By Cynthia Kaplan Shamash
ISBN-10: 1611688051
ISBN-13: 9781611688054
This riveting and totally distinctive memoir chronicles the arriving of age of Cynthia Shamash, an Iraqi Jew born in Baghdad in 1963. whilst she was once 8, her kin attempted to flee Iraq over the Iranian border, yet they have been captured and jailed for 5 weeks. Upon liberate, they have been lower back to their domestic in Baghdad, the place such a lot in their property were confiscated and the door in their domestic sealed with wax. They moved in with associates and utilized for passports to spend a ten-day holiday in Istanbul, even if they by no means meant to come.
From Turkey, the kinfolk fled to Tel Aviv after which to Amsterdam, the place Cynthia’s father quickly died of a middle assault. on the age of twelve, Sanuti (as her mom referred to as her) used to be despatched to London for education, the place she lived in an Orthodox Jewish enclave with the manager rabbi and his relations. on the finish of the varsity yr, she again to Holland to navigate her teenager years in a tradition that used to be even more sexually liberal than the only she were born into, or certainly the single she used to be experiencing between Orthodox Jews in London. almost immediately after completing her education as a dentist, Cynthia moved to the us in an try and commence over.
This brilliant, attractive, and intensely humorous memoir will entice readers intrigued via spirituality, tolerance, the non-public ramifications of statelessness and exile, the clashes of cultures, and the way forward for Iraq and its Jews.
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Extra info for The Strangers We Became: Lessons in Exile from One of Iraq’s Last Jews
Sample text
Mama called a Jewish doctor friend who recommended that our father see a cardiologist, who in turn produced an ekg and diagnosed a minor heart attack. ” Meanwhile, the Iraqi air grew thicker. Jews were led into Qasr al Nihaya to be tortured in the ludicrously named Palace of the End. As I grew up, my parents would listen to the fuzzy broadcasts of a tiny transistor radio tuned to Ibn el Rafeedeyn, an Arabic-speaking man broadcast by an Israeli station. Surrounded by my siblings, I listened, too— to static and a blur of words that I nevertheless felt I understood clearly, owing to my parents’ reactions.
What made the rest of us eligible, but not our father? Or was it a trick: the authorities knew we wouldn’t go anywhere without him, so in effect, the rest of us remained ineligible, too? There was no way for us to know. It was as if toddlers had given us their lollipops— whether and when they might demand them back we could not be sure. Nor would we ever learn exactly why, two weeks later, my father’s name appeared on the list. Why then? Why at all? My father’s passport photo disturbed me. His face, with its high cheekbones partially shaded by his dark-framed glasses, looked to me lopsided, worrisome.
In other words: Yeah. A girl. But it could have been worse. G Instead of a traditional Hebrew name— silent or otherwise —I was given a British name, Cynthia, by which my family never called me; my mother still refuses to use it today. Her preference is for Sanuti, the nickname that our laundress Romana used to incorporate into a little rhyming song that she sang while washing and hanging our clothes. . . I, of course, was too young to do any ironing, but the words reminded her what came next.
The Strangers We Became: Lessons in Exile from One of Iraq’s Last Jews by Cynthia Kaplan Shamash
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