By Nawal Al Ani - Researcher and media consultant

8/10/2025

In the world of Iraqi fiction, the voice of Betool Khedairi stands out as one of the distinctive female voices that has succeeded, through storytelling, in conveying the pain of the Iraqi individual surrounded by turbulent transformations.

Khedairi was born in Baghdad in 1965 to an Iraqi father and a Scottish mother. Through her life between East and West, she developed a unique narrative approach that is clearly reflected in her second novel, “Absent” (2004), which is considered a literary testimony to war, sanctions, and death. The novel also presents a vivid portrayal of the suffering of Iraqi women within a difficult reality.

This conversation with the author seeks to shed light on some of the hidden aspects of her experience and to open a window onto her vision of writing, Iraq, and soul-searching for meaning amid absence.

Q: How did the novel come into being?

My homeland was bleeding, and the least I can do is carry it’s voice out into the world.

While living in Jordan during the embargo, it was not easy to write about it as a spectator. My sources were: T.V news, letters that friends sent to their families abroad, meeting people who had fled the country, and off-the-record conversations which I did with Iraqis who stopped in Amman waiting for their immigration documents.

It is also challenging to write in the first person singular because the writer has to represent all the characters at the same time. I had to bear the weight of bringing together a group of people in their darkest of days, turning their building into a community of self-sufficiency and struggling for survival.

Q: If the building and its apartments represented a miniature country, which apartment would you choose today (2025) to be your image of Iraq?

I would chose Dalal’s apartment because it is the basis for the explanation of the  novel’s  title, “Absent”. It reflects the local culture on why childless Iraqi men choose to be named after a son even if he is unborn. Amidst all this male-pride driven society, we ended up with the loss of too many precious souls. During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) we lost (350,000) Iraqis of which (100,000) were Kurds. Add to that (40,000) Iraqis were killed during the invasion of Kuwait and the war that followed (1990-1991). That’s a lot of grief to fit into one novel!

Since I have not visited my country for 28 years, I do not have first-hand experience to elaborate on your question. In “Absent”, my long absence made me depend on fictive characters, some of which were inspired by real people and the stories that crossed my path. But my imagination alone could not do justice to the turmoil Iraq went through since (2003) and up to today. I will need to create another character like “Dalal” to become my voice and camera inside the Iraqi household and out on the streets. I might do that if I write a third novel.

Q: Let’s talk about these characters, and why did you describe them with a spirit of black comedy.

Although I feel I have no right to portray the tragedy of Iraq in a sarcastic way, but I needed to make the characters comical to alleviate their pain, so I chose a black comedy to frame them. On one hand, it is to load the dialogue between the characters with satire, and on the other hand, I aimed to make the heaviness of the catastrophe lighter for the reader.

I’ve always been a big believer of humor therapy; a technique that uses laughter to promote psychological well-being. The absurdity of life puzzles me. I must say, it made the process of writing tricky; complex (dark and pensive) on the inside, yet simple (fun and light) on the outside.

One example, is when “Um Ghayeb”, jelous of her husband, goes into a rage, raids his apiary, smokes his bees, collects the insects, dips them in glue, turns them into fur balls and uses them to make a fuzzy collar for her recycled coat.

Another example is “Saad” the hairdresser, who brings joy to everyone with his social gossip and sharing Kit Kats, turns out to be an informer in order to keep his shop under pressure from “Adil” the care giver who works for the secret service.

Every night, before I sleep, I watch comedy, to set the tone for a fresh batch of positivity the next day.

Q: On a personal note, I noticed that only recently you joined social media. Do you consider yourself a private person?

Ha Ha, this reminds me of when my late mother visited the mall one day and entered a Software department asking the staff: “Excuse me, where is the bra section?” I suppose I’m like her, we were the last ones in the family who were interested in learning about technology.

However, unlike her, I used to be quite a sociable person, but I became overwhelmed with my international book tours, Q&A’s, and certain people trying to invade my privacy. At that point I felt the need to lay down some boundaries, and I felt social media was too noisy for me. I also had to recover from a difficult medical situation, therefore, I withdrew in order to gather my energy and thoughts.

Q: Why did you study French, and how did that lead you to meet the great poet Abul-Razzaq Abdul-Wahid? Were you influenced by him more on a personal or literary level?

I don’t know who said, “Every language creates a different version of you,” but my mother applied that saying to me. While she was trying to learn Arabic, she drowned me in English fairy tales and French songs. From that, a new passion arose in me; the desire to learn a third language. I must admit that my early readings of French writers changed the way I think and freed me from the constraints of high school education.

During my studies at Al-Mustansiriyah University, my internship took place at the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and Information. My share of adventure happened at Dar Al-Ma’moun for Translation. Books and magazines would come straight from the press to their shelves, and I became addicted to the smell of ink, like smoked alcohol, and the glossy covers before they were smudged with fingerprints.

In the ministry elevator, I met a short man with a large head, piercing eyes, and a voice like thunder. I had seen him before on television, but when he said, “Hello, I’m Abdul-Razzaq Abdul-Wahid,” our friendship began. We spent coffee breaks in his office, after passing through the door labeled “Deputy Minister.” As the days went by, I became, as he jokingly called me, his “adopted student.”

I used to read him my attempts at writing short stories. He would call me “Babati”  (“my little girl”) and say, “You’re still too young to be so serious about life. I imagine you as a young woman busy with parties, not locking yourself in a room writing for hours.” Then he would read me his enchanting romantic poems. I was fascinated by his ability to condense the sea into a droplet of water. His style was captivating; the way he could make great things small without losing the depth of their meaning.

I never thought of writing poetry myself  - first, because I believed my classical Arabic was weak, and second, because my inclination toward prose gave me the freedom to play with the text. I used to jot down my thoughts wherever I was in the world  - on a napkin in a train, on a restaurant menu, or on a scrap of paper while visiting a museum. This led me to write scattered scenes like small cinematic sketches, which I later gathered into a novel.

I remember well when Abdul-Razzaq Abdul-Wahid  got angry with me for how I ended my first novel, “A Sky So Close”. He said, “I don’t understand, how can you write a literary work resembling a symphony, and then suddenly end it with word shit!?” Then he laughed adding, “But honestly, that was a masterstroke.”

We used to spend quiet hours together as he told me about the “Tomato Years”; a period in his life when he couldn’t write, so he spent his time buying tomatoes for his household. Then out of the blue, the office door would burst open without knocking, and my mischievous childhood friend, the poet Reem Kais Kubba, would enter with a commotion, and the poetic fireworks between them would begin.

The most important lesson I learned from him was when he said: “When an artist displays her paintings to others, she doesn’t stand in front of her work, she hides behind it.

Q: Twenty years after the publication of “Absent”, how do you feel knowing that the novel will be performed for the first time as a play in English in London?

I love the phrase “To hell with the impossible.” If it weren’t for the determination of my friends and collaborators - playwright Penny Black and director Svetlana Dimcovic - the Iraqi truth would never have been transformed into a surreal work to be presented to the world. And I’ll be hiding among the audience.

Q: In the building, women are strongly present because men are absent. Did you intentionally write a novel about women par excellence, or does reality impose itself on you?

It comes with the territory. With most of the men disappearing, the women had to rise up to the occasion. Once the females took over, I certainly had to create a contrast between them.

 “Dalal”, the young woman with fresh energy, is the narrator who absorbs the others’ perspective of life while trying to carve out one for herself.

“Um Ghayeb”, indebted to her husband for allowing her to raise her niece, puts up with his psoriasis skin crusts and his passion for collecting paintings.

“Ilham,” struggling with the image of her French mother and grinding human body parts to make kebab for survival.

“Um Mazin”, the evil genius, and Badriyeh, her stupid servant. They are marginalized characters who come into Baghdad from the suburbs carrying a culture of coffee cup reading for fortune telling.  Their magic potions and spells are disguised as cures and treatments. The female neighbors are so desperate for an alternative life to their harsh reality, “Um Mazin” becomes the star psychotherapist.

Q: When I read the two novels, “A Sky So Close” and “Absent,” I felt that the first focused on the self versus the world, while the second focused on the world intruding on the self. Is it possible that there is a thread connecting the two?

This sounds like a question for the critics. After my novels were published, I started reading reviews. I felt that if I read too much critique, I would lose the spontaneity of writing. I create in a state of flow; so I avoid analyzing and re-analyzing what I write.

Let me try to answer you with a memory that comes to mind. When I was young I used to lick a white powder that gathered outside a brick wall in my parents garden. The adults said that my body needed calcium. Since then Baghdad has represented this wall with the calcium being the Iraqi marrow that strengthens my bones.

Being present in this place and time is the thread that connects both novels. It’s more like a beaded necklace than a thread. The coloured beads have names; home, exile, pain, friendship, laughter, betrayal, embargo, dictatorship, loyalty, war, hunger, disease, dreams, destruction, conspiracy, hope. The last two beads that lock the necklace are black and white.

When you say self versus the world and world intruding on self, I feel there is no difference. It’s as if I am a window and the shadows from both sides float in and out through the glass freely.