Farewell Baghdad

This is a fairly straightforward, authentic-looking story about how the Jewish community of Iraq, having been part of the local society for two and a half millennia, was hustled out-- somewhere between expulsion and rescue-- after Iraq found itself on the losing side of Israel's War of Independence. (Iraq has no border with Israel, but sent troops anyway.) The story is shown through the eyes of a boy who sees previously hidden political activism and attitudes among his family and friends come to light, for better or worse, as the crisis develops and he is forced to take on adult responsibilities. Daniel Gad, as the boy, is too old-- or at least too big-- for the part. We're forced to mentally subtract a few years from his appearance. The period scenery, on the other hand, looks good except that there can be no very broad outdoor photography because there is too much modernity in contemporary Israel where the shooting took place. The film is almost entirely in Arabic; among the audience, those who know the language took delight in some salty and picturesque phrases that were lost in translation. Based on a novel and evidently filmed with the novelist's cooperation (he has a cameo), the film seems to take care to touch on several different angles within the political and social scene-- friendships between Jews and Muslims, the communist movement that was active during the same period, the assimilationist option extending even to conversion, the Zionist movement, the arrival of Arab refugees from Palestine, and the cultural influence of the West. For those unfamiliar with the experience of Jews in the world of Islam, it's an interesting picture and it suggests an important added perspective on today's tensions.

Farewell Baghdad (2013) (The Dove Flyer) was written and directed by Nissim Dayan. This movie portrays a chapter in Jewish history about which I had no knowledge.

The Jewish community in Baghdad had existed for more than 2,000 years. In 1950 and 1951, all the Jews in Baghdad were forced to leave. Hundreds of thousands of Jews left for Israel. They didn't want to leave their home, and many of them simply couldn't believe they would be forced to leave Baghdad. They believed they were an essential part of Iraqi society, and they probably were. Nonetheless, they did leave. The volunteer who introduced the film said, "Today there are no Jews in Iraq."

Daniel Gad stars as Kabi, a 16-year-old boy who has no concept of revolution, Zionism, or Communism, until he is confronted by all of these. Yasmin Ayun plays the beautiful Rachel, the young wife of Kabi's uncle. Tawfeek Barhom plays Adnan, Kabi's friend. (We had already seen Barhom in his starring role in "A Borrowed Identity," which I reviewed recently for IMDb.)

Anti-Semitism was a driving force in the expulsion of the Jews from Baghdad. However, some Jews were Communist revolutionaries, and some Jews were Zionists. As far as I could tell, the Zionists just wanted to get other Jews safely out of Iraq. I wouldn't call them revolutionaries. However, it's possible that the Iraqi government didn't make these distinctions.

The problem I had with this film is that it wasn't always clear to me who was hiding the rifles, who was trying to arrange for Israeli planes to take the Jews to Israel, and who was being imprisoned and why. I'm sure that an Iraqi--Jewish or Muslim--would know the answers to these questions. I have to admit I wasn't always certain about what was happening.

Unfortunate as that was, I still enjoyed this film because I started with no knowledge of the history of Jews in Iraq. When the movie was over, I had both a sense of what happened, and a sense of the misery endured by the people who were forced to leave. The film was both very informative and very dramatic, and I'm glad I saw it.

We saw this movie in Rochester's Dryden Theatre, as part of the highly acclaimed Rochester International Jewish Film Festival. It will work well on the small screen.