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Because I belong to a generation that never lived through the era of Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri when he was truly Iraqi, I knew him as many others did: from books, from poems, and from the echo of his voice as it traversed decades of controversy and compromise. Yet, I was close to his son, Furat (Abu Ban)—that writer who used to carry his weekly column to me when I supervised the back page of Al-Jumhuriya newspaper more than thirty years ago. As if carrying a fragment of his father’s soul, he would hand over his article like a precious gift to be handled with exaggerated care. He grew fond of me for some reason, perhaps because of how I treated his column, publishing it on the back page as if it were a historical document to be shielded from the very air.
I remember a winter day in Baghdad when Abu Ban walked in unannounced and said, “Come on, Karam, come with me.” I didn’t ask where, nor could I refuse. On the road, as he drove, he told me: “You are the closest person to the doyen of Iraqi music, Abbas Jamil. I am taking you to him; I have something he must hear.” Abbas Jamil’s house was just minutes away from the Al-Jumhuriya building. His wife, Um Faisal, received her guests as if the house itself were a living piece of Baghdad’s memory.
