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Memoirs and Secrets of Escape of Nouri Al-Said - Saleh El-Bassam
In 1926, he moved to the central preparatory school of Baghdad, the only one of its kind at the time, prior to his enrollment at the Royal Medical School where he graduated as a general practitioner in 1938.
The Medical School laws required that medical graduates serve a one-year training at the Royal Hospital. During his residency, two tragic events happened: first, the death of King Ghazi in 1939 in a car crash and second, the death of the finance minister, Rustom Haidar, who after sustaining a gunshot wound, underwent an emergency operation performed by El-Bassam but he could not be saved.
In 1953, King Faisal II was crowned the king of Iraq. Shareef Hussein, who had strong friendship ties with El-Bassam at the time, chose his friend’s residence, which overlooked the Euphrates, to host British delegates.
During a dinner held at his residence in the presence of the British Ambassador Michael Right and his wife as well as a number of the embassy’s staff and the British attaché for the East, El-Bassam was struck by the conversation among the guests on the need to change the Iraqi rulers to give the young educated groups a wider access to power. Ten days later on July 14, 1958, a coup d’état was staged in the country, which kept El-Bassam wondering why the British did not move a muscle or send a signal either to Iraqi rulers or to King Faisal so they could have taken the necessary measures to prevent the calamity that claimed the lives of the young king and many members of the royal family from happening. “What happened on July 14 made me think things through, including the possibility of the British having a hand in the events that unfolded in Iraq.”
Shareef Hussein was rescued and transferred to the Saudi Embassy where El-Bassam visited him before he and his family were given asylum firstly in Egypt, then Europe. Nouri Al-Said who served as Prime Minister and was a minister under several Iraqi governments during the royal reign, took refuge in the house of El-Bassam who shielded him for a while from the wrath of the insurgent troops and officers. He was secretly transferred to houses belonging to El-Bassam’s family in Kathimiya on the peripheries of Baghdad until he decided to commit suicide when troops from the Ministry of Defense, headed by his previous bodyguard Wassfi Taher, found out his hiding place and rushed to arrest him. In his memoirs, Dr. Saleh El-Bassam challenges the accounts that claim Al-Said was killed in the hands of Wassfi Taher and his troops, arguing instead that the man committed suicide and thus he was already dead when Taher fired at him. His body was later exhumed and cut to pieces.
Arrested on charges of hiding a fugitive and assisting royal rulers, Saleh El-Bassam was sentenced to one year in prison. After doing his time, which he described in his memoir as a serious ordeal exacerbated by the malevolent attempts to extend his stay in jail, El-Bassam was released and headed to Britain, regretting the calamity afflicted on several Iraqi families, demoting them from the top of social hierarchy to estrangement and exile.
The first edition of El-Bassam’s Memoirs and Secrets of Escape of Nouri Al-Said was published in 2003 by Dar Al Entishar Al Arabi as a call to bring Iraq back to the days of royal rule. His work carries bitter-sweet nostalgia to long-gone days and documents all that has fallen from the history of modern Iraq. Saleh El-Bassam, the witness, deplored the conspiracies woven by allies, friends and even members of the ruling class against the royal regime and the Iraqi people, hoping that one day, he and all Iraqis, will return to their homeland and recover their homes and properties, which were confiscated and occupied forcibly under the yoke of successive regimes. Major questions transcending the traditional concepts of ‘nationalism’ and ‘collaborationism’ and warnings from the schemes drawn by super powers for the Middle East are raised throughout the book.
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