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Escaping modern Babylon
By Tamar Morad, Robert Shasha and Dennis Shasha
Tags: Iraqi Jews, Babylon

"In 1936, the royal family of Iraq asked my father and uncle to establish the Iraqi Broadcasting Authority Orchestra. Except for one person, the orchestra was entirely Jewish - not because my father deliberately selected Jews, but because most musicians were Jews." This is how Shlomo El-Kivity begins his father's story.

Shlomo is one of the few able to tell the story of the last generation of Iraqi Jews - who remember living in and leaving Iraq. They were people who in many cases grew up with strong patriotic feelings but were always prepared for a future beyond Iraq's borders. Because those who remember vividly Jewish life in Iraq are dwindling in numbers, we felt a sense of urgency to record the experiences of these last Jews of Iraq. So, over the course of a year, we sat down to interview 64 Iraqi Jews from the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Israel, members of a 2,500 year-old community and the oldest Jewish Diaspora.

Our interviewees told us about their daily life in Baghdad at a time when Iraqi Jews saw themselves as part of the Iraqi national fiber in government, commerce, music and literature. Their accounts became our book, "Iraq's Last Jews: Stories of Daily Life, Upheaval, and Escape from Modern Babylon," an oral history collection.
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The book includes 20 personal accounts, including experiences in the Farhoud pogrom in 1941, during which some 200 Jews were killed, and about Operation Ezra and Nehemiah (1950-1952), in which nearly all of Iraq's 137,000 Jews were airlifted to Israel by the Mossad L'Aliyah Bet on 950 flights. We also heard from some of the approximately 10,000 who stayed behind, initially without undue hardship, but eventually in severe oppression under the young Saddam Hussein.

Here are some excerpts from several interviews.

Shlomo El-Kivity is the son of Salah el-Kuwaity who, with his partner and brother Daoud, comprised the "Kuwaity Brothers," perhaps the most popular music troupe in Iraq and known throughout the Arab world. The Kuwaity Brothers enjoyed their greatest popularity in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s but left for Israel in 1950 with Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. After their departure, their music continued to be taught and played throughout the Arab world but without attribution.

"Salah made good money, a name for himself, and achieved great fame. His name became famous throughout all of Iraq, to such an extent that in 1933, the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, the most popular singer in the Arab world, arrived in Iraq to perform and when she heard the song Galbak Sachar Jalmud ["Your Heart is Hard as a Rock"], she loved it. Umm Kulthum had rules: She never sang songs that weren't written for her, and she never sang non-Egyptian songs. But she asked to sing this song. So my father, together with Salima Murad [a famous Iraqi Jewish singer], sat with her and taught her not only how to sing it, but also the language, because the Arabic spoken in Iraq was different than that spoken in Egypt ...

"The orchestra [that he established in 1936] played three times a week live for the new Radio Baghdad. It was comprised of four musicians who accompanied a maqam singer. Its name was Chalghy Baghdad. Then my father formed a more modern orchestra for the Iraqi Broadcasting Authority, which also played on the radio and was a little bigger and played more modern music, which he composed.

"But this entire affair lasted only four years. Why did it end? One day, in 1942, the prime minister, Nuri el-Said - who treasured Iraqi music and was said to have loved their broadcasts - turned on the radio and there was no music. He called the Broadcasting Authority and asked, 'Why is there no music?' They told him, 'It's Yom Kippur. Jews don't work today.' 'What?!' he exclaimed. 'Jews don't work so there is no radio today?! No music?!' He was infuriated and kicked out the orchestras my father had created."

Oded Halahmy is a sculptor whose work is infused with the beauty of the Iraqi landscape, including the foods of Iraq, which he recalls in this passage.

"I loved to watch my mother baking or cooking and sometimes we children would put a reed mat on the floor and help with her preparations. For instance, my mother gave one of the children the hawan [the special mortar used to crush food] when we made medgugah - which is the process of pounding dates and nuts into a thick paste with the hawan, but it is also the end product. The women in the family, my mothers and aunts, would sit and gossip while they cooked, chattering and laughing about which woman was pregnant, who was marrying whom, and which of them made the best rice. We had a big kitchen to accommodate our large family: eight children, my parents, and grandparents. Every day my mother and the maid cooked for at least 15 people. When we had guests, it would often be 30 people."

In this passage, Salim Fattal recalls the two days of the Farhoud, when his uncle, Meir, was attacked by an angry mob in a Muslim neighborhood and never seen again.

"Meir and his business partner Nahum Kazzaz, who also lived in Tatran [a neighborhood of Baghdad], owned horses that they housed in Bab el-Sheikh [another Baghdad neighborhood], about five kilometers from their house ...

"On the morning of June 1, Meir, his brother Naim, Nahum and Nahum's 11-year-old son Nissim left Tatran in a carriage and spent some time with their horses. Between 4 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon they headed back home in a minibus... The bus was filled with Jews because it was headed toward our neighborhood. Suddenly, it was stopped by a mob as it was going through Bab el-Sheikh. The mob was also stopping other buses. Meir became a quick target because he had a typical Jewish face. How did the Arabs see that? They just knew - all Iraqis had a kind of instinct for identifying an Arab face versus a Jewish one.

"The mob opened the bus door and pulled Meir out. Naim tried to grab Meir and pull him back inside, shouting, 'This man is not a Jew!' They didn't listen and Naim couldn't fight them off. The Arabs beat Meir almost to the point of unconsciousness. In an attempt to save Meir, Nahum went out through the window on the opposite side of the bus: he felt he could help because he knew people in that neighborhood who worked for him ...

"Nahum's son Nissim was with him on the bus and saw his father go out. Nissim was confused and scared about why his father suddenly left. He tried to follow him by jumping out of the window as well, but didn't get that far: the driver told Nissim, 'If you leave, you will be killed. Stay here.' Fearing more bloodshed, the driver decided to drive on without any warning, abandoning Nahum and Meir.

"To this day nobody knows what happened to Meir and Nahum."

Shlomo Hillel was the Mossad L'Aliyah Bet emissary credited with orchestrating the Ezra and Nehemiah operation. In this passage, he describes how he worked undercover to broker a deal between Iraq's prime minister and the airline that would take Iraqi Jews to Israel (though the destination was never explicitly talked about). His partner, Ronnie Barnett, was a British Jew who had volunteered to work for the cause of illegal immigration and was serving as a liaison between Trans-Ocean Airlines, as an employee, and the Mossad.

"While working for Trans-Ocean, Ronnie had taken people to Mecca on pilgrimage, and in that capacity had met the director of the travel agency Iraq Tours, Abdul Rahman Raouf. They had hit it off, so Ronnie contacted him and arranged to meet him in Rome. I came along - it was my debut as 'Richard Armstrong.' We told him that he could make a lot of money bringing Jews out of Iraq if he could secure the bid with the Iraqi government. He said, 'I have something to tell you. The prime minister, Tawfiq al-Suweidi, is on the board of my company.' So we realized that we could turn this into a business opportunity for el-Suweidi, which would smooth the plan at the top levels of government.

"We went back to Baghdad and Raouf arranged for us to meet the prime minister. Ronnie and I met el-Suweidi in his home, and I was sickened with worry the whole time, realizing that what I was doing was the height of chutzpah - visiting the prime minister under an assumed identity. He began to explain to us how the illegal immigration was terrible for Iraq [some 2,000 Jews were escaping to Iran every month, largely with Hillel's help] because the Jews were likely smuggling property out and not settling their debts or paying off their taxes.

"I pretended to be sympathetic to this nonsense, and then we got to business: Raouf said he believed no less than 60,000 would leave, and we discussed how much we'd charge per ticket - 12 dinars [about $48]. We gave el-Suweidi the pitch about the strength of our fleet and the company's experience, but we all refrained from discussing the biggest seller to him personally - the projected revenues to Iraq Tours. That was understood."

Ilana Marcus was a stewardess on the flights for the airlift operation. Code-named "Chris," she also served as a courier for the Mossad between Iraq and Israel. Here, she describes the conditions on the approximately 200 airlifts on which she was the sole air hostess.

"I took about three flights per week to Israel. There were only 50 seats, but about 100 or 120 people were stuffed onto each flight. People sat in the aisles, on laps, anywhere they could. We used the same plane for all those flights. The experience was very difficult for all the passengers. Everyone came on with suitcases and women sometimes wore three dresses, one on top of the other, because they were only allowed to take out of Iraq what they were wearing and what they could carry in one suitcase. I remember seeing a Kurdish woman from Mosul wearing seven dresses ... Everyone was thirsty, but I never had enough water for them...

"Those flights were of course a very emotional moment for all the passengers, but, I have to say, not a really happy moment for them except for those who were really Zionist and were delighted to be coming to Eretz Yisrael. Most were weighed down with worries about being destitute - about how they'd earn a living in a place they'd never been and where they didn't speak the language. They worried about whether they'd have a house and where the children would be educated. They didn't know what to expect and in many cases they didn't really know why they were going except that it was what everyone was doing. But the worries were silent usually. I just became so familiar with the looks on their faces that even if they didn't say anything I knew what was going through their minds."

Below, Richard Obadiah tells how his father, Abdullah Obadiah, the headmaster of the last Jewish school in Iraq - the Frank Iny School, where Richard was a student - kept the school afloat even during the most trying times for the community. Abdullah Obadiah was able to do this partly because, as a mathematics professor at Baghdad University, he taught many members of the Ba'ath Party.

"In the early 1970s, when the Jews were escaping to Iran through the Kurdish areas, the emptying out of the community was noticeable at the school. Some days I'd come in and three students in my class wouldn't show up that day, and everyone knew that they were, simply, gone - over the border [to Iran]. This didn't escape the notice of Muslim teachers, as well as the janitors and gardeners, all of whom were Muslim and some of whom were informants recruited by the government security services. My father knew which ones were the informants. Through some of his ex-students within the security services, he was even given the reports filed by these informants on several occasions. But he never got rid of these people because doing so would have only raised unwarranted suspicion.

"As a result, my father was called to the interrogation center of the secret police, which used to be a Bahai temple that the government had taken over after throwing out the Bahais (whose religion the Ba'ath Party refused to recognize). I remember driving my father there and waiting nervously outside for him. He emerged three or four hours later. He told me he had been ushered into a room and told to sit and wait. They kept him waiting - part of their psychology of intimidation and fear. He guessed that they had a few interrogators observing him as he waited.

"Eventually they brought him into another room and asked him, 'So, you're the headmaster of the Frank Iny School. Where are all your students disappearing to? Are you organizing them to leave? If you tell us the truth nothing will happen to you. If you don't tell us the truth, something bad is going to happen to you.' My father was not the type to be intimidated. He gave them a biting lecture about his service and loyalty to the country and threw out a few names of top government officials whom he knew well, some of whom he had taught in the university. Then he told them that they had no right to speak to him in such a threatening and accusatory manner. He wasn't going to be intimidated by what were, in his eyes and in truth, a bunch of thugs - junior thugs, kids. And that was that. They let him go."

Excerpted from "Iraq's Last Jews: Stories of Daily Life, Upheaval, and Escape from Modern Babylon," edited by Tamar Morad, Dennis Shasha and Robert Shasha. Forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan, November 2008.
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