Farewell, Babylon: Coming of Age in Jewish Baghdad

Laila Abdalla is an associate professor of English at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, and former professor at McGill University.

In this memoir, Naim Kattan attempts to blend personal anecdotes with
descriptions of a rich and complex heritage. Iraq is like many Arab
countries—seemingly homogenous in its majority population of Arab
Muslims, yet complex not only in ethnicities and religions, but also
within them. Geography, tradition, and sects contribute to making Arab
culture a variegated tapestry, and Kattan seeks to re-weave this
tapestry through the loom of his private experience.

He is only partly successful. His accounts do reveal the cultural
multiplicity of Baghdad, but they are all too often bogged down in
indulgent prose: “Our relationships with the group were steeped in
quietude … A few darts fluttered across this limpid horizon now and
then, bringing us back to order. We rejected their stigmata and soon
ignored our wounds.” These not infrequent elaborations mostly detail
the indispensable yet underappreciated presence of Jews in Baghdad.
Unlike Fridays, the Muslim official day of rest, Jewish holy days
virtually cripple the city. While the Muslim doctor is charitably
willing to minister to the Jewish child’s dislocated arm, it is
painful and shameful for the boy to witness his father dress and speak
in a way that denies Jewishness to have access to said doctor. The
Muslims feel “more Iraqi than others” because of their language, yet
the “best students in Arabic in the final examinations were Jews, and
the Alliance Israelite school produced the best Arab grammarians.” The
repetitive nature of these observations becomes tedious. Most
disappointingly, this memoir denies us the expected pleasure of spying
into someone else’s life; the few anecdotes that are provided are
short and lacking in detail and intimacy.

Without a doubt, Kattan’s story is worth telling. Sadly, Farewell,
Babylon tells only a part of it.