Cooking & Kitchen

The way and place of cooking and dishes of Iranian prisoners in Iraqi camps.

The process of feeding captives

The process of captivity started from the moment of apprehension. After a couple of hours, the prisoners were transferred from the front line to the rear of the brigade or division headquarters. After a day or two, they were transferred to Iraqi Intelligence Service or the garrison of Aqaba city and after the first interrogation, if they were important, they were transferred to Iraqi Intelligence Service at Iraq or the nearest Iraqi Intelligence Service and about 20 to 30 days later they were transferred to the camp and spent the rest of their captivity in the camp.

As regarded the amount of food and water given to the captives, it has to be admitted that it was just enough to prevent them from dying, and in a manner of speaking, to keep their body and soul together. About the food, it can be said during the beginning days of captivity, they gave them anything they found available, which was generally canned, no matter if they could open it or not. The prisoners opened them by scrubbing the can`s lid on the coarse cement floor of their cells.

In Al-Rashid Prison, which was considered the center of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, they interrogated the prisoners. Food in Iraqi kitchens, was prepared and sent to the prisoners by the Iraqi staff working in kitchens. To drink water in the prison, there was a tap the pressure of whose water was so low and it was used for drinking, cleaning their clothes and also washing bandages, because there was no access to a new bandage.

Kitchen in captivity

Kitchen was a place for cooking, a warehouse for keeping dry rations and a room where the Iraqi official resided Some large pots and a few oil primus stoves and implements such as a ladle, a skimmer and a colander were the minimum cooking utensils required at the kitchen. However, the space of the kitchen and equipment generally weren’t suitable for the number of the prisoners. This lack of equipment in unregistered camps compared with others was more noticeable.

The whole kitchen staff consisted of Iranian prisoners namely the head of the kitchen, assistant, the chef and staff who usually a high-ranking Iraqi officer controlled . The whole camp had one officer to supply the necessary kitchen implements. About interior kitchen facilities as my experience I can say that in Tacrit camp 12 at Salahehgdin, there was such a shortage that the cooked rice by the Iranian prisoners was poured on sacks of rice spread on the ground so that the pots were reused for cooking stew. According to the other Iranian prisoners, who have been registered, this lack of facilities was more or less seen at camps too.

For the daily distribution of food , the representatives of each sanatorium filed carrying a kind of plate called “ghosateh”. They were placed in front of the main food containers in a certain order, received their share and returned to their original line, and at the end of the food distribution, they returned to their sanatorium in the same order.

Captive Food

Breakfast

In registered camps by the Red Cross, the prisoners usually claim that the breakfast formed 2/3 of a plastic cup or 7 to 8 spoons of lentil soup to which at times some split peas were added. However, in unregistered camps the situation was different, in a way that during the early days of captivity, a cup pf tea was distributed among 4 to 5 people , but in the latter part of captivity it was distributed among 3 people. Therefore, the lentil soup ( actually it was a mixture of lentils and a little rice) in camps was given inside one medium bowl to each food group consisting of 13 to 15 people at beginning and in the end there were groups of ten people- that once distributed, each person received almost as much as a cup.

Lunch

Lunch was almost a regular cup of cooked rice for each person which contained 8 to 10 spoonfuls of rice with a kind of simple watery soup made up of cabbage, okra, eggplant, beets and tomatoes. For each group consisting of 8 to 10 people they gave a big ladle of that soup which according to the remarks of prisoners, for each 2 to 3 people there was only one or two small pieces of meat and the rest was gravy, celery or etc. it should be said in case of unregistered camps it was almost the same. Maybe the difference lay in the number of captives at each group ; the larger the group, the smaller the amount of meat would be. The Friday Lunch was a little bit different depending on camps. The Friday soup was made up of legumes including lentils and beans plus dried stuff.

Dinner

In first months of captivity as the establishment of camps was not yet quite consolidated, captives were provided with no dinner. Dinner differed from camp to camp. For example, in Remadie’s camps three meals were distributed. Because the Iraqis gave two meals in other camps and Iranians were used to three meals, with policy of Iranian cooks, in registered camps they spared some of lunch ingredients, so that they could make some broth for dinner and in some camps they bought some evaporated milk, mixed it with water and made a kind of rennet using orange peel so that they could make yogurt . Or they boiled orange peel and using their sugar ration, made jam, so that sometimes they had bread & jam for dinner. Of course in most camps dinner included less than 2/3 of a glass of some runny broth for each person. About unregistered camps, it must be said dinner was broth made with beef, tomato paste and occasionally chicken.

There were almost no facilities or means whereby the captives could cook their own dinner. Since the captives had no allowance, they had no alternative but to eat what the camp gave them and the same applied to cigarettes. The amount of meat which was given to prisoners was less than 40 grams. About chicken, it was half of one with about two normal bowls of some runny stew which was divided among 10 people. Some days, during the hot season as dinner was cooked in the afternoon, the heat caused chicken or meat in general to decay and that usually inflicted diarrhea upon vulnerable captives. What aggravated this plight were the restrictions the captives were confronted with to access WCs. Naturally with the spread of diarrhea the restrictions would prove far more irksome and insufferable.

Bread

The daily ration of bread for each person, usually included two small oval loaves of bread called “samon”, resembling a sort of sweet named lady finger. According to prisoners , generally the middle of Samon was uncooked. The idea that the prisoners came up with was to remove the dough from inside and dry it under the sun, then, grind it by hands, and mix it with rice as part of their dinner . In registered camps, sometimes they collected the dough and made traditional delicacies such as halva and zoolbia with that.

And this is how bread was distributed among captives. First, it was brought into the camp in a military vehicle such as a van. Then the people in charge of bread at each sanatorium collectively went to the car to take the delivery of the bread using their statistical information for that purpose After distribution of the whole bread, they would come back and divide the bread among the prisoners. This process lasted for two hours from 10 am to noon. Usually the different distributors of bread in sanatorium got an extra bread. However, some of them refused to take the extra bread and that bread was divided equally among the prisoners considering the quality and size.

Tea

Each person received a third of plastic or aluminum cup of sweetened tea. In unregistered camps, it was even less. The sanatorium officials had their own tea ration and some of them refused to use their own ration and instead divided it equally among the captives. Sometimes they gave the extra tea to captives at the sanatorium with special conditions for example those suffering from diarrhea, etc.

The importance of tea in the camps of the Red Cross was that it was the only sweet thing they consumed and under the given circumstances the captives found it most enjoyable.

Meat

The meat brought to the camp was mostly frozen and imported from Brazil, Australia or France. The chickens imported to camps were half warm and half frozen and in some cases the frozen chickens were imported from Brazil and France.

Grains and legumes such as lentils, beans and rice were imported mostly from America and Argentina. Interestingly, salt was imported from Egypt, Saudi Arabia or other countries.

Fruit and Snacks

In the registered camps, the fruit given to captives every ten days, on average, was a small watermelon for ten people or one small apple for each person or an orange shared by three people and sometimes some of the distributed fruits turned out to be rotten or unripe. There were no snacks in camps. In some camps, on rare occasions such as Christmas, they distributed chocolate bars on a small scale that is several captives received only one piece of chocolate. In unregistered camp, distribution of fruit was irregular, sometimes every ten days and most of the time, it took even longer, but sometimes it was given out once a week. In terms of quantity, a group of 3 or 4 captives received one apple or orange, and on the average, a group of 15-20 captives was given just one watermelon. It is noteworthy, however, that the quantity and frequency of fruit & snacks distribution were much less considerable during the early days of captivity. About other snacks, it should be said on average every six months or more the captives received chocolate on a special occasion, so that as one of the unregistered captives stated during the whole captivity he and his inmates had received chocolate just once, and it had been a very tough chunk of chocolate that a group of 10 captives had had to break into small pieces by hitting it on the cement floor. Other snacks such as cakes and sweets were simply unthinkable for the prisoners. Of course, some days, each captive got one dried date.

Occasions

The most important occasion was Ramadan when in camps they gave lentil soup as Sahary(the first meal a fasting muslim is supposed to take at daybreak), and to break their fast in the evening they ate what was otherwise served as lunch. The prisoners prepared the Zulbia with sugar and dough themselves. In all camps, it was possible to fast, so that the time of distribution of food was adjusted with the Ramadan, however, in terms of amount and the kind of food, it was the same as the other days, and they had only changed the time of distribution. Somedays they served breakfast before closing the doors of the sanatoriums, which was related to the security level of the camp.

For Moharam, the prisoners made Halva with sugar and dough. It repeated in Norooz too. With a salary of 1,500 felsi, they bought some biscuits, sugar and oil from Hanut to make halvah and sweets. In unregistered camps, because prisoners had no allowance, it was almost impossible to provide the food except the food they gave them so the captives could not eat whatever they fancied. During the captivity, on very rare occasions, the captives were permitted to spend a small amount of money obtaining items such as date syrup with which they made sweets and cookies and distributed them among inmates of each sanatorium to celebrate Nime-ye-Shaban festivity. This case was so unexpected from the point of view of Iraqis that some Iraqi officials showed sensitivity towards the issue. The Iraqis themselves gave chocolates to the captives on their own occasions, such as the celebration of the establishment of the Iraqi army, the anniversary of the Baath Party foundation, or the anniversary of Saddam's rise to power.