Book Review: The Wolf of Baghdad by Carol Isaacs

´Even if we could go back to Iraq, it would be as Jewish ghosts´.

For 2,600 years, Jews lived continously in the territory defined as Mesopotamia, a region encompassed between Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They lived together with the other religions and cultures, although life was not always easy and violent outbursts were frequent. Prophet Ezekiel´s tomb is located there, However, everything changed dramatically in the 1940s, when Jews in Iraq were hit by the Farhood - pogrom, in Arabic. The main contribution for this change of heart towards Jews is attributed to the growing influence in the region of the infamous Mufti Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, one of the biggest Nazi supporter in the Middle East. Nowadays, there are only a few Jews living in Iraq, from around 147,000 at the end of the 1940s. 

I had the priviledge to meet and talk with Jews born in Iraq - in Baghdad or Mosul - and I cannot forget the nostalgy of their voice when sharing their childhood memories from places that are no more. Through their stories they transmitted the love for Iraq to their children and grandchildren, some of them feeling the homesickness for the country that they never seen. 

The Wolf of Baghdad by Carol Isaacs - known also as The Surreal McCoy - is, as according to the undertitle, the Memoir of a Lost Homeland. Based on various accounts of the life in Baghdad, where Jews represented around 1/3 of the population before moving - being forced to move - out of the country, some in Israel some in London, Australia, Singapore, Ireland, Canada or America. The ethnography of Iraqi exiles does not have necessarily a religion, but it cries with the same tears of sadness. Through those stories, the Baghdad or the Mosul takes shape moulded by dreams and memories and memories of the memories shared. This is how The Wolf of Baghdad was written and illustrated. 

The wolf enters in the story as a protector from demons, according to the local superstitions, spread around the entire Middle Eastern region. Amulets made of wolf teeth used to be kept near the baby cribs to protect them from the evil eye and other bad occurences. It seemed that in Baghdad, the evil was too powerful to be beaten by the wolf. 

The story unfolds almost like a ghost story, with a fast-forward overview of the everyday life changes the Jews in Iraq experienced in the 1940s. Sooner, the images populated with voices and children playing or watching from the top of the roofs are replaced by shattered glasses and keys of houses that were long destroyed by hate. 

There is hardly anything that cannot be convened in the form of the graphic novel. The Wolf...is beautifully convening through the drawings and the texts - very sparse, actually - decades of heartbreaking homesickness. The images summon the present and the past, in a dream-like graphic conception. The story it is based on the author´s personal experience. Born in London, she witnessed the traditions and the stories of other Iraqi - not all of them Jews - hosted by her parents. The memories, tastes and fragments of stories, were turned into a song-like story of love for a country that once was. The book is sometimes presented also as a slideshow, with its own musical soundtrack, often performed live by an ense,ble playing music of Iraqi and Judeo-Arabic origin. In this setting, the author herself plays the accordion.

When the Temple was destroyed, the rituals and memories were internalized. What was left from the Temple was the learning and the rituals applied in the home. For the Jewish communities dispersed in the Middle East after the destruction of the Temple(s), being forced to live their homes after thousands of years created another dramatic memory rift. The keys from the houses soon to be destroyed epitomized the longing for a home where they can never come back. Stories and the images are small fragments of the shattered glasses they carry with, in their hearts and minds. Their children can only dream about the dreams of their parents.

As for now, writing and keeping the memory is all that´s left. It can mean a lot though for preparing for those times when hopefully, a return will be possible. The Wolf of Baghdad is one of the many stones against forgetfulness. 

Rating: 4 stars

Memories from the Baghdad that Once Was

How I wish I can see Baghdad through the eyes of the Jews that were forced to left. All the Iraqi Jews I´ve had the chance to meet that were born there kept nostalgia for this place in their hearts and minds.

The Dove Flyer by Eli Amir - himself born in Baghdad, nowadays living in the Gilo neighbourhood of Jerusalem - is a multi-layered story documenting the last years of the world oldest Jewish community between the terrible Farhood and the forced expulsion in 1950. There are wellknown documented facts unfortunatelly rarely mentioned in the big media. 

Told by Kabi who is a young teenager going himself through his coming of age story it features perfectly the diversity of voices within the community: the communist, the rabbi, the pro- and anti-Zionist etc. All of them are living though in a state of fear and ambiguity, not sure about what will happen next or if it is worth waiting to see. Moving to Israel - which may not be the country of milk and honey from the holy books - is for some an existential choice: Where else to go, but after all, why stay in the middle of an hostile world. But for most of them, their homeland will remain Iraq and if /when they are forced to leave, they will rarely accuse the entire society. Indeed, some of them were bad and indoctrinated, but the rest of the people, their neighbours, were those good people they helped during Shabbat or they break bread with during the rest of the week.

Besides the historical facts which serve as a context for the story, The Dove Flyer has interesting lively characters with a life of their own and a story to tell. There are love stories and bold characters keen to risk their lives for love, no matter what religion is involved. 

Amir´s novels, included in the school curricula in Israel, are both testimonies of the Iraqi Jews odissey and historical stories about a minority that suffered a lot both in diaspora and in the country. The Dove Flyer was turned also into a movie, Farewell to Baghdad.
Hopefully, I will write more in the next days and weeks about stories of Jews from Iraq, my modest contribution to all the good people from Iraq I had the chance to meet in the last years.

The Farhood - History of Iraqi Jews