Iraqi JewsIraqi Judaism lives on in literary form
Until around 70 years ago, Iraq was home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. As well as perpetuating their centuries-old traditions, these secular and civic-minded Jews of the modern age also strived for integration into Iraqi society. Their efforts were particularly successful in the 1920s, after Iraq became a British mandate under the Hashemite King Faisal I. and Jews were allowed to occupy posts in politics and administration.
But then Faisal died prematurely in 1933 shortly after Iraq gained independence. During the reign of his son and successor to the throne Ghazi I., the nation was destabilised long-term, and not only by ultranationalists and the members of the military. It also fell under the influence of Nazi Germany, which spelt a dramatic worsening of the situation for the Jewish population of Iraq.
Mass exodus
Iraq's persecution of the Jews reached new levels following the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948. The government passed a de-naturalisation law permitting them to emigrate on the condition that they renounced their citizenship and all their possessions. Almost all of the some 120,000 Jews living in Iraq left the country – most of them headed for Israel.
There, where for a long time the European-influenced Jewish elite was the dominant group, there was little interest for decades in the history and culture of the Jews who had come from Iraq. It wasn't until the 1990s, with the publication of novels by Iraqi-born writers such as Sami Michael and Eli Amir that people began to sit up and take notice.
Interest continued to grow after the turn of the millennium. A number of representatives of the Iraqi immigrant community published their memoirs – more than 50 Hebrew and English-language books on the history and culture of Iraqi Jews have been published in the last five years alone; these have been joined by an increasing number of publications in Iraq.
When the literary debut of Iraqi-heritage Israeli writer Tsionit Fattal Kuperwasser was translated into Arabic in 2017 by the Baghdad publishing house "Mesopotamia", it caused a sensation in both Israel and Iraq.
The novel "The Pictures on the Wall", published in Israel in 2015, also constituted a novelty because its creator, an Orientalist and lieutenant colonel in the Israeli Army, wasn't born in Iraq, but in Israel in 1964.
Novel hits a nerve
Just as in Israel, an increasing number of intellectuals are now interested in the lost Iraqi-Jewish world in Iraq, a country where few Jews live nowadays. The interest is focussed in particular on the inter-war era, that epoch of optimism and pluralism regarded by some Iraqis today with a blend of nostalgia and fascination.
In this respect, the novel "The Pictures on the Wall" appears to have hit a nerve here by affording readers an insight into the isolated living environment in one of the poorer Jewish quarters of Baghdad in the first half of the past century.
The novel's heroine Nuria lives there in a large multi-generational family, whose members are constantly observing and controlling one another. Intermarriage has always been the rule, but Nuria defies this custom when she falls in love with the young Adwar, who saves her from being raped by a group of Muslim thugs on the periphery of the Jewish quarter and whom she eventually marries. This leads to conflict with the powerful aunt Hadiwa, whose son Nuria had been promised to.
Up to that point, Nuria had been Hadiwa's favourite niece. The aunt had instructed the girl in the magical healing practices for which she was well paid and Nuria turns this to her own advantage, now earning her own money. This means she is in a position to curb the influence of her increasingly devout husband on the elder two of their three sons at least. But she can only partially protect the sons from the machinations of the extended family.
