Photographed in Iraqi Kurdistan in January 1994
"March 1991 - In squalid and freezing makeshift refugee camps in the
inhospitable mountains of southeast Turkey, desperate Kurds, who had fled the
vengeance of Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War, were
begging visiting journalists and photographers from the West to contact their
relatives abroad, to let them know that they were still alive.
One of the many telephone numbers I was given on a scrap of paper bore the
country code 972 (Israel). Are you Jewish, I asked incredulously. What religion
are you? came the cautious reply from a wizened old woman, in a colorful but
tattered Kurdish dress. She was the first of many Kurdish Jews photographer
Frits Meyst and I have encountered, since the defeat of Saddam Hussein gave
foreigners access - albeit unauthorized - to Iraqi Kurdistan. The ancient and
once flourishing Kurdish Jewish community was all but extinguished when the bulk
of Iraqi Jews emigrated to Israel between 1948-1951. Those who remained were
mainly elderly or assimilated.
Living under successive vehemently anti-Zionist regimes, where being Jewish
could lead to trumped-up charges of espionage on behalf of Israel, most Jews hid
their true identity. Synagogues and graveyards were destroyed over the years,
but local Kurds, proud of their historically close relations with the Jews,
showed us the few sad ruins.
Organized Jewish life in Iraqi Kurdistan no longer exists. But the surviving
Jews have eagerly exploited the permeable border between northern Iraq and
Turkey to re-establish contact with their relatives in Israel and elsewhere.
Long conversations in broken Kurdish and Arabic via satellite-telephone led to
the exchange of greetings on video-tapes, and even to family reunions and the
emigration of hundreds of Kurdish Jews.
Before one of my many visits to northern Iraq with Frits Meyst, I was asked by a
Jewish woman, who emigrated to Israel in 1951 as a young girl, to try and trace
her father. He had broken with his family and converted to Islam when they still
lived in Erbil. I managed to trace 90-year-old Haji Morad, bringing him a letter
from his daughter in Israel, whom he had not heard from in 43 years, and
returned to Israel with a video recording of her father and relations in Erbil.
This remains one of my most moving encounters with the remnants of Kurdish
Jewry."
Reuben Loewy, a correspondent in the Middle East for the The Globe and Mail, Canada, and Dutch photographer Frits Meyst have travelled extensively in Iraqi Kurdistan since March 1991.
