The President's Garden

I’m reviewing Muhsin Al-Ramli’s epic novel of modern Iraq, The President's Gardens. It was first published in Arabic in 2012, and in this English translation by Luke Leafgren in 2017, by Maclehose Press. I read it for the World Literature discussion group on Goodreads, which is reading Arabic fiction this year. It is available in the Library in the Adult Fiction section under Ramli.

The President's Gardens is dedicated "To the souls of my nine relatives slaughtered on the third day of Ramadan, 2006/And to all the oppressed in Iraq." The first sentence is, "In a land without bananas, the village awoke to nine banana crates, each containing the severed head of one of its sons." So while fiction, this is obviously not entirely an imaginary story.

One of the nine is Ibrahim Suhayl, and we see the reactions of the villagers, and especially his two closest friends, Abdullah and Tariq. The beheading occurs shortly after the American invasion: who is responsible? The Americans and their supporters? The supporters of Saddam Hussein? Or some other group opposed to both? We aren't told. But although we are left to wonder, the novel is not a mystery. It is the story of three boyhood friends, Ibrahim the Fated, Tariq the Befuddled, and Abdullah Kafka, as they nicknamed each other -- collectively known to themselves and the village as the sons of the earth crack.

After the first chapter, the book flashes back to the discovery of a newborn baby in a crack in the earth, and his adoption by a childless couple, who name him Abdullah. The story then proceeds mainly in chronological order, through the childhood of the three inseparable friends, their adolescence and adulthood. We see through their eyes the horrors of the Iran-Iraq War, the invasion of Kuwait and the first war with the NATO allies, as well as the brutality of the Saddam Hussein regime. We learn what really went on in the President's beautiful gardens and palaces. We also see the condition of women in an Iraqi village -- the forced arranged marriages, and the "honor" killings. As with the earlier novels I have read by this author, Broken Crumbs and Dates on My Fingers, the political violence is relieved by episodes of friendship, romance, and even humor -- but in this novel, the balance tips to the darker aspects.

In the last pages, the story catches up to the first chapter, and the novel ends with Ibrahim's daughter Qisma setting off with Tariq to try to find her father's body and information about who killed him. This quest is presumably the subject of the recently published sequel, Daughter of the Tigris.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to go beyond the headlines and the superficial media propaganda to understand what these decades under Saddam Hussein were actually like for the people of Iraq.