Iraqi author Inaam Kachachi’s latest novel, A Swiss Summer, explores an experimental drug to rid people of their ideologically induced bigotry. According to Kachachi, the drug washes away prejudice “better than any washing powder and in record time.”
Set in the late 1990s in Basel, Switzerland, the novella follows four Iraqi refugees—each either a perpetrator or a victim of torture under Iraq’s Ba’athist regime.
The story begins as Swiss authorities carefully select these four individuals, offering them the chance to spend the summer in Basel for recreation under the supervision of Dr Balasem, an Iraqi psychiatrist from a hospital in Manchester. The group consists of Hatem Al-Hatemi, a burly security officer; Basheera Hassoon, a former leftist detainee, along with her violet-eyed teenage daughter, Sondos; Ghazuan Al-Babeli, a former Shiite detainee; and Dalali, a Jehovah’s Witness missionary.
The “treatment” involves taking the drug—Swiss pills referred to as bonbons—twice daily, alongside group therapy sessions. The participants are also forbidden from following news from Iraq.
Kachachi juxtaposes Switzerland’s cleanliness and order with Iraq’s squalor and turmoil. She also alludes to the vast sums of money stolen from the Third World and hidden in the vaults beneath the Union Bank of Switzerland. For this reason, she describes Basel, “this washed, clean bride,” as having “abscesses under its skin.”
Throughout the novella, Kachachi reveals the tragic pasts of her protagonists. Al-Hatemi, for instance, was once ordered to execute his best friend, Abu Mohammed, who had been accused of treason. Though convinced of his friend’s innocence, Al-Hatemi obeyed. Later, he celebrated his own survival with his colleagues—only to be consumed by self-loathing and estranged from his wife.
Basheera’s story is no less harrowing. Suspected by her leftist party of having become pregnant after being raped in prison, she was hastily smuggled out of Iraq and married off to a fellow former detainee. The man, rendered impotent by torture, eventually abandoned her and Sondos to marry another woman.
Then there is Ghazuan Al-Babeli, a short Shiite man who constantly resorts to humour as an escape. Although Kachachi never explicitly states his sectarian identity, his past speaks for itself—he was brutally tortured in prison, where some of his fellow inmates were dissolved in acid.
Dalali, the Jehovah’s Witness missionary, is an Iraqi Assyrian Christian who inexplicably embraced this creed. Practically overnight, she began evangelising amid the international sanctions against Iraq, much to the embarrassment of her husband, a celebrated football player whom she deeply loved. He even leveraged his fame to secure her release from prison. Yet, even in the Swiss resort, she remains undeterred in her mission, willing to sacrifice her husband and children for her faith.
As the novel unfolds, the characters’ inner turmoil comes to the surface. They are burdened with pain yet incapable of openly discussing their suffering.
Under the influence of the treatment, Ghazuan transforms into “a monument sculpted by a fawning artist for a corrupt leader.” Meanwhile, a long-buried truth emerges: Al-Hatemi had secretly loved Basheera since they were neighbours. Years earlier, when she was about to be tortured—and possibly raped—by low-ranking security officers, he intervened, ensuring her safe return home. Blindfolded at the time, Basheera could only rely on her hearing, committing Al-Hatemi’s voice to memory.
Kachachi also portrays how the protagonists become pawns in the power game of Western interests in the East.
Al-Hatemi is mesmerised by the Western scientists administering the pills, seeing them as enlightened representatives of a superior civilisation, free from prejudice. His outlook mirrors that of certain Arab intellectuals who regard the Western mind and its scientific advancements as inherently capable of solving the East’s problems.
Likewise, Dr Balasem’s presence in the experiment—having been summoned from England—reflects, in Kachachi’s view, the deep collusion between Western intelligence agencies in monitoring Arab refugees. The entire project also underscores the intersection between Western geopolitical interests and the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in Switzerland.
As the experiment ends, the group—now including Balasem and Sondos—gathers by the River Rhine, which Al-Hatemi likens to the Tigris, where Iraqis once washed away their worries and sorrows. In a symbolic act of defiance, they toss the experimental pills into the river and dance the Dabka.
The novella’s 26 chapters conclude with the American invasion of Iraq, after which Kachachi traces the protagonists’ fates.
Sondos, now married to a Danish man against her mother’s wishes, returns to Iraq as a journalist. She observes how Iraqis now mark history as before and after the American invasion. During a visit to Al-Babeli, who has risen to prominence, she pleads for her father-in-law’s pension. He dismisses her, citing his inclusion on the Ba’athist Eradication Law list. She realises she has no personal connection to Iraq beyond a few postcard-like images. To her, the country has fallen into the hands of sects and militias with no hope of recovery.
Despite its strengths, the novella has minor flaws.
Dr Balasem, supposedly a fluent English speaker given his career in England, inexplicably asks Dalali to translate the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on Theodor Herzl, the founder and first president of the Zionist Organisation, who convened its inaugural conference in Basel in 1897.
Additionally, Dalali emerges as the least convincing character, as Kachachi fails to provide a plausible motive for her actions.
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