Subscribe to Print Edition | Wed., May 21, 2008 Iyyar 16, 5768 | | Israel Time: 18:35 (EST+7) web haaretz.com   Back to Homepage Rosner's Domain Diplomacy Defense Jewish World Opinion National Print Edition Advertising Books Peres Conference Business Real Estate Easy Start Travel Week's End Anglo File

Last update - 18:32 21/05/2008 Memoir For the love of Arabic By Ina Friedman Tags: memoir, Baghdad  Baghdad, Yesterday: The Making of an Arab Jew, by Sasson Somekh Ibis Editions, 187 pages, $16.95 (paperback) The immigrant experience, which in our age of globalization is undergoing renewed literary examination, is not monolithic. Yet for all, it does inevitably imply a reinvention of oneself, as one embraces at least some part of a new identity while shedding at least some part of an old one, however slowly or reluctantly. In Israel, a country of immigrants par excellence, this experience is both particular and shared. Perhaps that is why, despite signal differences of time and place, Sasson Somekh's brief memoir of coming of age in Baghdad in the 1930s and '40s will likely resonate powerfully with Israelis who originated elsewhere, as it has in this reader. Written as a collection of vignettes, some of which were published in Haaretz between 1999 and 2003, "Baghdad, Yesterday" evokes a surprisingly cosmopolitan way of life that vanished, almost overnight, when the 120,000-strong Iraqi-Jewish community was airlifted to Israel, in 1950-52. What's more, Somekh's narrative and musings -- informative, affectionate, ironic and often ambivalent, but wholly free of rancor -- are delivered from the unexpected vantage of a teenager who came to Israel "not from Zionist motives," as he readily attests, "but rather out of an urge for adventure and rebellion." Clearly, had it not been for policies that effectively blocked his entrance to a university, Somekh -- who at 17, when he emigrated to Israel, was already a published poet and essayist hobnobbing in cafes with Iraq's avant-garde literary elite -- would have been happy to remain in his Arab homeland, to whose language and literature he was passionately attached. The fact that, after settling in the Jewish state, he remained true to himself and went on to become a world-renowned scholar of Arabic literature (he is now professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University), only makes his story all the more poignant. The Baghdad of yesterday we visit in these pages is far from what ignorance or bias may have primed us to expect. Nearly one-third of its inhabitants were Jewish, and they comprised more than half the Iraqi Jewish community, which was increasingly middle-class (about 50 percent in Somekh's childhood), white-collar and Westernized (due to Britain's effective rule of Iraq for decades after its occupation of the country during World War I.) Somekh -- who grew up in a new neighborhood populated by a mix of Jews, Muslims and Christians, and, in a departure from Jewish custom, went to a non-denominational, private elementary school -- illustrates the currents that were reshaping the Jewish community in various engaging ways. Reproducing a photograph taken at his uncle's wedding, circa 1927, for example, he notes not only the occupations of the guests -- mostly merchants and clerks who had studied at secular schools (particularly those of the Alliance Israelite Universelle) -- but also their sartorial preferences: European, for his uncle's generation, traditional (Ottoman) for the preceding one. The languages that prevailed in the Somekh home were another sign of the times. The spoken tongue was a Jewish-Baghdadi dialect of Arabic, but there wasn't a single Arabic book or newspaper to be found there, we are told, "at least not until I started to bring some books and journals home." Educated at Alliance schools, Somekh's parents had a mastery of both English and French. His mother, however, had never studied written Arabic, and his father's career as a manager in a British bank rendered his familiarity with written Arabic "primarily theoretical." To help fill their leisure hours, his mother maintained subscriptions to Ladies' Home Journal and True Story, his father to Life magazine and True Detective. "At some point -- I must have been thirteen or fourteen -- I started to rebel against what struck me as a 'split personality,'" he writes. "Here I was, an Arab Jew in whose home and at whose school Arabic was treated with disdain." Soon the adolescent rebellion had developed into a drive to personally span the language gap, first by translating English poetry into Arabic and later by writing poetry in the language his parents could not read. Equally intriguing is the degree to which the Somekhs, like many of the other "Westernized" families of his parents' generation, were secular Jews. True, they annually attended a Passover seder at a relative's home. Yet beyond that -- and despite being related to Hakham 'Abdullah (Ovadiya) Somekh, "the greatest of Baghdad's rabbis in the nineteenth century" -- their home was devoid of religious ritual or tradition. "In our house there were no Hebrew Bibles or prayer books," Somekh writes. He was not exposed to the Bible until he attended a Jewish high school -- and, even then, during only one hour of weekly study. "Yom Kippur was a day for relaxing at home, and no one made us observe the fast." And all this applied equally, he adds, to most of his uncles, aunts and cousins. Somekh portrays a charmed childhood, replete with swimming in the Tigris and picnicking on savory, barbecued fish on one of the islands that cropped up in the river in the summer; sleeping on the roof to beat the heat and hearing the American musicals screened outdoors by a nearby movie theater; and later cutting school to immerse himself in the literary treasures of the Baghdad central library. Yet shadows also loomed at the edges of his life. Somekh's maternal grandfather had been hanged by the Turks for aiding the temporarily routed British forces during World War I. Sasson himself was 7 in June 1941 when, after the fall of Iraq's short-lived pro-Nazi regime, the Farhoud -- the rampage of a mob of mostly destitute soldiers and Bedouin -- ripped through Baghdad's Jewish neighborhoods (though not his own), taking the lives of over 100 of their inhabitants. And in 1948 one of his uncles was arrested on a trumped-up charge (whose nature remains vague) and sentenced to five years of hard labor. Though he professes to have been "indifferent to politics," Somekh's exposure to local communists provides some of the most fascinating reading in these pages. We learn, for example, that two leaders of the banned Communist movement in the 1940s were Jewish, and both met their ends at the gallows. The younger of them, Sasson Dallal, also happened to be the brother of Somekh's school friend Fathi, whose home he visited on occasion without ever suspecting that it was also the abode of a political outlaw. While Fathi soon drops out of the narrative, his family does not. For after emigrating to the United States in the 1950s, one of Somekh's cousins met and married the eldest Dallal brother, David, who had been Sasson Dallal's ideological mentor. By the time Somekh met him, in the 1970s, David was "a very engaging man, but totally apolitical." The wickedest twist, however, came when Somekh was invited to the wedding of David Dallal's son, named Sasson after his martyred uncle, and noted that it was to be held in an ultra-Orthodox wedding hall in Bnei Brak. "The groom, who bears the name of one of the legendary leaders of Iraqi communism, had become religiously observant and chose to devote his life to Torah," he comments dryly. All in all, Somekh perceived the darker moments of his childhood, including the trauma of Sasson Dallal's execution, as stemming solely from the malice or ineptitude of Iraqi officialdom, rather than any general air of anti-Semitism. And they did nothing to erode his sense of being among "the last generation of Iraqi Jews who lived side by side with Iraqis of other religions, speaking a common language and participating actively in Iraqi culture." What sparked the Jewish exodus, he explains, was not a belated reaction to the Farhoud but a burgeoning threat to the quality of life following the United Nations' 1947 resolution partitioning Palestine, which grew sharper after the founding of Israel the following year. "Many [Jewish] civil servants had been dismissed from their governmental or quasi-governmental jobs," he writes of this interim period. "Commerce had declined considerably and the memory of the Farhood, which had meanwhile faded, returned." There were other blatantly ominous signs of an unpromising future for Jews in Iraq, such as the hanging of the prominent Jewish businessman Shafiq Adas. "Hundreds of [other] Jews, as well as non-Jews, were sentenced by military courts to long prison sentences for Zionist or Communist activity, both real and imagined." As the atmosphere turned ugly, the 1950 passage of the Citizenship Waiver Law, which allowed Jews to emigrate provided they forfeit their Iraqi citizenship, was seized upon as a means of salvation. Even a subsequent law freezing the assets of Jews who waived their citizenship did not stem the tide. In 1949, "at fifteen, I was indifferent to the Zionist idea," Somekh writes. Two years later, however, when he realized that he would not be able to pursue a higher education in Iraq, he left for Israel, on his own (his parents following three months later). While visiting a cafe a few days earlier, and finding friends from his literary circle seated with people he did not know, "I didn't dare speak of my imminent departure," he writes, for fear that "the strangers might turn hostile" toward "one who had turned his back on their country." Yet Somekh found that his close non-Jewish friends, while expressing regret at his going, "respected my decision" -- though he was chided by the poet Akram al-Witri, not for joining the reviled Zionist enterprise, but for cutting himself off from the language and literature in which he had displayed such talent. "His concern was that I might lose my culture and my mother tongue and, with them, my very identity." In Somekh's case, that fear was unfounded; to this day he defines himself as an Arab Jew and has maintained his attachment to Arab culture. But he does lament that "many of my generation, who were scalded in the [Israeli] melting pot of the fifties and the sixties, were distanced from their native culture because of the continuous conflict with the Arab world." Even at the time, the exodus was not a blithe event. Glancing around at the faces of other travelers on the plane, "I saw little joy and a great deal of anxiety," Somekh recalls. "Upon arrival, I saw no one kneeling down to kiss the sacred ground." Most of the 120,000 Jews who left for Israel had taken "an unexpected leap into the unknown" and were "not ready for the drastic transition from an Arab country to the new Jewish state. Of course, no one can say how events would have unfolded had Israel not mounted the legendary airlift of Iraqi Jewry dubbed Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Yet in his penultimate chapter, Somekh tells rather mischievously of two younger cousins who left Iraq just over a decade later, in 1963 -- and seemed no worse for the wear. He had expected them to be "introverted and furtive," the result of what he imagined to have been years of living in fear and isolation. "But Solly and Sammy were young men brimming with self-confidence and lightness of spirit," he writes. Both had worked as clerks in successful commercial enterprises and "had been able to spend their leisure time swimming in the Tigris or playing tennis on the Jewish sports fields," indicating that such facilities had continued to exist. Admittedly, both men settled successfully in Israel (with Sammy eventually moving to the U.S.), and the Israel they met was not wracked by the rawness and austerity of the '50s. Yet "during their first years they clearly missed the comfort and pampering of their Baghdad days," Somekh continues. "Over the years Solly and Sammy would recall, laughingly but not entirely without nostalgia," the wonderful days of the late 1950s." Ina Friedman, a correspondent for the Dutch daily Trouw, is co-author of "Murder in the Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Fear of extinction The state of over 20 species of birds in Israel has worsened considerably. Taking advantage Jerusalem police probe possible gang rape of disabled woman.

Read & React Al Gore: Israel should lead the way in renewable energy Responses: 113 Olmert to U.S.: Impose naval blockade on Iran Responses: 170 Israel, Syria to begin indirect peace talks Responses: 120 Akiva Eldar: If Israel wants peace, it must bolster Fatah Responses: 70 Opinion: The demise of the European left Responses: 70 Rosner's Domain 5 questions: Does Israel need rescue? Goldberg vs. Boot. I'm going to stay neutral! Rosner's Guests: Israel not likely to invade Gaza soon Poll: Meeting the president of Iran - good or bad? Can Obama win over Jewish voters? (WTR) More Headlines 17:14 Israel and Syria officially confirm indirect talks 17:08 Shas: Syria still in axis of evil; Labor MK: Olmert using spin to deflect from probe 17:07 ANALYSIS / Small piece of land could scupper Israel-Syria talks 18:33 Hamas: Israel-Syria talks won't affect our 'strategic' ties with Damascus 18:31 Microsoft CEO, in Herzliya: Our company almost as Israeli as American 18:09 Talansky offers $1.3m J'lem flat as guarantee of testimony 13:15 Iran detains seven Baha'i leaders, citing 'Zionist' ties 15:45 Palestinian official: Israel, Hamas still at odds over truce terms 11:51 Warring Lebanese leaders seal deal to end 18-month crisis 15:48 In countdown to Champions League final, Avram Grant faces the test of his life 14:47 Gazans fear for their health as they turn to cooking oil to power cars 15:24 IDF soldier lightly hurt when mortar explodes on Negev base 11:50 Hungarian-born Australian denies Holocaust war crimes Previous Editions Select Day 20 may 19 may 18 may 16 may 15 may 14 may 13 may 12 may 11 may 09 may 08 may 07 may

Special Offers Advertisement Dead Sea Products Buy Dead Sea mineral skin care and beauty products. Coupon code Haaretz for 10% off. Istudy Learn Hebrew in 3 months The Terraces Your Ultimate Coastal Address On Nitza Boulevard, North Netanya Together Celebrating Israel's 60th The Jewish Agency and You - together making history Pardes Institute Summer Sessions http://www.pardes.org.il/ Free the Palestinians from: Corrupt Kleptocracy, Tyrannical Theocracy, Abysmal Anarchy Fattal Hotel Chain Perfectly located hotels on best resorts of Israel. ISRAEL BONDS Build Israel Israel bonds - a multi-purpose way to celebrate Israel's 60th Eldan Rent a Car Israel's leading car rental company offers you a 20% discount on all online reservations Junkyard Junk a car - get free towing nationwide and a tax-deductible receipt

Home | TV | Print Edition | Diplomacy | Opinion | Arts & Leisure | Sports | Jewish World | Underground | Site rules |

Real Estate in Israel

Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.

© Copyright  Haaretz. All rights reserved