FROM
JESSICA JIJI
AND
AVON A
Reading Group Guide
- Shafiq is born into a different religion from Omar’s, but as a boy he is barely aware of this fact, thinking only that the various pastries their mothers cook on holidays prove that “religious diversity is good for dessert.” How do his feelings change over time? Did you have any childhood friends with very different backgrounds—and if so, did your feelings evolve as you got older and became aware of society’s attitudes?
- Despite the imminence of war in Iraq, Shafiq and Kathmiya find a measure of peace in their early friendship; but after he hears Ezra’s warning, he stays away from her. Was Shafiq right to keep his distance from Kathmiya?
- During the riots, “The sound of the prayer competed with the banging of the men making weapons. Both disturbed Shafiq in equal measure.” Why?
- When Shafiq hears about the Muslims who helped Jews during the riots, even at their own personal risk, he thinks of the Kurds at his father’s warehouse. “These were people of faith, but it didn’t divide them, just made them stand for what was right.” What role does faith play in the novel? Do people of true faith by definition act to help others who are suffering?
- After Leah gives birth to a girl, she tells Kathmiya about expressions in her tradition meant to convey that it is better to have a boy. In what other ways does the society portrayed in the novel favor boys over girls? How do the girls cope in response?
- Ezra says to Shafiq, “You have to ask yourself, am I an Iraqi who happens to be Jewish? Or a Jew who happens to live in Iraq?” What does this mean? What does Shafiq decide?
- Trying to get information from her older sister about the three mysterious objects she finds, Kathmiya is exasperated to learn that Fatimah thinks she had a more difficult childhood. Do you sympathize with Fatimah’s point of view? In the long run, is Kathmiya better off for all of the suffering she endures?
- As Shafiq’s family deals with Marcelle’s estrangement and, later, Naji’s disappearance, his mother adheres more and more to traditional tribal practices. Why does she behave like this? Is it an appropriate way to cope with loss?
- When Naji decides to escape, Shafiq realizes that the danger comes not from any person but from Communism, “this outsized cause that had stolen his brother’s soul.” Is Naji’s idealism admirable or harmful? How does Shafiq deal with his brother’s fanaticism?
- Shafiq’s father, Roobain, lives by the philosophy that “in Iraq, neighbor leans on neighbor and friend on friend; these ties of intimacy were all that was meaningful. Without them, society’s fabric would be completely torn.” How do the characters in the novel forge ties by leaning on one another? Is this the best way to hold society together?
- Shafiq has memorized a statement by Iraq’s founding king: “There is no meaning in the words ‘Jews,’ ‘Muslims’ and ‘Christians’ in the terminology of patriotism. There is simply a country called Iraq, and all are Iraqis.” Was that true of the society where he lived? Is it true for Iraq today, or any other country?
- Jamila tells Kathmiya that Ali doesn’t accept her because she was spoiled by foreign missionaries when she was very young. Even though this is only part of the real story, is there any truth to the link between Kathmiya’s unusual upbringing and her rare outspokenness?
- Shafiq has two men who influence him to be patriotic. “Sayed Mustapha believed in his students, whatever their religion—believed in a pluralistic Iraq. Salim put this doctrine into practice, mingling freely with anyone interesting—to him that meant everyone. Both loved Iraq, and both had encouraged Shafiq’s future there.” But both are eventually silenced by the authorities. Does Shafiq lose his patriotism?
- When the old widow Nafisa tells Kathmiya to just accept her station in life, Kathmiya feels “endlessly grateful.” Why should she feel grateful to someone who is suggesting that she give up on a better future?
- When Shafiq tells Kathmiya he is going to America, she becomes angry, but he feels no sympathy for her, saying, “You act like you have no idea that you are brilliant and beautiful.” Is he showing her respect and compassion, or is he being callous and unsympathetic given the constraints she faces?
- Shafiq’s mother explains why the sapphire ring is so special: “it only becomes pink because it tries to be a ruby. It doesn’t succeed, but it doesn’t fail, either, because in the process it becomes even more rare and beautiful.” When he gives it to Kathmiya she feels understood for the first time in her life because “she may never have the rewards that society prized, but rather than becoming less worthy, she could be more rare, more precious, more beautiful.” Is Kathmiya like the ring? Is it magical, or does its story simply inspire her?
- Honor is a powerful concept throughout the novel. A girl is killed because she damaged the family’s honor. Shafiq gets into a fight over a man’s honor and has to go to court. When Jamila calls Shafiq a “man of honor” at the end of the novel, he can only think, “Honor. What they had all lived through in its name, what they had all nearly lost.” Is the emphasis on honor beneficial to the society, or harmful?
- When Salim’s friend helps Shafiq obtain an exit visa, he tells the officials to do it for his “nephew.” Shafiq calls Omar his “brother” and Salwa his “auntie.” Roobain calls Salwa his “sister,” telling her son, “We are not strangers, we are relatives.” What is the significance in their society of calling someone a relative? What does it say about them?
- When Shafiq hugs Omar good-bye before leaving for the United States, he thinks to himself, “Even America could not compete for this affection.” How is the significance of their friendship greater than the pull of adventure and success?
- When Shafiq says good-bye to Kathmiya, he tells her, “The world is changing. Someday all of us can live in peace, and I can come back to Iraq, to rejoin my family and return to you.” What makes him say this? What future can they have?
The Roots of the Vine
My first novel, Diamonds Take Forever, was based loosely on my own personal history of heartbreak and happily-ever-after. My husband jokes that it’s a documentary and acquaintances who read it often ask which parts are true.
Sweet Dates in Basra—so titled for Iraq’s most emblematic fruit, the tale of the romantic encounters between Shafiq and Kathmiya and the relatively idyllic years of cultural tolerance following independence—is loosely based on my father’s story.
Many elements are true. His brothers opened the first-ever movie theater in Old Basra, naming it the Roxy. My father drew inspiration from the poetry of Khalil Gibran. And while he never actually experienced romance as a teen, he was infatuated with a Marsh Arab maid whose skin was so pale she was suspected of having a European father.
But for all of the colorful experiences I have drawn on in creating this work of fiction, one stands above the others in its authenticity: the loving relationship between the Muslim and Jewish families at the heart of the book. My father had a Muslim best friend he referred to as “brother” because they both nursed at the same breast. They broke through the wall between their courtyards to share the water supply. When the Muslim father died, my grandfather paid the widow’s mortgage while her sons were in law school. And when her eldest became a judge, he used his connections to help secure the release of a family member—who, like the character fashioned after him in the novel, was a staunch nationalist arrested for Zionism—from prison.
The solidarity between these microcosmic Jewish and Muslim families endured through successive wars, changes in government and sanctions.
I am still moved to tears when I hear stories about this family I never met, and I wrote this novel in tribute to the Iraq that I was raised to revere. Unlike the war-drenched country portrayed on the news, it is a place of pleasure and adventure, richness and warmth, friendship and family.
My father continued his Iraqi traditions after moving to America. If we invite six people over, we cook for twelve. There are always seeds for birds in the backyard. Growing up, we had a wooden swing, hanging from ropes, in the middle of the living room. I received my own version of this Iraqi treasure as my wedding present. Family is so important to my father that when he fell in love with my mother and found out she already had two children, she became even more perfect in his eyes.
One tradition embodies many of these Iraqi ways: our annual grape harvest, when we make wine from the grapevine that my father cultivated up the side of his Manhattan home and onto its roof.
Back in Basra, he had also coaxed a vine to the roof, but it didn’t bear fruit. Still, my grandfather bought red grapes, crushed them manually, and put them in a large barrel, where they would ferment, yielding around fifty bottles each year for the family.
The Manhattan vine didn’t bear fruit for seven years, but then, slowly, little bunches of grapes started appearing. It was nurtured with such love that by now we get hundreds of pounds every year—and over a hundred bottles of wine, up from nine the first time we made it.
In many ways, the process bears no resemblance to the primitive winemaking of my grandfather’s day. Where in Iraq they had no special methods or tools, in New York we use fancy equipment and techniques, from an elaborate machine that separates the grapes from the stems to sophisticated chemistry that calculates how much tannin to add.
But in more fundamental ways, my father has brought the Iraqi spirit to the production. Family members, friends, neighbors and the strangers they bring are all welcomed with an overflow of warmth. Everyone is fed and cared for and made to feel part of the team. Young children get the low-hanging bunches while tall men lean out the windows and gather those that no one else can reach. When a basket full of grapes is lowered on a pulley from the roof to the garden, the kids love to yell that it is on its way, while the adults invariably joke that next they’ll put the children in it for a ride. All of us get our hands soaked while cleaning the Niagara grapes, or take a turn with the heavy manual press, or sweep the leaves that rain down from the vine. It is such a shared enterprise that by the end of the evening, when we are all eating Iraqi specialties for dinner, we feel like a tight community.
I once asked my father how it was that the primitive system in Iraq yielded wine just as good as our much more elaborate New York process. He had told me that his father paid absolutely no attention to standard rules that forbid contact between air and wine or demand sterilized equipment. Even the cover of the big wooden barrel didn’t fit properly; it was just a large board that sat at the top. But whenever my father would go over and lift the cover, he would smell “this wonderful, wonderful fermenting wine.”
“What kept it from turning into vinegar?” I asked.
By way of answering, he told me about the time my mother suggested that they set out to produce some vinegar. “Hard as I tried, I couldn’t get any,” he said. Ever since then, he stopped being overly cautious and never had one year that the wine was bad.
“This issue of ‘be careful it may turn into vinegar’ is highly exaggerated,” he observed. I thought of my grandfather, who, back in old Iraq, knew that all along.