Shmuel Moreh

Shmuel Moreh grew up in Baghdad and began publishing his own poetry as well as translations of English poems in Iraqi newspapers. He left Iraq for Israel in 1951, but pursued his interest in Arabic literature in the following years, earning a doctorate in modern Arabic poetry in 1965. Valuable scholarship informs much of his published work on Arabic literature and criticism as well as on Jewish writers of Arab descent. He is the founder and chairman of the Association of Jewish Academics from Iraq and the chairman of the Academic Committee of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, Or-Yehuda, Israel.

“A Belly Dancer from Baghdad” presents intriguing aspects of the Iraqi Jewish experience. The detached narrator is a Jewish man, and the principal character is a Muslim woman, but because they meet in London, they feel free to talk about Iraqi society, including ethnic tensions. Their perspectives converge and diverge owing to their different perspectives on Muslims and Jews, but there is an unmistakable bond between the two. Fawziyya, the belly dancer, tells the Jewish narrator, “You’re like a brother to me,” and there is every indication that she means what she says. Ironically, she reveals how conventional social dictates regarding boys and girls in Iraq alienated her from her own biological brother when she started to grow up. Like Samir Naqqash’s “Tantal,” Moreh’s story is a valuable document in presenting Jewish writers’ view of ethnic relations in Iraq, but, unlike that story, it presents a detached assessment because in many senses the story is Fawziyya’s, a Muslim woman’s, and Jewish issues are peripheral to her experiences.

“A Belly Dancer from Baghdad” is a translation of “Raqisa min Baghdad” from the collection Al-qissah al-qasirah ind yahood al-Iraq (Short Stories by Jewish Writers from Iraq), edited by Shmuel Moreh (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981).

A Belly Dancer from Baghdad

Those mesmerizing Middle Eastern features were a rare sight in a London night club. Her exotic belly-dancing outfit made her look even more shapely despite the extra flesh she carried. Makeup had revived her receding beauty and charm, especially her full-lipped, inscrutable smile, which, because of her profession, she had to use cautiously in dealing with clients. When our eyes met, her smile beamed with more charm.

“Are you from Iraq?” she asked when she approached me. Her broken English had a strong accent.

“Yes. How did you know?” I was indeed surprised.

“From the mark on your left cheek. Isn’t this habbet Baghdad? I’m from Baghdad, too. A stranger sees all natives as his own family. I can’t tell you how happy I am to find someone I can talk to in my own language.”

I smiled and blushed a little. This was the first time I had talked to a dancer.

“This mark helps Baghdadis recognize each other abroad and helps to draw them closer,” I said. “Some Iraqis brag to foreign women that it’s a war scar. When did you leave Iraq?”

“I have been here for a bunch of years,” she suddenly said in Iraqi Arabic. “I have been trying to forget Iraq, but I simply can’t. Iraq is the only place I long for, but as much as I love it, I can’t even look at its men. They’re the reason behind my estrangement in the West. Nothing compares to Baghdad’s river or sun. Here, the river flows with stagnant water, and it rains all year long. The sun comes out for a few seconds and then goes behind the clouds. No wonder you see people nearly naked crowding the parks on sunny days.”

She had probably picked up the weather talk from the British, I thought.

“It baffles me,” she added with an apologetic smile, “how I feel at home with an Iraqi woman, but other than that I’m like the stranger of our Iraqi proverb who sees only closed doors as soon as night falls.”

Tango music was playing, inviting people to dance, and couples soon started dancing. I remained seated, looking at dancers in front of me.

“When did you leave Baghdad?” she said suddenly. “Not a long time ago, I hope.”

“Just two weeks ago,” I said.

“So, you still smell of Baghdad. Are you Muslim or Jewish?”

She asked her last question as if to apologize for not asking sooner. The question was customary among Baghdadis, Muslims, and Jews alike.

“Jewish,” I said, expecting an end to the conversation, as often happened in Baghdad with Muslims.

“So what? We all are alike since we all drink the waters of the Tigris,” she said smiling. “Our neighbors were the Hisqail family, the china trader, and I used to play with his daughters. I still love them to this day. What a pity those days are gone now. We have come a long way from the days when Jews were seen like animals. Tell me, do you still make tibeet every Saturday? Allah knows how much I loved it. The only thing I couldn’t stomach about Jewish food was sesame oil. It made me barf.”

She laughed, and I laughed with her. I remembered then how Muslims used to refer to Jews as those “who stink of sesame oil” and how we used to speak derogatorily of the oils that Muslims use and of their ways of slaughtering chicken and animals.

She didn’t wait for my answer.

“You don’t know where we used to live,” she went on in English with a good deal of Iraqi Arabic. “It was in Bab al-Sheikh, and my family was very conservative. I was their only child, and it pained me when my father would say whenever I approached him, ‘Get away from me, may you perish! Why didn’t Allah give me a son?’ I wondered then about the difference between a girl and a boy, and the only one I saw between me and the neighborhood boys was my long hair and dress.

“When my mother gave birth to a boy, my father was elated. He gave lavish parties, and I wondered if he gave such parties when I was born. I asked my mother, and she said, ‘No one is overjoyed when they have a girl. A girl is a curse from Allah.’ I felt jealous, but I thought that boys must be better than girls. When my brother came home after his first day in school, there was such a commotion—ululations and ‘Allahu Akbars’ and sweets sprinkled over his head as if he had just achieved an undisputable victory. As for me, needless to say, I stayed home and learned what good homemakers needed to learn—sewing and cooking and preparing myself to serve my husband. I wanted to go to school, but no one would listen to me. Not even my mother. ‘You were a girl, too,’ I told her once, ‘so how can you accept this preferential treatment of boys?’ The long-honored tradition always wins of course.

“Years later when my brother became a young man, I was told to abide by the rules of modesty in his presence. ‘But he’s my brother,’ I protested, and again convention, not reason, ruled. I had to wear the abaya whenever I was outside and could never go alone—always with either mother or the maid. I was closely observed as if I were a scandal about to happen, but my brother could go anywhere and do whatever he could. Nightclubs, brothels, and he would share his adventures with my father. My father even bragged about the true son who wore down the town prostitutes. I’m sorry if my language offends, but I’m really upset. And you’re like a brother to me.

“Anyway, I waited for the good man to come along, and that finally happened. The day of good—or bad—omen came when a middle-aged man expressed interest in me. An idiot nibbling on a big inheritance and knowing nothing but sinful living. My father turned down educated young men because they were ‘penniless’ he said. I don’t want to bore you with stories of my husband’s behavior, but he was just like other men—consumed by bad company, alcohol, and women of all sorts. When I became pregnant, I had hopes he would settle down and become a family man. He tortured me day and night with his threats that if the child was a girl he would send me back to my father. I was scared, and I prayed for a boy, but can one change one’s own fate?

“I gave birth to a girl and nearly collapsed from anxiety. My husband completely lost his mind. He didn’t spit on the floor and curse me the way my father did the day I was born, but he left for a life of orgies, and before a week had passed I got the news of his death. Killed by the lover of a dancer, Badia, for whom he had bought a furnished house.

“I remained a luckless widow, and his mother took me with her to Turkey. After she died, I lost my source of sustenance, and I had to work at nightclubs in Istanbul. I made sure my daughter got the best education and sent her to a boarding school to keep her from knowing what I did. I wanted her to become a doctor, and I started to work for the owner of this club after meeting him in Istanbul. My daughter will soon finish medical school.”

She felt proud enough to repeat, “Yes, my daughter will soon become a doctor. She knows my suffering, and she’s sworn to liberate me from this humiliating job. No dancer is immune to drunkards’ bawdy comments or roaming hands, and they have to put up with this and more to keep the patrons happy. After she becomes a doctor, I’ll repent and go to Mecca for the hajj. I’m proud to save my daughter from the fate that all Iraqi women face when they have no provider. To work, that is, as a maid, which means sleeping with the men of the house, or as a dancer or singer. What else can they do? Either a whore or a maid.”

“Fawziyya, you’re next,” the owner of the club told her.

She smiled to me. “Here, they respect dancing,” she whispered. “It’s art. In Baghdad, if you play the violin, you’re a pimp, and if you sing, you’re a whore. Good-bye, sweetheart. Come visit us when you have the time.”

When she got up, her smile showed pride and perhaps something else I couldn’t tell for sure. Was it wounded dignity?