Memories of Eden: A Journey Through Jewish Baghdad »

"A fascinating and important book."---Sir Martin Gilbert" "An inside look at an inside look at the last decades of Jewish daily life in Baghdad, Memories of Eden records the forgotten details and preserves the sights and smells, joys and anxieties, of those final pivotal years."---Edwin Black. New York Times Best-Selling Author of Banking on Baghdad and IBM and The Holocaust" "Memories of Eden is a superb account of a long forgotten time---indeed a time which is barely imaginable now, given the hatreds that currently exist in the Middle East. Until World War II, Jews and Muslims lived side by side. Shamash writes: áWe were treated as equals and accepted on our own merit until the poison of Nazism and Arab nationalism entered the bloodstream. The evil spread like a bad, contagious disease.' It still does so."---William Shawcross, Author of Allies: The U.S., Britain, and Europe in the Aftermath of the Iraq War" "One cannot help but feel the parallels with Iraq's current strife---as Violette grows to womanhood amid a vanishing past, her very survival reminds us of Iraq's repeated scattering of history, neighborhoods, and people."---Heather Raffo. Author and Actress of Heather Raffo's 9 Parts of Desire" "According to legend, the Garden of Eden was located in Mesopotamia, today's Iraq, and for millennia Jews resided peacefully there. Memories of Eden: A Journey Through Jewish Baghdad reconstructs the final years of the oldest Jewish community in the world, using the letters and other writings that Violette Shamash (1912-2006) sent to her daughter Mira Rocca and son-in-law, the British journalist Tony Rocca, over a period of twenty years. Collected and edited by the Roccas, the writings compose a deeply textured memoir---personal, yet revealing of the complex dynamics of the Middle East." Shamash creates an exquisitely detailed portrait of life in the City of Caliphs, beginning near the end of Ottoman rule in 1917 and running through the British Mandate, the emergence of an independent Iraq in 1932, and the start of dictatorial government. Shamash clearly loved the world in which she grew up but is altogether honest in her depiction of the problems facing Baghdad's diverse population. That world was shattered by the Farhud, a brutal massacre of hundreds of Iraqi Jews over two days in 1941, which Shamash witnessed firsthand. An event that has received very slight historical coverage, the Farhud is further described and placed in context by Tony Rocca in his afterword.

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Author's Note

A Note About Language

Memories of Eden

The Palace 3

Childhood 25

The Shebbath 39

Iraq 49

Changes 55

High Holy Days 85

Qahwat Moshi 101

Love and Marriage 123

The 1930s 139

Revolution 155

Curfew 169

Farhud 177

First Flight 191

Last Flight 195

Postscript: January 2006 203

Epilogue 207

Afterword

Inside Story: Behind the Farhud 215

Appendixes

Time Line 268

The Ishayek Dynasty 269

Acknowledgments 271

Glossary 275

Bibliography 285

Index 287