تقديم لمقالة يسار
حسن:
أيسر الخفاف: أم
وزوجة وشريكة مناضل من أجل حرية العراقيين
مصباح كمال
ما يدفعني إلى نشر هذه المادة هو أن السيدة
المرحومة أيسر الخفاف (1933-2002) بدأت العمل في المجال التأميني سنة 1968 في شركة
إعادة التأمين العراقية، وهي نفس السنة التي دخلتُ فيه هذا المجال. ويشترك كلانا، إلى حدٍ ما، في سبب أو ظروف دخولنا
لهذا المجال. هي دخلته بعد غيبة عن العمل (كانت
محاسبة متمرسة عملت أولاً في مصفى الدورة في بغداد) لأسبابٍ سياسية ضمن تسوية، بان
زيفها فيما بعد، بين النظام الذي ساد بعد 17 تموز 1968 والأحزاب والقوى والشخصيات
السياسية اليسارية. دخلته اضطراراً وليس
اختياراً منها. وهو ما اشتركُ به معها مع
فارق وهو انني كنتُ عاطلاً عن العمل رغم اني ابتعثتُ من قبل وزارة المعارف (1962)
للدراسة في بريطانيا بعقدٍ يفرض علي العمل لدى الدولة (وزارة الخارجية) بعد حصولي
على الشهادة الجامعية المقررة (1967).
وهكذا بدأتُ العمل في شركة التأمين الوطنية في بغداد (1968) لأنه لم يكن
أمامي فرصة عمل أخرى جديرة وقتذاك. ويشترك
كلانا أيضاً بمؤهل معرفة اللغة الإنجليزية التي ربما كانت من العوامل المهمة التي
شجعت على استخدامنا.
لم تعمل السيدة أيسر في ما نسميه الجانب الفني (قسم
الحريق والحوادث، قسم البحري بضائع وهياكل السفن، قسم التأمين الهندسي .. الخ) في
شركة إعادة التأمين العراقية، وهو ما أكده السيد قيس المدرس في رسالة من المنامة بتاريخ
10 تشرين الأول 2014، اقتبسها كما وردتني:
“As I remember,
Ayser Alkhafaf joined Iraq Re same year as me 1968 and she was assigned to the
Finance Department and she joined me in sitting with Dr Rajab twice or three
times a week to discuss some insurance topics as part of our orientation. She did not work for a long period with us.”
ربما لو كانت قد استمرت في عملها في شركة إعادة
التأمين العراقية لكان لها دور متميز في تاريخ هذه الشركة، خاصة وهي تحمل شهادة
جامعية من بريطانيا ومتمكنة من اللغة الإنجليزية – أحد المتطلبات التي كان د.
مصطفى رجب، مدير عام الشركة، يؤكد عليه في اختياره للموظفين والموظفات. وكما يتبين من هذه الرسالة فإن نية إدارة
الشركة آنذاك كان منصباً على الاستفادة من قدراتها المحاسبية واللغوية للعمل في
الجانب الفني، وهو ما حصل بالنسبة للسيد قيس المدرس إذ أصبح مديراً عاماً للشركة
(1980-1998).[1]
السيدة أيسر هي من نمط موظفين عملوا في شركة إعادة
التأمين العراقية ولم يستمروا فيها طويلاً كنجيب المانع ومجيد الحاج حمود وآخرين
لا أتذكرهم. أما أنا فقد بقيت أعمل في
قطاع التأمين، في بغداد ولندن، منذ 1968.
التقيت بالسيدة أيسر الخفاف في أوائل تسعينيات
القرن الماضي في لندن بفضل الصديق عزيز جصّاني.
كانت تبحث عن عمل. لم يكن
باستطاعتي مساعدتها مباشرة فشرحت لها، حسب ما كنت أعرفه، أوضاع العمل في سوق لندن
للتأمين، وارشدتها إلى بعض وكالات الاستخدام المتخصصة بقطاع التأمين، والمجلات
التأمينية التي تنشر إعلانات عن وظائف في هذا القطاع. لكنها لم تعمل وتوجهت للعمل الطوعي لبعض الوقت.
لم ألتقي بالسيدة أيسر بعد ذلك لكنني التقيت ابنها
الكبير يسار، كاتب هذه المقالة، مرات عديدة قبل الغزو الأمريكي للعراق عام 2003
وبعده. كان مهموماً بقضايا العراق وتقدمه،
وعمل بكثافة في قضية إلغاء ديون العراق ضمن حملة Jubilee 2000، وهي
الحملة التي ربما ساهمت، إلى حدٍ ما، في إعفاء 80% من ديون العراق؛ مثلما عمل في
مجالات أخرى.
لقد جاءت مقالة يسار محمد سلمان حسن باقتراح مني
للكتابة عن والدته بعد أن كتب مقالة طويلة هي بمثابة سيرة لوالده، نشرتها شبكة
الاقتصاديين العراقيين.[2] وتزامن
هذا النشر مع الملف الخاص الذي نشرته مجلة الثقافة الجديدة، العدد 368-369،
2014، ص 8-90.[3]
بالمناسبة، لم يكتب د. محمد سلمان حسن عن النشاط
التأميني في العراق بشكل مباشر أو غير مباشر لكن أطروحته حول دور التجارة الخارجية
في التطور الاقتصادي في العراق، 1864-1964، يوفر مرجعاً وخلفية لدراسة هذا النشاط
في العراق ضمن التطور الاقتصادي العام للعراق.
فهو يذكر شركة أندرو وير (Andrew Weir & Co) التي
دخلت العراق سنة 1905 وكانت تحتكر تجارة تصدير التمور والشعير خلال وبعد الحرب
العالمية الثانية،[4] وكان تمارس أعمال التأمين أيضاً، وقد أشرت إلى ذلك
في مقالةٍ لي.[5] وقد حاول
الزميل ستار كرمد عيدان الاستفادة من كتابات د. حسن في بحثه عن جذور سوق التأمين
العراقية.[6]
لندن 7 تشرين الثاني 2014
Ayser
al-Khaffaf
Mother,
Wife and Partner of an Iraqi Freedom Fighter (1933-2002)
Yasar Hasan
The following are glimpses from the life of Ayser
Shawket Suleiman al-Khaffaf.
Ayser al-Khafaff was born in the summer 1933.
She was well known for her good looks and was
chosen a beauty queen whilst in middle school. She completed her pre-university schooling in
Iraq and was one the few young women who won a scholarship from the Iraqi
government to study in the UK. She
pursued a degree in commerce at Manchester University. Her colleagues in the same year were Ibrahim
Alawi and Fouad al-Amir.
While at university, she met another Iraqi student
on a scholarship, Mohammed Salman Hasan.
They met in one of his trips to meet Iraqi students in Manchester. They married eventually and she was with him
whilst he was doing his DPhil at St Anthony College, Oxford.
While in England, she recalls a visit from a
special envoy of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa’id, asking the young scholar
Mohammed Salman Hasan, aged 28, to be Iraq’s permanent representative in the
UN. This offer was made in 1956 after
firing him from his scholarship (1954), withdrawing his passport (1955) and
requesting the British government to deport him - all this because of his
radical political views. This offwe was
made after the Iraqi students occupation of the Iraqi Embassy in Queen’s Gate,
London in which he played a central role.
The occupation was in solidarity with Egypt and its people against the
Tripartite Aggression against Egypt. He
consulted his wife, Ayser, on the offer; she concluded that it is not morally
right to accept such a dangled carrot to silence him. With dignified calm, he delivered the refusal
to the envoy.[7] This example of uncompromising moral stand
continued with her for the rest of her life.
Eventually, having graduated in 1958, both of them
returned to Iraq prior to the revolution.
Her husband, Mohammed Salman Hasan, DPhil Oxon, held one of the most
prestigious qualifications. However,
because of his radical views he could only be appointed at the Development
Board as a temporary employee on a daily rate.
She was appointed an accountant at Doura Refinery in Baghdad.
After the 14th July 1958 Revolution,
Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim offered Dr Hasan a ministerial position but he
apologised for declining this offer. In
one of our conversations, he said that he told Qasim that although he can
fulfil the duties of that position but having been away from the people for so
long made it hard for him to assume such a public responsibility, which he
always took seriously. He was then
appointed secretary of Majlis al-Eimar (Development Board) and was allocated a
government bungalow for a nominal rent in the Alwiyah area in central Baghdad,
previously occupied by British government advisors. He was also privileged with a government car,
registration number 3 Eimar.
She used to walk in the muddy path to get from our
home to the main street to take the bus to go to work whilst she was heavily
pregnant with me. Yet my father refused
to drive her to work in the government car, though their offices were
close. His view was that the car was
connected to his work and it was not a family car; the privilege should not be
abused. At best, he will drive her, on
his way to work, to the bus stop.
She was active in the Iraqi Women’s League along
the founding leaders Naziha al-Duliami and Dr Salima al-Fakhri and many other
leading woman lights in Iraq.[8]
Towards the end of Qasim’s regime her husband wrote
a controversial appeal signed by 32 top intellectuals of the country, demanding
a human rights charter to enshrine the rights of the Iraqi people including the
Kurds.
In February 1963, whilst pregnant with her second
son Ammar, Qasim issued an arrest warrant against her husband because of the
appeal. Her husband was a very close
friend of the late air force commander Jalal al-Awqati. He was aware of the Baathist coup attempt
that is why the Baathists swiftly murdered him early in the early hours of the morning
of 8th February 1963.[9]
In early February 1963, the elite pilots of Iraq
were on practice led by Jalal. One of
the pilots was Esmat Shwaket Suleiman Al Khaffaf, Ayser’s brother, who did not
perform to his usual faultless flying.
He was stressed because of his sister’s condition. Jalal asked Esmet why he has not told him
that his sister had a difficult birth while Dr Hasan was engrossed in his work
at Majlis al Eimar knowing that General Qasim will activate the arrest warrant against
him. Dr Hasan was also under great
stress and his message to his wife Ayser was that she was giving birth at the
worst time for Iraq.
After the coup, both were sacked and Dr Hasan was
sent to prison together with other members of Iraq’s intellectual elite.
On reflection, Prof Hasan’s imprisonment under the
order of Qasim has saved him from certain death. Rumours suggest that Saddam tortured him and
as a result, he lost his hearing.
They have just built a house in the Dawoudi area in
Baghdad on a plot given to them by the Qasim government. Having lost their jobs and having no income,
a friend arranged for her to work as an accountant with Whinney Murray, a
branch of a British chartered accountancy firm.
At this time, we were looked after by our
grandmother Makkia al-Ani, daughter of the head of a tribe in Ana.
Prof Hasan was persecuted for belonging to the
Communist Party and hence unemployable.
He was cleared of this charge by court in 1965-66.
She supported her husband’s attempt to win election
to the presidency of the Iraqi Economists Society, which he lost.
She used to host and meet fellow intellectual
families in mixed meetings, with both women and men discussing together various
subjects from medicine to education to art to economics and politics.
In 1967-68, the couple borrowed money from her
father, Shawket al-Khaffaf, to build her plot in Qadisiyah District in Baghdad
before the government repossessed it.
Because of their financial difficulties, Prof Hasan relented on not
leaving Iraq and accepted a grade “A” appointment as a UN consultant in Kuwait.
She remained in Iraq looking after her house and
children. On 17th July 1968,
when a coup brought the Baathists back to power, President Baker sent after
Prof Hasan in Kuwait to join the new government but he refused. However, he decided to return to Iraq. He was re-admitted to work for the government
sector following the amnesty he demanded from Baker. So my parents returned to public sector
employment - Prof Hasan to Baghdad University as lecturer and head of
department and Ayser al-Khaffaf to Iraq Reinsurance Company (1968). My father was forced into retirement by a
Revolutionary Command Council decree in 1976; my mother followed him in the
late 1970s.
They then struggled against Saddam’s regime. He was imprisoned during the 1970s. Because of the torture, Prof Hasan has
developed a kidney disease.
During these years, he was presidential advisor to
Salim Rubies Ali, President of South Yemen, while Ayser was doing voluntary
advisory work with the Women’s League there.
The work involved projects against early marriage at 12 and promotion of
education of girls and women.
One of their pet projects was designing a
scholarship system in Iraq, which to this day remains unimplemented. The system involved IQ tests. On
passing the tests, students (from poor families) were to be offered
scholarships to continue their studies.
The project was inspired by the UK scholarship system to provide
financial means to students from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue their
university education.
In 1976, her daughter died from a mysterious
illness. Later it was rumoured that her
death was caused by induced meningitis.
In 1977, her eldest son was forced to leave Iraq,
as he did not attain admission to a university.
It was particularly hard to obtain a UK visa for him. He involved his father who was on a lecture
tour in Oxford and Cambridge to seek assistance from the British ambassador to
facilitate the granting of a visa for his son.
The youngest son, Ammar, had a brilliant
engineering mind but decided to dedicate his life to medicine and
plastic/cosmetic surgery. During the
Iran-Iraq war and while he was a medical student at Basrah University, he
worked as a volunteer in local hospitals in Basrah. Eventually, he was operating on patients with
his professors’ approval. He won respect
and admiration for this work down to his final year when he was practising
neurosurgery.
In 1983, Ammar donated his kidney to his father who
was in the UK undergoing treatment.
Although he had a place in Oxford University to read medicine, he went
back to Iraq in the vain hope that he can return later to do postgraduate
studies in medicine. He was cruelly
interrogated by Mohammed Hamza al-Zubaidie.[10] He was told that his father was
anti-revolutionary and asked what he thought of his father, to which his answer
was that he was proud of his father.
Because of his defiance and independence, he was
told to watch out. He was fatally
wounded in a road accident, engineered by the regime, whilst he was eating
outside a takeaway shop in Basrah. While
in hospital, his death was completed by fellow doctors and students under
strict orders from the Baathist authorities.
Ayser al Khaffaf, grief stricken, was anonymously
advised to try to obtain information on his killer by making a motor insurance
claim for her son’s death. That way the
insurance company would ascertain the person responsible for his death. The killer turned out to be an operative with
the security establishment operating under a soldier’s guise.[11] The killer was prosecuted but without a final
sentence being passed by the court.
She remained defiant while her husband was
committed in 1983 to the Psychological and Psychiatric Hospital in Baghdad
(known as Shammaiya Hospital), where he underwent various kinds of torture.
Government agents approached her many times, after
his release form hospital, offering exile, which both of them declined. He started an open house university from his
house.
Following Prof Hasan’s death in 1989, she was in
mourning for one year, and in 1990 whilst Saddam allowed travel to people who
had relatives abroad, I managed to get her to London in 1990, prior to the
Kuwaiti invasion. She was granted
indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
She remained isolated and aloof with little
involvement in Iraqi public issues in the UK.
She tried to help women groups and worked with women suffering from
family and other problems.
Following her family’s interest in arts, she
studied Chinese drawing and laced the same with Arabic letters. She also took an interest in sculpture.
She wore a black dress from 1976 as a gesture of
defiance against the status quo.
Although she had vowed to wear a red dress and dance in the street upon
the fall of Saddam’s regime she did not get her wish.[12] She died in London, a broken woman, on 16th
July 2002.
London 27 October 2014
[2] لقراءة ملف د. محمد سلمان حسن في موقع شبكة الاقتصاديين
العراقيين يمكن استخدام هذا الرابط:
[3] لقراءة الملف في مجلة الثقافة الجديدة يمكن استخدام هذا
الرابط:
[4] Mohamad Salman Hasan, “The Role of Foreign Trade in
the Economic Development of Iraq, 1864-1964: A Study in the Growth of a
Dependent Economy” in M A Cook, Editor, Studies in the Economic History of
the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970, reprinted 1978), p
349.
نشرت بعد ذلك
في كتاب مصباح كمال، أوراق في تاريخ التأمين في العراق: نظرات انتقائية، (الطبعة
الإلكترونية، 2014) ص 58-90.
[6] مصباح كمال،
عرض كتاب "ستار كرمد عيدان، سوق التأمين العراقية: دراسة تحليلية في
الجذور التأسيسية (بغداد: شركة إعادة التأمين العراقية، 2012)، 84 صفحة (قياس 21X29.7 سم)، الثقافة الجديدة،
العدد 366، أيار 2014، ص 62-68.
[7] For further details on
my father and mother please refer to my paper “Prof. Dr Mohammed Salman Hasan:
A Short Biography of a Pioneer Iraqi Economist. By Yasar Hasan,” published by
the Iraqi Economists Network:
[8] Salam Ibrahim Kubba, “Oil Experts in Iraq are an Inexhaustible
National Treasure: Dr Muhammad Salman Hasan as a Model,” al Thakafa al
Jadida, 368-369, September 2014, p 73.
[9] One can
argue that the Baathist coup was, in one way, a response to Dr Hasan’s work on
Law No. 80 on dispossessing the non-explored territorial concessions from the
foreign oil companies.
[10] Mohammed Hamza
al-Zubaidie (1938-2005), a member of the Revolutionary Command Council and
commander of the Central Euphrates military district. He came to fame with the brutal suppression
of the 1991 uprising.
[11] In his essay “Muhammad Salman Hasan: Militant, Intellectual and a
Human Being,” al Thakafa al Jadida, 368-369, September 2014, p 30, Dr
Issam al-Khafaji made the following comment: “His mother Ayser al khaffaf walks
downtown Basrah streets carrying a placard demanding justice for her son after
being executed by a truck with a distinctive mukhabart number plate which rode
over the pavement and killed him in front of many witnesses.”
[12] However, the way Iraq has descended into chaos since 2003, she would not
have been best pleased or would have accepted the new religious rules imposed
post-occupation. She was the lifetime
comrade and bearer of Prof Hasan’s modernist message, his draft constitution
for Iraq and all his radical thoughts dedicated to the empowerment of the poor,
including women, and transformation of their beloved Iraq into the first world.
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