Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, 1998 (14) 3 pp. 45-60 45

The Immigration of Iraqi Jewry to Israel as Reflected in Literature

Moshe GAT

Anything used by a historian is a historical document. Historians, however, have the means to determine to what extent it depicts historical fact. Were we to imagine for a moment that there were no historical material available about the history of the Jewish community in Iraq in the first half of the twentieth century, we could derive much information from the novels of Eli Amir (1937- ), Sami Michael (1926- ) and Shimon Ballas (1928- ) about the life and leaders of the community, about its economic development, and about the circumstances which prompted the Jews to leave Iraq. Amir's Farewell, Baghdad, for example, is an historical novel, in which the events of the 1940s and following years play an important part.

Such writing is not unique to these novelists. Turning to world literature, we would find it impossible to understand nineteenth century Russia without reading the works of Gogol, Dostoyevski, Turgenev, Goncharov and others. These writers describe the life of the serfs, of the bureaucracy, of the aristocracy, of the revolutionaries and of society in general. Similarly, if we wish to understand the life of the farmers in Fascist Italy and to gain insight into the fundamental nature of this regime, we may turn to such books as Bread and Wine, Fontamara and The School for Dictators by Ignazio Silone. In order to understand the status of the Israeli Arabs, we would read A.B. Yehoshua's The Lover or Sami Michael's A Trumpet in the Wadi.

The importance of the novel lies in its expression of human consciousness, reflecting the concepts, feelings, thoughts, and spiritual life of the generation. The writer can recreate for the reader a living, vibrant society which has been obliterated — with its neighborhoods, places, markets and smells — enabling us to share his experiences, traumas and unhealed wounds. Here we must ask: Do the novels which