OCTOBER 2023

1958 revolution swept away the king
and the British, but not the beer – although
the deeply suspicious officers
who took power considered the Alwiya
Club a subversive organization.
Beer not only survived the seizure
of power by the secular pan-Arab socialistic
Baath party in 1968, but breweries
proliferated. The party nationalized
the Khedairi firm in 1973-74 and
in 1975-76, the government established
two breweries; one in the city of Mosul
and the other at Amara, an extremely
strict Muslim city where workers had
to be brought from China.
Farida achieved peak production of
thirty million bottles a year during the
1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Their slogan?
“Always in bottles, never in cans.”
There was another major twist of
events during the sanction years of the
1990s, when Saddam Hussein’s oldest
son Uday started harassing the private
sector companies and successful brewery
owners. Uday, a sadist with a taste
for cruelty, sports cars, women, and
alcohol, had a complex, dark character
and carried a grudge against the elite.
Once you came to Uday’s notice, he
never left you alone. He also had an appetite
for liquor and beer.
Uday, also known as Al-Ustath, had
his staff call Khadhuri’s son and managing
partner
of the Eastern
Brewery Company
for a meeting
in his office. In that
meeting, Uday claimed
the company was best
run by the state and offered
to buy the company with Iraqi
currency. The Iraqi dinar at that
time was a worthless piece of paper
printed by the government during
the Iran-Iraq war.
Khadhuri politely tried to decline
the offer, stating that the brewery was
the only family business, and many
family members depend upon it for
their living. Khadhuri’s request to decline
the offer was denied; however, as
a gesture of good will, Uday told the
owner’s son that he would keep him
on as a plant manager.
Two years later, after the sanctions
squeeze and a series of reversals,
Uday summed Khadhuri again and
asked him to buy the company back,
this time with US dollars that the family
must have stashed in the west. With
his own survival instincts and some
knowledge of Ustath Uday’s history of
deceit, Khadhuri took his family and
fled to Jordan the next day.
Beer and Politics
The ancient Iraqis made drinks from
barley and wine extracted from palm
dates. The wine from palm juice was
made by cutting the top of the trunk
of the palm tree, collecting the resulting
juice, and fermenting it for two or
three days. It became quite a strong
intoxicant. The drink was intended for
the people, distributed at a rate of more
than a gallon per person; meanwhile,
the Iraqi government of today prevents
it, confiscates it, and forbids it.
When sanctions were imposed by
the UN in 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait,
the government imposed a 50 per
cent cut in production and banned money
transfers abroad. Farida carried on by
obtaining malt and hops from a supplier
who did not mind flouting the decree. It
is reported that a Farida spokesperson
said, “How he paid was not our concern.
He gave us one hundred tons of malt for
30,000 cases of beer!”
In 1998 Farida licensed a Jordanian
company to make their beer in Amman,
Jordan. Farida remained privately
owned until 2001, when ousted President
Saddam Hussein’s eldest son,
Uday, and his friends took over the firm
and made soft drinks as well as beer.
In the weeks after the invasion of
Iraq by the Bush administration, Farida
was forced to compete with imports
from Holland and Turkey. Popular
name brands and imports such as Amstel,
Heineken, Almaza, Corona, and
Budweiser dominated the Iraqi market.
Until Shia fundamentalists were
installed in power in Iraq by the US
occupation, brewing beer was a profitable
business. In 2004, Shia fundamentalists
halted beer production
in all breweries. Smugglers hawking
chilled beer appeared beneath the
Jadriya Bridge alongside peddlers
selling illegal drugs. The supplies
of Farida vanished. Sadly, today the
breweries and shops selling beer and
other alcoholic drinks have shut down
or been torched. Clubs, bars, and restaurants
have closed.
Carrying on the Tradition
Beers that were brewed in Iraq have
mostly female names. In addition to
the most famous of all — Farida, meaning
“unique”— there was Diana, “the
golden lager;” Shahrazad; Loulou’a;
Kahramana; and Sanabel.
In the 1940s, King Farouk of Egypt
married the Iranian princess Safinaz
Zulfiqar, and then called her Princess
Farida. Like most other nations, the
Iraqi were obsessed with the ruling
royal family, and so was the managing
director of the Iraqi Eastern Beer Company,
who bestowed upon their product
the name “Farida.”
Keeping up with the Mesopotamians,
some Chaldean Americans
dived into the micro-brew industry
in the United States. The first Chaldean
known to do so was the author
of this article, Dr. Adhid Miri, who
opened Copper Canyon Micro-Brewery
in Southfield, Michigan in 1998. The
Sarafa brothers, Anmar and Haithem,
entered the industry and purchased
Frankenmuth Brewery in Michigan in
2009. They are still going strong today.
Beer and friendship go back thousands
of years. William Bostwick, the
beer critic for the Wall Street Journal
(plum job!) once said, “Humankind
was built on beer. From the world’s
first writing to its first laws, in rituals
social, religious, and political, civilization
is soaked in beer.”
Some other favorite beer quotes include,
“Friends bring happiness into
your life; best friends bring beer,” and,
“Life and beer are very similar, chill for
best results.”
Cheers!
Sources: Wikipedia, Al-Gardinia.
com, Andrea Fallibene, Brew Master,
Yaqthan Chadirji, Naiem Abid Mhalhal
OCTOBER 2023 CHALDEAN NEWS 41