'What Has Been Written Upon the Forehead, the Eye Must See': An Arabic-Jewish Author Between Baghdad and an Israeli Transit Camp

Abstract

As an integral part of Arab society since the pre-Islamic period, Jews participated in the making of Arabic literature. We know of prominent Jewish poets such as al-Samawʾal ibn ʿᾹdiyāʾ in the sixth century A.D. and Ibrāhīm ibn Sahl in al-Andalus in the thirteenth century. During the first half of the twentieth century, Arabic literature in fuṣḥā (standard Arabic) written by Jews witnessed a great revival, especially in Iraq and Egypt, but this revival was cut short as a casualty of Zionism and Arab nationalism and the conflict between them. We are currently witnessing the demise of Arabic literature written by Jews; the Arabic language among Jews will probably remain mostly a tool of the military establishment and the intelligence systems as encapsulated in the dictum 'know your enemy' instead of being a medium for coexistence and knowing the Other. The article concentrates on the literary activities of one of the most talented Iraqi-Jewish authors, Shalom Darwīsh (1913-1997), whose promising anticipated literary future in Arabic literature encountered a deadlock following the aforementioned exclusion of Jews from 'Arabness'.