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"Memories of Eden" evokes a bygone era - when pre-WW2 Baghdad was
one-third Jewish and interfaith relations were harmonious. When
Violette was born, Mesopotamia had been Ottoman for some 600 years,
until redrawn as Iraq by the British when Violette was eight years
old. This bittersweet memoir tells of a childhood spent in the city
of Caliphs, Scheherazade and the land of the Garden of Eden, of
traditions passed down over the generations, and captures vividly
the elusive quality of a scene totally at odds with our image of
today's Iraq. As a privileged young woman growing up with her
extended family in the city of The Thousand and One Nights,
Violette re-lives the excitement of a vibrant society coming to
terms with daily life, first under Ottoman, then British, and
finally, pro-Nazi rule, which ended in disaster for the Jews of
Iraq, who were brutally attacked in two days of slaughter in May
1941 while British troops stood by, under orders not to
intervene.The pogrom, which sounded the death-knell for the oldest
community in the Diaspora, has been sidelined in history. Now, in a
final section in the memoir, the editors reveal the steps that led
to the catastrophe and the British bungling that brought it about.
Like Anne Frank's diary, "Memories of Eden" tells of an easy and
happy childhood, of growing maturity and sophistication, and then
shrinking circumstances, victimisation and, finally, flight.
A story inspired by true events. Nicky, a pushy young radio
presenter with a dark past, lands her first big job on a struggling
provincial radio station in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Marc, a
world-weary advertising man, takes pity when no-one responds to her
pleas for listeners to text her show. He falls for her and invents
a whole cast of characters, a total of 18, and assigns a
second-hand mobile to each. The station's fortunes change
dramatically as a result of all the messages they receive from
these individuals, not having a clue that they are fictitious. Marc
and Nicky, whose ambition has driven her from executive bed to bed,
finally make out - but his texts have been so convincing she's
fallen for one of his characters! Nicky then discovers Marc's
deception, and flees. Mortified, Marc is shocked to find how she
has been deceiving him all along. Finally he is rescued by one of
her broadcasting colleagues. They fall in love, marry, settle
down...and Nicky, meanwhile, lands the job of her dreams.
According to legend, the Garden of Eden was located in Iraq, and
for millennia, Jews resided peacefully in metropolitan Baghdad.
Memories of Eden: A Journey Through Jewish Baghdad reconstructs the
last years of the oldest Jewish Diaspora community in the world
through the recollections of Violette Shamash, a Jewish woman who
was born in Baghdad in 1912, sent to her daughter Mira Rocca and
son-in-law, the British journalist Tony Rocca. The result is a
deeply textured memoir-an intimate portrait of an individual life,
yet revealing of the complex dynamics of the Middle East in the
twentieth century. Toward the end of her long life, Violette
Shamash began writing letters, notes, and essays and sending them
to the Roccas. The resulting book begins near the end of Ottoman
rule and runs through the British Mandate, the emergence of an
independent Iraq, 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 transformation of attitudes toward
Baghdad's Jewish population. Shamash's world is finally shattered
by the Farhud, the name given to the massacre of hundreds of Iraqi
Jews over three days in 1941. An event that has received very
slight historical coverage, the Farhud is further described and
placed in context in a concluding essay by Tony Rocca.
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