glance.
I realised that my first few months at the college had
been based on a mistake. I'd been invited out to Baghdad by
Arabs, not by an official British organisation, and I'd assumed
that for this reason I wasn't identified with Embassy politics,
whatever they were. But I was wrong. For the first time in
my life I was hated in my flesh, for a matter that was beyond
me, which I'd never created and which I knew next to nothing
about. It was a peculiar sensation, like gooseflesh.
I started feeling defensive about it. Who was to
blame if the British used influence where influence was
tolerated?
Instead of saying that the British were behind
everything bad that happened, even the weather, that all
Englishmen were spies etc ete, why didn't they stand up and


make a government of their own, and clear their cities of
slums, and rally the poor people? Why build me into a
figure---a poor damned fool of a teacheri---unless they were
burning with envy, that little maggot with a political face
sometimes called 'freedom'.
I à couldn't help it if they felt
inferior! And who were these people who felt inferior?
Who were these girls who hissed in my face and bared their
teeth at me ; who were the ir younger brothers across the
road? Quite half of them came to college in long, bright,
American limousines! It was the done thing among the girls
to offer me a lift at the end of the morning---me, the
imperial master, who hadn't even a broken-down Ford, ev en
a bicycle:
Their servants swarmed round the gates every
morning, salaaming and smiling, come to fetch the little ones!
These were the purveyors of 'freedom' to the people---the
sons and daughters of the very men who squeezed the people
to their last drop of blood! And they certainly needed their
political slogans---to hide the brutal discrepancy between
themselves and the malaria-ridden, tubercular, half-starved
masses under them! Yes, they needed a scapegoat!
In fact, much fewer than half the girls came in
limousines.
There were a handfull of rich girls. Most of
them were the children of professional people---lawyers,
teachers, doctors.
They were middle class and their
hatre ds were of an abstract kind.
Then I was rescued. A Kurdish friend, hearing the
noise of a riot from the ministry of justice where he worked,
phoned my home to see if I was there, found I wasn't and


came straight across. He liked making grand gestures,
and he enjoyed walking slowly from his car thr ough a hail
of stones to the college, dressed in his perfect White
suit, with a panama hat at an angle. He prided himself
on knowing most of the important communists in the city,
and on being the only landowner they treated as a friend.
He'd taken me one evening, with an air of conspiracy, to
a communist cell, in a flat high above the main square of
the city, where there were two small, urgent-looking men
with revolvers in their belts. I remember we sat on the
terrace looking over the iron rail at the flat roof-tops
where people lay on hammocks and divan beds in the heat,
and at the twinkling lights of King Feisal square, and the
rolling, brown river in the distance, with lighted moso ques
on the other bank. He told me that this communist cell
was like hundreds in the city, there were armed men waiting
for 'the day', which would happen in two years, five years,
ten years; but it certainly would happen.
And it did
happen, in about five---to the surprise, apparently, of the
diplomats and the so-called Arab experts.
The prime min-
ister was murdered and dragged through the streets with his
feet cut off, the Prince Regent and the king were both shot,
the British Embassy was burned to the ground. A Kurd
became the leader.
I was certainly happy to see him in the doorway of
the recreation-room, looking immensely tall next to the
girls. We walked out of the building arm in arm, with
the stones still flying about. Not much notice was


taken of us. The police had gained an entrance into the
college, though there were stillmstudents yelling on the
roof. Things had abated somewhat.
The road was uncann-
ily still and deserted, apart from the policemen ducking
down behind walls and trees like soldiers in battle. It
wouldn't last much longer, my friend said. It was a
'damp squib'. The police were well in control.
Next day the students were as cheerful and talkative as
ever.
The Byron girl smiledat me in the old way. I peered
into their faces but couldn't see a trace of the feelings of
the previous day. The girl who had run across to the men's
college was called to the head's office and given a severe
talking-to. But she wasn't punished.
There was still a
sign of fear in the head's face. She had a sad, lip-biting
manner underneath her authority. The other teachers drifted
back and sat in the recreation-room or the clerks' office as
usual, not mentioning the disturbances.
Most of them agreed
with the principles behind it, anyway.
They wanted S ome
sort of social position, which they didn't have, and they saw
people like me, much younger, coming from England or France
or America, getting salaries that made theirs look silly.
I was surprised to see the bloody young man, too. He
came across to take a glass of tea with his sister. We even
spoke to each other. He had kindly eyes and a charming
smile. I asked him what he'd been saying the day before but
he looked quite blank. I even began to feel unsure that it
had happened.
Perhaps abstract hatred, besides being the


deadliest hatred there is, is also the quickest forgotten.