On the last Jews in Iraq and Iraqi national identity: a look at two recent Iraqi novels

After 2003, Iraqi literature, particularly the novel, rediscovered the now extinct Jewish community in Iraq. The Jews were the first major community in Iraq to be completely erased. Writing about the Jews served to underline the pluralism of Iraqi society in the past and to admonish against a similar fate awaiting other small communities in Iraq today. This article will focus on two recent Iraqi novels, written by two of Iraq’s prominent novelists, in which Jews are at the centre of the narratives: ‘Ali Badr’s “Haris al-Tabagh” (The Guardian of the Tobacco Shop), 2008 and Khdair al-Zaydi’s “Atlas ‘Azran al-Baghdadi” (‘Azran al-Baghdadi’s Atlas), 2015a. These are not only ordinary Jews, they are the last Jews of Iraq and Baghdad. As such, I will argue, they are doomed by the writers to serve as symbols for something exceeding their lives (and deaths) as individuals or Jews. The novels thus are more about Iraqi national identity after 2003 than about the last Jews. By choosing “the last of the Jews” as a protagonist the authors signal a pessimistic end to the illusion of sustaining a version of a pluralistic and accommodating Iraqi national identity.