INT: Can I ask you, again, about the pogrom that you lived through, as a child? Do you think that was directly related to what was happening in Europe?
ED: Yes, because my dad says, and I have a vision of that, although I don’t remember seeing it, about half a dozen Gestapo people walked in the main street of Baghdad, like the high street, and they were followed by mobs of Arabs, you know, welcoming them and all that. There were only about four or six of them, all in their leather things and their outfit, the uniform and all that, and the swastika. I have a vision of that, I don’t really know if I saw them, if I was in the street by chance, or if my dad told me about them. But there is a picture, in my head, that I saw these officers, the SS officers, being welcomed in the middle of Baghdad.
And then things changed, I think, in Europe at that time, maybe. Because, at that time, all Europe was really,[under Nazi occupation] Belgium and France and up to Norway and, of course, up to Egypt as well, so we were not far from them then.
INT: So you think that you suffered, especially, because of what was happening in Nazi Germany?
ED: Yeah, because the government were very pro-Nazi and, at that time, (Oh it’s really very convoluted) we had a young, I was still there, a very young king there. His father was killed in an accident and he was only about ten*, and he was killed in a motor bike accident, or in a car accident. So we had a Regent there, and that’s when I left, so I don’t really know what happened after that.
*{Editor’s note. The car accident happened in 1938, when the young King was aged 3}