Book Review: Late For Tea At The Deer Palace

Book cover of Late For Tea At The Deer Palace. Photo / Supplied

Late For Tea At The Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi
HarperCollins $28.99

When the stone deer was placed in position in the pool in front of the Chalabi home in Kazimiya, near Baghdad, locals immediately named the palatial home the Deer Palace.

Whenever the family moved, from one large house to another, the deer went too. The moves were dictated by the changes in occupation of, first, Ali Chalabi and then his son Abdul Hussein Chalabi. Both were important men in the worlds of politics and finance in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire.

But the story behind this memoir follows most closely the life of Hadi Chalabi, his wife Bibi and their ever-increasing family.

As it does so, it maps the history of the state of Iraq, from its inception in 1921 through to the two Gulf Wars.

All the usual suspects get a mention. T.E. Lawrence is there, a friend of Faisal, the first King of Iraq. King Hussein of Jordan, Faisal's cousin, gets several mentions. Saddam Hussein features, first as a less-than-gifted law student of Hassan Chalabi, Hadi's son, and later in the role he became best known for.

The family fortunes improve and then wane through confiscation. The family is banished from their country, first to Lebanon and then to London. The Chalabis are Shi'a, a branch of Islam numerically larger but politically less powerful than the Sunni Muslims. As such, they are not able to hold the highest political positions, despite their associations with the various royal families, and their fate is in the hands of those who wield the power.

But the book is more than a list of political coups and adventures. The pivot of the story is Bibi, the matriarch, though scarcely deserving of the name. She is more concerned with her clothes, jewels and furnishings than with her nine children - heavens, isn't that what nannies are for?

But she is an appealing anti-heroine, as much for her social goings-on as her wailings and screams when things don't go her way.

Crafting the story of a nation on to the story of a family is a nice conceit, and Tamara Chalabi, Bibi's granddaughter, handles it well.

The readers of the book, though, are less well served by the maps at the beginning, which are so small in scale that they add little, and the chronology, which should be at the end rather than the beginning.

But these are quibbles. If you want to know more about the genesis of Iraq and its factions and strife, this is a good place to start.

The deer was eventually beheaded by Sunni rebels.

Phoebe Falconer is a Herald columnist.