MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It's never easy to try to tell the story of your own family, especially when your family story includes political upheaval, war and exile and especially when your father is Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi politician who remains controversial in the U.S. seven years after coalition forces rolled into Baghdad, but writing that history was an essential project for Tamara Chalabi, Ahmad Chalabi's daughter.

MR. KOJO NNAMDITamara grew up in exile and first touched Iraqi soil as an adult. She learned about the land of her father mostly through family stories, stories that mirror the tumultuous story of Iraq itself during the 20th century. Tamara Chalabi joins us to discuss the intersection between her family story and Iraq's story and what those two stories tell us about that nation's possible future. Tamara Chalabi is a historian and author of the book, "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of my Iraqi Family." Thank you so much for joining us.

MS. TAMARA CHALABIThank you.

NNAMDITrying to write a family history is a dangerous thing no matter who you are. Inevitably, people are going to expect that you'll show them only in their best light. Why was this project important to you?

CHALABIIt was important to me because for somebody who has had this story be recounted to me secondhand through the various memories of my family in exile, I needed a way for myself to connect to Iraq, to make a connection to the country once I saw it for the first time and in the upheaval and the chaos and the violence that ensued the 2003 invasion. I felt that the only way I could do that really was to make sense of the past. And the most logical place would have been -- to start was my family story.

CHALABIThe other reason I decided to do this is, I think, increasingly so much has been written about Iraq and the American-Iraqi relationship of the last two decades starting with the Gulf War. And yet, I think it's a worthwhile question to ask, how much do we really know about Iraq certainly in America and the West besides from a very narrow window of politics?

NNAMDIYou write that it was essentially anger that drove you to write this book. How so?

CHALABII was angry by the way that I felt Iraq's story was entirely hijacked. Initially, understandably, up to a point, by the American encounter with Iraq. Everybody was writing about Iraq from a very, again, narrow prism. Everybody was angry with -- Bush had an issue with the administration, for whatever reason, and they were writing about Iraq as if Iraq was a land without a people and Iraqi voices mostly were silent and not present. And I felt that Iraq was just reduced to this dirty word with an empty landscape of tanks, bombs, children screaming, women hysterical and it almost -- I mean, I think Iraq was dehumanized on many levels. And this is the anger. And I wanted to give some dignity back to the country to show another side of Iraq through the culture and the people, which I think is very important.

NNAMDIYou've called many places home over the years. Beirut is perhaps the place that's closest to your heart. Why and what did Iraq mean to you growing up?

CHALABIWell, Beirut is a -- I was born in Beirut, but also my mother is Lebanese. So I'm half Lebanese, which complicates things a bit. And I -- it's my childhood so I'm very attached to it and I was there during the Civil War and we left during that war. So -- but growing up with these two different identities, the identity of my father's family was always present. I mean, they were a political family in Iraq before they were exiled in 1958. And as exiles, they had a very obsessive relationship with their country, and particularly when that country became dominated by Saddam Hussein and his totalitarian regime into the Iran-Iraq War and so on and so forth.

CHALABISo the encounter with them, spending time with them, being around them was -- you couldn't get away with it. It was part of -- so it almost felt like --I mean, it was part of the landscape, I mean, the sound. You know, like, I remember, you know, they talk -- I mean, I was still young and didn't really understand anything about the Iranian Revolution or the -- but I would -- I remember when the war started, for example, the Iran-Iraq War, the sort of idea, the word Saddam said, you know, very emphatically. And, you know, his name in Arabic means confronter. It's actually -- it's a pretty aggressive adjective or noun rather, sorry.

CHALABIAnd so, you know, it sounded -- it sort of became like thud and this thing kind of grew larger and larger. So this was this very unusual situation around this country and the obsession that they had and the kind of -- it was intriguing. I mean, it left a mark.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Tamara Chalabi. She is a historian and author of the book, "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of my Iraqi Family." If you'd like to join the conversation, call us at 800-433-8850. Send us an e-mail to kojo@wamu.org or a tweet @kojoshow. Despite all of this, when you first set foot in Iraq, you didn't feel like a lot of people feel who set foot on the place that their parents were born in and the place that they've been hearing about all their lives. You didn't feel like, oh, home at last. You didn't get the feeling enveloping you that this was a very familiar place to you.

CHALABINo, I did not. When we arrived in Baghdad, it was a few days after Baghdad, -- I mean, Saddam's regime -- after the 9th of April. And it was very dark. It was late at night and we'd driven from the south. And I was surrounded a lot of people who were exiled who are coming back to Iraq and they were very excited and, you know, people were crying, kissing the ground. And I really -- I felt a sense of deep foreboding. I felt it to be a very alien place because, you know, I had no memories of it.

CHALABII have no personal memories of that place. At that point, I didn't have any. And I had been struck driving from the south into Baghdad how dilapidated and destroyed and backward the country was. I mean, there were villages very near Baghdad that we drove through that had no potable water, no electricity, nothing. And this was the case for -- it wasn't something recent. It had been going on for some time. So it just -- I was really shocked.

NNAMDIWell, for people who hear the name, Tamara Chalabi and know the name Ahmad Chalabi, I guess it would be logical for those people to think, well, if she writes a book about her Iraqi family, this is a book that is written in defense of her father. Did that enter your mind at all in writing this book?

CHALABINo, not at all. I think that my father...

NNAMDIYou say on the very first page of your book that your father, Ahmad Chalabi's story is essentially his own to tell.

CHALABIYes, it's his story. I mean, I think he has his story to tell and this is not that story, this is another story.

NNAMDIThat said, what would you want an American audience to know about your father?

CHALABIWell, he's my father. I mean, I think that people are very concerned obviously about the question that always comes up and understandably, his supposed role in influencing this country to go to war in 2003. And I really -- my opinion on that is simply that I think it's very naive a viewpoint to have. I think that we all know how foreign policy works and I think of a country as powerful as the United States of America with its quite elaborate intelligence community and multibillion dollar budget cannot possible decide to go to war on the supposed words of one man.

CHALABIAnd I think this accusation has spun out of control and has become an urban myth. But I also think that it is quite easy to vilify someone who's outside of the U.S. government and someone who's a foreigner and an outsider. And I think -- I mean, there's many cases in history where that's happened and I just think he's become a very easy target.

NNAMDIIt is naive to think that one man could have masterminded the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But from all that has been revealed, it is clear that your father played a significant role in the intelligent process. He had contact with both people high in the administration and in foreign policy circles in this country and with a variety of people in the media for whom he was obviously a source. So if one concedes that he could not be the mastermind, is it incorrect, you feel, to think that he played a significant role in it?

CHALABII think my father's role has been somehow hijacked from him. I think -- I know -- I mean, my father's an Iraqi patriot. I think he devoted -- I mean, he devoted many years to fighting Saddam Hussein. He was in the opposition. He lived in Northern Iraq throughout the '90s. He risked his life. I think that's a very different thing to say that he played a big role in influencing the United States. He did what I think many other opposition figures do in coming to America to seek American support and help.

CHALABIAnd his main achievement in America, from my point of view, was working towards the Iraq Liberation Act that was passed and voted upon by both Houses with large majority in late 1988 and was signed on as a law by President Clinton. And that stipulated America's commitment to a democratic Iraq and to supporting the Iraqi opposition to do that. It did not -- if you read that document, you see that it doesn't speak about invasion and occupation. That's a very different thing. So I think that's really what my father can claim to have done in this country.

NNAMDIIndeed most of the interview that we conduct with you today will be about this book and not about your father, but there are questions that do have to be asked.

CHALABIOf course.

NNAMDIOne being that regardless of the role he has played, does it disturb you that, in many circles in the United States, he is seen as being a devious individual, which is really a character attack on him, so to speak?

CHALABIWell, I don't think he's a devious intellectual or individual. He's a -- I think he's a very intelligent man, but he's my father so I, of course, personally, I find it unfortunate. But again, he's...

NNAMDIHe's going to tell his own story, we hope, at some point.

CHALABIYes.

NNAMDIBy the way, what is he doing now? We read blog items on the Web suggesting that he's poised to become the new Minister of the Interior for Iraq.

CHALABIHe's currently a member of parliament. He was elected to parliament and that's what he is right now. You'd have to check with him on the latest development.

NNAMDIWe want to break news on this show here. Tell us something we don't know.

CHALABII'm sorry, I don't have any...

NNAMDIIs he going to be the new Minister of the Interior?

CHALABII don't have any information about that.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break. When we come back, we will continue this conversation with Tamara Chalabi. She is a historian and author of the book, "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of my Iraqi Family." We're taking your calls at 800-433-8850. You can send e-mail to kojo@wamu.org or go to our website, kojoshow.org, join the conversation there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation with Tamara Chalabi. She is a historian, author of the book, "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family." We spent some time talking about her father Ahmed Chalabi. Now, for the rest of the family. Let's go back in history to the Iraq of your great grandfather, Abdul Hussein. What was life like in that Iraq and what role did your family play in that society?

CHALABIWell, Abdul Hussein was very much a product of the Ottoman world that he was born in. Iraq at the late 19th century was part of the Ottoman Empire. It was Baghdad where he came -- lived and was born in -- was a province of the Ottoman Empire. So that world was obviously a very different world to today. It was a much more carefree world. You had an interaction between families at many different levels. You had literary salons of a certain nature, mostly men mixing with each other.

CHALABISo men mixed with men and women mixed with women. Iraq was part of the development that happened, as far the general modernization policies of the Ottoman Empire and Iraq was -- or at least Baghdad was a late recipient of those. So more schools were opening. Magazines were being set up. There were cafes, music. But it was a world that was very, I would say, on the one level, a parochial -- in the sense that it was very local.

CHALABIObviously, you wouldn’t have that kind of globalized links that we have today. But equally, I would say, that it had a certain cosmopolitanism to it so that you had different mixes of people in the same locations of -- you had a lot of Iranians in Baghdad because of the shrine, the Shia Shrines in Kazimiyah, which is next to Baghdad and also in Najaf and Karbala, as I'm sure you know. And so you had a lot of visitors coming for pilgrimage, people from Afghanistan, people from India, lots of Indians.

CHALABIYou had people from Burma. And it's interesting because today, you have some reminisce of -- you have families with names that come from, like, you know, the Rangooni (sp?) family and the Istarabadi family and so that come from the cities -- from outside of Iraq. And you also had a lot of Jews in Baghdad at the time. Baghdad had a very large Jewish community and in many ways it was a very Jewish city, as far as, for example, commerce. So that Saturday was, you know, was a Sabbath and everything shut down.

CHALABIBut obviously, as you would imagine in the late 19th century, early 20th, it was a conservative society. Women were generally behind doors and even the architecture of the houses was divided between, you know, the woman's quarters and the men's quarters. It was more public. So...

NNAMDIYour great grandfather, Abdul Hussein, witnessed the end of that era, the end of the Ottoman era in Baghdad and the British role in creating the modern state of Iraq. What did he think of that transition?

CHALABIWell, initially, I think, from everything that I've read and gathered, it was a huge shock to everybody that the Ottoman's collapsed as quickly as they did in Baghdad. I mean, Baghdad was captured by the British in March 1917, which was a good year and a bit before the war ended. And I think that while the conditions during the First World War became very, very harsh in Baghdad, as they actually indeed were in other places in the region, including Lebanon, for example, people were -- there were food shortages, people were very hungry.

CHALABIThe military took a lot of liberties in terms of recruiting very young boys. You had a high death toll. And so people were very worn out. And -- but equally, the Ottoman Empire, if you like the Sultan, in Istanbul was -- had existed forever in these peoples imagination. I mean, ever -- you know, for, you know, 400 years prior so it was not something that you were going overcome, you know, overnight.

CHALABIIt was a huge shock. And, I think, for a while, there was a sense of, if you like, I don't know, an emotional (word?) until the British came and the British did something which, I think, many people were initially appreciative of, which is they established order. There was a lot of chaos in Baghdad when the Ottomans -- the Ottomans essentially withdrew and left the city. And interestingly, there was a lot of looting. And this was one thing which I found very -- it was very informative because looting seems to be a very common thing in Iraq when there is a lack of political insecurities.

CHALABISo that the big looting happened in 1917. It happened again during the Second World War and then during the '58 revolution. And then, of course, we know about the famous looting in 2003.

NNAMDIAbdul, World War I, I'm glad you're getting to that point. World War I touched people in many parts of the world...

CHALABIYeah.

NNAMDI...Iraq was no exception. Talk about the role Iraq played in that conflict and, in particular, how it affected your family.

CHALABIWell, I really wanted to write about that period because I do think that when we talk about the two World Wars, but especially World War I, we tend to see it very much from the Eastern front and the Western front, which is either from, you know, France and Britain or the Russian front. Obviously, you know, let's not forget Germany, but the places like Africa and the Middle East and indeed even India, do not really feature very much.

CHALABIAnd, of course, they do, but not in the same volume and research that -- I mean, they've talked about a second (word?) and in Iraq, that first World War was a very difficult time, as I said, because the Ottoman sixth Army was positioned in Baghdad, stationed there, and there was a serious shortage of men to recruit from. So you have these memories of people hiding their sons, desperate to get them out because they'd come in the middle of the night and grab these young boys.

CHALABIAnd this is precisely the preoccupation that my great grandfather, Abdul Hussein, had with my grandfather, Hadi, who at the time was a young boy of 16. And although Abdul Hussein was a notable and he had elaborate relations with the Ottomans because of his family position, they had been administrators of Kazimiyah and they -- and he was on an advisory council for the Ottomans before the war. So he really was in a difficult position because he was terrified to have his son be conscripted and sent to the front.

CHALABIAnd actually, the men that were taken from Iraq were not -- were sent to the caucuses. They were sent to other regions that the Ottomans were fighting, not even to Baghdad. So people vanished, they could've died in the freezing cold of Russia and...

NNAMDIAllow me to interrupt for a second to tell our audience with whom we're talking. In case you hadn't guessed it, Tamara Chalabi is not only a Chalabi, she is clearly a historian interested in the details of history, which she's sharing with us right now. She is author of the book, "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family." We're inviting your calls at 800-433-8850. And I know many of you want to talk about Ahmed Chalabi. And you can hold, we will come back to that.

NNAMDIWe started the discussion with that, wanted to go through a bit of the family history before we get to the telephones. So please be patient for a second, 800-433-8850. In 1916, your family got a bit of respite from the war with the marriage of your grandfather to a girl named Bibi Bason (sp?). Tell us about your grandmother, Bibi.

CHALABIYes, Bibi is my grandmother. I'm very fond of her. She's a very colorful figure. She's a -- in a way, she's a force of nature. She really was a matriarch of the first order. And she -- I thought it was very interesting to research Bibi's story because she carried on in life doing exactly what she wanted, the way she wanted to do it. And yet on the surface was a conservative woman, was a wife and a mother and so not pioneering in terms of career, et cetera, but was a very smart woman. She was very literary in the since that she had memorized a lot of poetry and would quote that at a moment's notice.

CHALABIShe -- in many ways, Bibi's story symbolizes, for me, an Iraq story. She was both a very spiritual woman -- she was religious. She used to go the Shrines to pray for -- she thought -- she was worried about being infertile in the beginning. She took a while to have her first son. So she used to go and pray and kind of do offerings and so on. And at the same time, she was a very forward-looking and very modern woman. As soon as she could do it, she threw off the abaya, which is this long black garment that women wore outside the home from -- that covered them from head to toe.

CHALABIAnd she just threw it and it caused a big drama in the family and in the -- in general and she just couldn't care. This, for example, during -- at one point, my grandfather was imprisoned in the '30s and was actually sentenced to death. And Bibi was pregnant with her eighth child and was obviously quite hysterical about the future of husband. Lobbied everybody and applied pressure on absolutely the whole world. But equally, every night, she would go to the riverbank because they had -- their house was on the river.

CHALABIAnd she would light these little votive candles that they put reed boats -- small reed boats and sent them to one of the saints, the master of time and with the prayer that her husband would be released. She would write letters to the saint. And this is a very old tradition in Iraq, actually, that a lot of people did.

NNAMDIThis is in relation to your grandmother, Bibi, because you talk about this in the book. We got a question from Laura on Facebook -- by the way, we're talking with Tamara Chalabi. She is a historian and author of the book, "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family." She is the daughter, Tamara Chalabi is, of Ahmed Chalabi, who according to news reports played a significant role in the lead up of the U.S. invasion to Iraq.

NNAMDIBut back to your grandmother and the question from Laura on Facebook. "Does your family have a long standing history of public service in Iraq?"

CHALABIAct...

CHALABIAnd how would your grandmother be a good example of that?

CHALABIMy Grandmother was a great philanthropist. She helped many, many families in Kazimiyah where she came from. She helped many people, but it was not in any, if you like, institutionalized fashion. She didn't have a foundation or an organization. She did it from her house. And many of the stories that I collected from her children and people who knew her at the time, talk about this sort of house full of women who would come and share their woes and problems. And it was very much done through the women, women to women. So she did a lot in that way.

NNAMDIYour family went into exile in the late 1950s as a consequence of the revolution that overthrew the monarchy in Iraq. Why did your family decide to go into exile and was it a very quick decision?

CHALABIWell, I don't think they were left with much choice. The 1958 revolution in Iraq was a very bloody one. For a start, the royal family, the King at the time, was a very young man of -- I think he was 21. And was shot, killed to death. Their bodies were dragged in the streets of Baghdad. The Crown Prince, his uncle, was dragged through the streets and his body was hacked to pieces. At that time, my grandfather, Hadi, Bibi's husband, was the acting -- he was the deputy head of the Senate, but he was the acting head and was on an official visit to Iran, the Iranian Senate under the Shah had invited him.

CHALABIAnd so he could not get back to Baghdad. My uncle, (word?), their eldest son, was Minister of Economy. And ironically, he'd just come back from London two days earlier when Iraq had successfully negotiated a really good deal with the Iraq petroleum company, which was then owned by -- well, not owned, but had large majority share hold by the British. And it increased Iraq's oil share to 80 percent. And on the day of the revolution, this was on the front pages of the newspapers that were published -- issued.

CHALABIAnyway, he and the entire cabinet were arrested and put in jail. So things became very difficult for my family. I mean, even Bibi was subjected to a gun put to her chest when they were looking for her children.

NNAMDIBut surely, as a historian, you understand, as that happened with the Shah in Iraq later, that when monarchies are overthrown, that people who are associated with those monarchies, regardless of the role that they play, also tend to be the targets of the hostility of the revolutionaries in that situation.

CHALABIAbsolutely, yes. They were. And for that reason, they -- it was very difficult for them to continue to stay in Iraq. For example -- and here I'll talk about my father as a child because, I mean, he was about 13 and his nephews were of his same age were at a -- they went to American Jesuit school in Baghdad called Baghdad College, which is very famous and has a long legacy. And it was -- it became very impossible for them to continue at that school because they were bullied and they were subjected to a lot of attacks on the streets going to school.

CHALABISo it was -- the family felt it was very important for them to be taken out and sent to school elsewhere. And that was a very elaborate process because the passports were obviously no longer valid. They had to get new permits. They had to -- and that took a while. My uncle was, as I said -- my grandfather couldn't come back so he was sort of in limbo for a while waiting to get a visa to go to England because his -- one of his sons was -- had finished University and was in London.

CHALABISo it was complete, you know. Their lives were turned overnight entirely.

NNAMDINow on to the telephones. Here is Heidi in Springfield, Va. Heidi, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

HEIDIHello, yes, thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to mention that even though I agree that -- with Tamara Chalabi, that her father was not the main instrument in having the U.S. carry on a war in Iraq by any stretch of the imagination, but still, you know, she just set it aside as if that wasn't important. That Mr. Chalabi, in fact -- the organization that he found in England, very clearly is a fact known and published everywhere in the U.S., that received money from the U.S. Congress to set up the organization. The National Liberation -- I don't remember the exact name. And also...

NNAMDIThe Iraqi National Congress.

HEIDIThat's correct. And also, the fact that all during the time when she mentions -- I mean, she goes to Iraq, she saw the country in such bad shape, but the fact is that it has been under sanctions by U.S. for such a long time. And for someone to write about that time in Iraq and not take responsibility for the fact that at least he's family's -- her family supported the sanctions against Iraq and that every data shows that this happened many Iraqi children died because of the sanctions.

HEIDIThat's the question that was asked from (unintelligible) .

NNAMDIWell, I'll allow Tamara Chalabi to respond about how she deals with that period in her book.

CHALABIWell, I agree with you. I'm not denying anything. I think the sanctions were a terrible thing and we know how terrible they were. We discovered a lot more when we understood the extent of the corruption that the oil for food program had, and which was used by Saddam as a vehicle to enrich himself and to strangle the Iraqi people. But as an opposition group -- and I think this is not just my father -- the Iraqi National Congress was an umbrella group that actually included all Iraqi opposition, most of them, ranging from the communist to the Islamist with the Kurds.

CHALABIIt was a big umbrella organization. We're concerned with removing Saddam Hussein. I mean, they all believed that Saddam's dictatorship was the main reason for all of this catastrophe that had fallen on the country, whether it was from the abuse of human rights to the deplorable economic situation that existed. But I'll take it even further back and say that, you know, the first Gulf War was a calamity.

CHALABII mean, American Army was a hundred kilometers outside Baghdad. Bush, Sr. famously told the Iraqi people to rise against the dictator, they did and as a result, 300,000 were killed. I mean, so I don't think that the job was finished. I mean, Iraq was left in a very suspended situation. Its sovereignty was compromised with a no-fly zone in the north. It wasn't functioning as a proper country anyway.

NNAMDIHeidi, thank you very much for your call. We move on to Bobby in Bethesda, Md. Bobby, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

BOBBYYes, Kojo. Thanks for taking my call. The -- I'm gonna try to find the book of Ms. Chalabi and read it, but in the meantime, I just wanted to ask her, as a historian, doesn't she think that she has the obligation of not only telling the truth, but separate herself from Mr. Chalabi as her father, but the main player into the invasion of Iraq.

BOBBYAnd I would like also to know what she thinks -- how much responsibility she thinks that her father had in the suffering of the Iraqis who have been victimized by the war and the two million Iraqis who are now in exile as her father was for probably 10 or 20 years.

NNAMDIHere's Tamara Chalabi.

CHALABIAs a historian, I will tell you that I think any history written of the present period is not history, it's reactive. As a historian, we're used to dealing with documents that go back hundreds of years. I mean, I don't know if -- there's a famous story about Nixon during his visit to China in the '60s, and he asked Zhou Enlai, the Premier -- Chinese Premier at the time what he thought of the French Revolution then, and the answer was, it's too early to tell.

CHALABISo it's not a question of telling the truth, or not telling the truth. I'm here to talk about my book which goes beyond -- I mean, it is not a book about my father or the history of the war in Iraq. And I think that it is almost too early to be talking about the history of the war. I mean, it's -- we don't have the full picture, we don't have the full documents, we don't have the -- we don't have the full story. So I don't think it's possible to be writing a history of the war since 2003 in a complete way.

NNAMDIBut this is -- this is a unique challenge for you as a historian, because what we're talking about in this book is both part memoir, and part history. What was the challenge of combining the two things, and the extent to which it was a memoir is the extent to which I think our listeners would expect to hear what your feelings about your father and his conduct during that period are in this book, and maybe in this interview.

CHALABIWell, this is -- as I said at the very beginning, this is a history of my family across four generations, and it is not my father's story. And I think that's the kind of book that maybe you wanted from me. I'm sorry that's not the book that you're getting. It's...

NNAMDIWhat was the challenge of combining memoir with historical research?

CHALABIIt was very challenging, because on the one hand, I wanted to use the story of a family and I happen to have access to my family, to tell the story of a country, and intertwine their story with the public story of Iraq going back to the -- as I said, to the late 19th century. And as a historian, and as a writer that was very challenging because it was always trying to keep a balance between the public history, and all of the information, the archives, all the -- anyway, all the information that's available with the private history which was very much -- I -- I researched it very much through, in addition to obviously, documents, but through oral history.

CHALABIAnd through the memories of my own family and -- who are -- especially the older generation who are now in their 80's and 90's. And even the way that they recounted their history was very interesting in trying to put it within a structure in this book. So for example, the memories that they had of their childhood were shockingly more detailed than the memories they had of more recent years. I'm talking about, you know, for example their childhood in the '20s was -- the details they had about that were so much more about what they had from the '60s for example, or the '70s.

NNAMDIWe've done shows on memory here, and frankly that is not surprising.

CHALABIYes.

NNAMDIIt turns out that most people...

CHALABIIt's very interesting.

NNAMDI...most people's memories -- and Bobby, thank you for your call. We've got to take a short break. It turns out that most people's memories from their teenage years and up to the age of 25 are much more vivid...

CHALABIYeah.

NNAMDI...than their memories of anything that happened after that. We've got to take a short break. When we come back we'll continue this conversation with Tamara Chalabi about her book, "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family." I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Tamara Chalabi. She is a historian and author of the book, "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family." Because she is the daughter of Ahmad Chalabi who has been reportedly involved with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a lot of the questions and comments we've been getting have been about that. One more, before I ask you about the book again, and that is, clearly people who are calling and asking want and expect there to be some criticism, some denunciation, if you will, of your father by you in this book. Why not?

CHALABIHe's my father. It's not his story. This is not his story. He should be telling his story. This is a story of Iraq. The purpose of this book is to really show more of the social and the cultural history of Iraq across the 20th century through the four generations of my family. I mean, I...

NNAMDIWhy is called "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace"?

CHALABIIt's called "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace" for two reasons. The first being that in 2003, when I arrived in Baghdad, as I describe, I went looking for my grandparents' house, the one that they left in 1958. And it took a while to find it. And when I did, I was very taken aback by the emptiness and the dirt of this house. It was empty, there were big empty rooms, dirty corridors, and just ghosts of the past kind of evaporate.

CHALABIThere was not even -- I mean, it was an entirely empty house except for when I went down to the basement, I was struck by a lush garden, and in the kitchen, a tea pot. There was just this teapot sitting in the kitchen. It was the strangest thing. And I felt that I had really arrived late for the -- for a tea party. I was too late for that.

CHALABIBut also, the title was inspired by the fact that a lot of the inheritance of memory that was passed onto me by my family of their time in Iraq and of what Iraq was like, you know, when they were -- at least my uncles, etc., were coming of age in the '20s, '30s, and '40s was in Iraq. There was believe it or not a carefree Iraq. An Iraq that had many modernization activities going on. An Iraq that had a lot of different aspects of vibrant culture. An Iraq that had a destination. An Iraq that was one of the leading countries in the Arab world. And so I felt that I'd also arrived late for that party. So hence, "Late for Tea."

NNAMDIMany Americans, including yours truly, know the experience of being an immigrant, but being in exile is something different. How did exile affect your family, your grandparents in particular? How did it affect the environment in which you grew up?

CHALABIWell, yes. You are so right. I think being an immigrant is very different from being in exile. I think the big difference is I think the one of loss. I mean, I don't think all immigrants leave necessarily because it's a great thing to leave one's home. I mean, there are many reasons why people have to leave. But I think being in exile is often marked by some serious trauma, some serious rupture, and some -- it's the taking away of one's home.

CHALABISo there's -- there's this big void that is irreplaceable. Your identity is in a sense taken away from you because you are thrust into another place. You cannot be where you come from. You are uprooted. And, I mean, we -- I think we have some wonderful literature of exile from many different peoples and countries across the world, and I think this condition has been very well described.

CHALABIBut from my personal experience, it's very much this case of, for me, I feel like a second generation exile versus being -- I wasn't born in Iraq, but it was very much about an inheritance of memory. You inherit the memories of your family of a country which is supposed to be yours, but which you don't know. And the longing and the -- the way in which your identity is somewhat thwarted somewhat -- it's arrested, it's not fully developed because you don't -- you're supposed to be something, but you don't know what it is except through a second-hand account of family.

CHALABISo it has obviously an added emotional content to it. So -- but essentially it's very much about longing and the idea that your future is not necessarily brighter than your past, because your past was pretty bright and good. So it's almost kind of counter intuitive to the immigrant.

NNAMDIYou write that you grew up from a young age in a household that was in essence obsessed with Saddam Hussein and his dictatorship. How did that obsession work its way into everyday life?

CHALABIWell, I'll tell you the way in which I remember it clearly, which was during the middle years of the Iran Iraq war. When Iraqis were fleeing Iraq -- and I'd like to just say something about the -- to the lady who said that there are two million Iraqi refugees outside of Iraq today, and I think that's really deplorable and unfortunate, and I think they should be in Iraq. But I would like to say that during the Saddam Hussein period, there were four million Iraqis that were refugees that nobody ever talked about because Saddam was a friend of the west.

CHALABIBut in any case, a lot of the -- a lot of people were fleeing Iraq, and so I came in firsthand encounter, and many of them would come to my family for -- to seek some kind of support in getting asylum in the west in Sweden and Britain and Holland at the time. And they would come with the most horrific stories of having family members being killed and they were made to pay for the bullets that killed them, not being to have funerals for them.

CHALABII mean, I know one particular family who I knew firsthand, who lost their father. Their father just was -- disappeared one day and never ever came back. And it was many, many years later that they got confirmation that he was killed. So...

NNAMDIYou went from being in a family that was obsessed with Saddam Hussein and his dictatorship, and today you have been very critical of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Obviously we cannot go back and change history, but what relationship would you like to see the U.S. have with Iraq moving forward?

CHALABIWell, I think there is a very positive relationship that could develop between the two countries. I think, unfortunately, for a long time now, Iraq was seen just through the prism as a battleground, as a place for military action as the battleground for a war. And I think that a strategic relationship between the two countries is essential. I think that Iraq can benefit so much from many things that America can offer, but first and foremost it is through a people-to-people interaction.

CHALABII think technology transfer, economic operation, education, technology, everything that you can think of from the (unintelligible) . And I'm a real believer of that, and I think that if one, again, were to look back at history and, you know, I talk about this in the book, there were many instances were America and Iraq had relationships that were based on culture and education. And, you know, one of my favorite stories is about Frank Lloyd Wright coming to visit Baghdad in the '50s when he was invited by the Iraqi government to help design an opera house, which sadly never got built because of the revolution.

CHALABIBut, I mean, you know, and we're talking about the '50s which was very forward looking in the region. There were American schools in Baghdad, there were -- well, I will spare you the kind of the dramas of American movies.

NNAMDISee, that's the problem when you're talking to a historian. They get...

CHALABIYeah. Sorry, I...

NNAMDIThey get so preoccupied with talking about the things that they've been researching for such a long time, they can't stop. But we're out of time. But Tamara Chalabi, thank you so much for joining us.

CHALABIThank you very much.

NNAMDITamara Chalabi is an author and a historian. Her book is called "Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family." "The Kojo Nnamdi Show" is produced by Brendan Sweeney, Tara Boyle, Michael Martinez and Ingalisa Schrobsdorff, with help from Kathy Goldgeier and Elizabeth Weinstein. Diane Vogel is the managing producer. The engineer today is Andrew Chadwick. Dorie Anisman has been on the phones.

NNAMDIBut before we end today's show, we'd like to wish a good night's sleep and hearty congratulations to our producer, Brendan Sweeney and his wife Lauren Frost. Their son, Liam Frost Sweeney was born at 7:55 p.m. on Saturday, January 15. He weighed eight pounds and three ounces. He measured 20.5 inches. Congratulations to Brendan and Lauren on producing yet another loyal WAMU 88.5 listener. Thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.