Samir Naqqash, Translated from the Arabic by Sadok Masliyah
TENANTS AND COBWEBS
Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2018, ISBN-13: 978-0815611080
A Review in Historical Perspective
Reviewed by Nimrod Raphaeli1
The mass Babylonian Jewish immigration to Israel in 1950-51 included several gifted writers, novelists and poets, who had already established themselves in their native language, Arabic. Most of these writers endeavored to master the language of their adopted country and, for example, novelists such as Sami Michael, Shimon Balatz, and Eli Emir were soon producing works in Hebrew. Ironically, it was someone who immigrated as a boy, a thirteen-year-old, aspiring writer named Samir Naqqash, who, in his writing life, remained committed to the language of his Iraqi heritage.
While many if not most immigrants who arrived in Israel as children ultimately forgot their spoken Arabic, Naqqash broadened and deepened his command of the language, most importantly of the vernacular Arabic that was spoken by the Baghdadis and the Judeo-Arabic spoken by the Jews of Babylonia. His mastery of Arabic and its various dialects is particularly remarkable given that his exposure to them were limited. He would have had some experience with Judeo-Arabic speaking with family and also while staying at the maabara, the transit camps where all Iraqi immigrants were placed during their first few years in Israel. He would have had to dig much further into memory for Baghdadi Arabic since he was never able to return to his place of birth. Spoken language, of course, is dynamic and mutative. One of the qualities that some contemporary Arab Iraqi writers have particularly enjoyed about his work is that the characters in Naqqash’s fiction speak the Arabic of the 1940s-1950s. Rashid al-Khayoun, in particular, has commented that Baghdadi language has changed so much over the decades that a contemporary reader must resort to dictionaries while reading Naqqash’s “pure Baghdadi dialect.”2
Tenants and Cobwebs was first published in Israel in 1986 by the Association of Jewish Academics from Iraq. The English version under review was published in 2018. The novel is set during the most dramatic decade in the life of Iraqi Jews starting in the Farhud in 1941 and ending with the immigration of as many 100,000 to Israel. Developing its story with a sometimes difficult-to-follow mix of dialogue and internal monologue, the novel looks at life through the eyes of thirty characters, eighteen Jews and twelve Muslims, who dwell in an apartment building in a small working-class neighborhood in Baghdad. In this mixed community, the Jews and Muslims seem initially to live in reasonable harmony, conversing freely with each other, almost like an extended family. As the novel progresses, however, the reader is made to feel the uncertainties the changing environment introduces into the lives of Jewish characters as, like those of us who lived through the decade, they swing back and forth from the deepest of depression, fear and anxiety to high expectations of geulah (salvation) and a new beginning in the Promised Land.
The Farhud, a dreadful and unmitigated assault on the Jews of Baghdad in June, 1941, was encouraged by the German ambassador to Baghdad, Fritz Grobba, and the notorious mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Unruly mobs, including soldiers and policemen, attacked Jewish homes, killing 190 and injuring more than a thousand Jews. Many women were raped and Jewish businesses were looted. The British army was in the outskirts of Baghdad waiting for orders to enter the city and restore the royal family expelled earlier in the year by a pro-Nazi military coup, but refused to intervene while the assault on the Jews was carried out. One character in the novel describes the situation as “a British dish seasoned with Nazi spices of chaos.” He describes how, when the Jews were attacked by the mob, “[i]t rained shit and piss on God’s worshippers.” Then, later, he goes on to say, it rained “pearls, emeralds, and other precious stones, because the turmoil of World War II passed away after leaving hundreds of victims” (23).
Indeed, Jewish businesses were flourishing and most Iraqi Jews felt a sense of security. It was soon to turn into fragile if not false security once the partition of Palestine was approved by the United Nations in 1947. A new wave of Iraqi nationalism, mingled with anti-Jewish government-sponsored measures, made life utterly uncomfortable and often unbearable for the Jewish community. As Naqqash observed, during that decade, a lot of young Iraqi Jewish youth were either Zionists or communists, both illegal at the time.
The dialogue between the neighbors portrayed in Naqqash’s book dwells on common social concerns, such as marriages and health issues, as well as lots of gossip. Young girls were maturing and ready to become brides; in the absence of dating, matchmakers were kept busy and were the subject of conversation. Marriage for a young man was a constant topic of discussion because, in Naqqash’s words, “a man is not a man until he is married.” But social status was a key factor in any match. One girl recalls her father warning her against pursuing a young man in the neighborhood: “It is unworkable for you to marry him,” he cautioned, any more than “a palm tree could sprout from your head” (29). Children in the neighborhood were special, Naqqash lamented, “since want and deprivation molded them. They had no fun, no movies and no happiness.”
Medicine often took the form of sorcery. When Aziz, a Jewish boy who fell in love with a nightclub dancer, dropped out of school and acted belligerently toward his mother, a neighbor counsels, “Surely, he’s bewitched . . . . Pour a little urine and smear it over him.” Later, the neighbor returns with a bowl of urine and instructs the mother, “Rub on his hands and legs. It would be best if you have him drink some” (180). Charms were also commonly provided as a remedy for an ailment or to dispel the evil eye. Modern medicine was either not available or not affordable in these poor quarters of Baghdad.
With the creation of the State of Israel, Jews in Iraq were viewed as spies. The government issued a host of decrees terminating their employment by its offices, freezing bank accounts, limiting real estate and trading activities, and generally engaging in arbitrary arrests of Jews. But nothing was as a dramatic in the life of the Iraqi Jews as an event which Naqqash touches on only briefly in his novel -- the September 1948 hanging of Shafiq Adas, a wealthy businessman, for allegedly selling weapons to the Zionists. In fact, Adas had two Muslim partners who jointly sold British army metal scrap to Italy; however, not only were they not prosecuted, they were not even mentioned during the trial or in the press. The military tribunal that tried Adas moved rapidly to condemn an innocent man to death by hanging, a sentence carried out without the right of appeal. The body remained twisting on the gallows for hours as a large enthusiastic crowd celebrated. These events took place in my native city, Basra, and I can never forget the panic that engulfed us and kept us hiding in our homes for fear that the celebrating mob would turn against us. Martial law was declared in the country and heavy restrictions were imposed on the Jewish community. It was clear that Jews were no longer welcome in the country of their forefathers. In less than three years, the vast majority of the Iraqi Jews were living in transit camps in the new Jewish state.3
The novel dwells at length on the conflicting emotions of many Iraqi Jews during this period and how once close friendships between Jews and Arabs could sour and turn hostile. When ‘Alwan, a coffee shop owner, is collecting money to save Palestine and says, protectively, of his friend Ya’acoub
“He doesn’t behave like a Jew”
Ya’acoub thinks, “But I am a Jew, ‘Alwan, my friend for life.” And he thinks, “I may be a Jew, but I am not a traitor. How could I betray a homeland containing soil holding the remains of my father and forefathers? This land is made of us, ‘Alwan. We lived in it before you were born. When you were sperm, we had already completed compiling our Talmud, our Jewish law. I was here before you, twelve centuries before you” (197).
Later, when most Iraqi Jews, feeling they have no future in the land of their fathers, choose to leave the country, ‘Alwan accuses his boyhood friend Ya’acoub:
“What did I tell you? Did I not say you were all traitors and bastards? . . . All of them are leaving the country. They appreciated nothing. Now you leave! Go fly with them fool, one way and no return” (346).
‘Alwan’s words to Ya’acoub reflected the provision of a law that deprived the Jews of their nationality as a precondition for their organized flight to Israel. Like all of us Babylonian Jews who left Iraq in the years 1950-51, Naqqash was no doubt provided by the government a laissez passer with this categorical written statement,
“Usqitat ‘anhu aljinsiya
aliraqqiah walan yusmah lahu alduckul ila Iraq mutlaqan”
“His nationality has been forfeited and [he] will never be allowed to
enter Iraq.”
Naqqash was never able to reconcile between the lost land, Iraq, and the promised land, Israel. Writing solely in Arabic, he remained marginalized and poor in Israel. He tried to find solace in other countries like India and Britain. He once even crossed the border to Lebanon illegally and ended up in prison for a few months. He dreamed of Baghdad but was never able to fulfill his dream. For him, Zionism represented his tragic separation from his beloved Baghdad, his guaranteed heaven. When asked about the difference between Zionism and Judaism, Naqqash responded: “Zionism is a political movement, Western and atheistic, but Judaism is values. It is religion. It is universal.”4 It is not surprising that he never attempted any literary work in Hebrew. For him, it seems, Hebrew was an expression of Zionism; it was in Arabic that his own Jewish culture and tradition lived.
In his translation of Tenants and Cobwebs, Sadok Masliyah does an excellent job of keeping the feeling of the original alive for his English readers. What cannot really come through in an English translation, even an excellent one, is that while Jews and Muslims spoke Baghdadi Arabic when they conversed together, the Jewish characters spoke a different dialect among themselves. This difference was true in all interactions between Iraqi Jews and Iraqi Muslims regardless of class and level of education. Today, the Judeo-Arabic dialect is dying, if it is not already dead; in a few years, there will be hardly anyone remaining to speak it.
1 Nimrod Raphaeli is Senior Analyst Emeritus at MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute.
2 See http://www.akhbarak.net/news/2015/02/09/5867777/articles/17690977, in Arabic.
3 The novel by Eli Amir, The Dove Flyer, Halban Publishers, 2010, describes the exiting of Jews from Iraq.
4 Abdul Jabbar al Atabi "Naqsh Iraqi fi-althakira," in Arabic.