Nana
Nana Saida, was born in 1901 in Baghdad, Iraq. Her life
represents a microcosm of Iraq's Jewish community in this
century. One of eight children born to a family of tobacco
merchants, Nana spent most of her childhood hidden behind a
walled compound with the other women in the family. When she
was old enough to study, Nana attended the neighbourhood
school. She was often harassed by boys and men on the
street, because she had not yet started to wear the veil and
outergarment typical of the women of Baghdad. By the age of
15, however, Nana had adopted this custom and carried it
well into her 30's.
Up until the time of the First World War, many young
women were married off at the age of 12 or 13 without their
consent. Nana remembers one of her sisters, Lelwa,
describing the first week of her marriage.: "She was still a
little girl and liked playing games, especially hide and
seek. Her husband was somewhat older, maybe he was 30, and
in the beginning he tickled and kissed her, affectionately.
But...after awhile, he got tired of finding her hiding under
the bed, and one day, he forced himself on her." In an
environment where a stranger merely had to drop a coin in a
girl's hand for her to be forced to become his wife, Nana
avoided marriage until the unusually late age of 19. In
1918, Sion Balass, a money changer asked for her hand.
Charmed by his unusual blue eyes and good looks, Nana
accepted. Within a year of their marriage, the first of
seven children was born.
With the opening up of the country to Western influences
under the British mandate, many younger Jewish women
including Nana gradually stopped wearing the veil and
adopted Western fashions. By the early 1940's, the sight of
a Jewish woman covered up in traditional style became quite
rare. In the late 30's and early 40's, tensions resulting
from the Zionist struggle in Palestine, Muslim Arab
nationalism, and the anti-Semitic influence of Nazi Germany,
combined to make the prospects of Iraq's Jews rather
precarious. In 1937, pregnant with her last child, and
worried about the future, Nana attempted to miscarry: "I
locked myself in the bedroom and was hanging from the bed
post, swinging and twisting around in gymnastic positions
until I started bleeding." Her attempts failed. However,
after the pogrom of 1941, she decided to send one of her
sons away, to the relative safety of Iran.
At the beginning of the next decade, the Iraqi government
concluded a secret agreement with Israel. For the first time
in many years, Jews were free to emigrate. As a result,
between 1950 and 1951, over 90% of Iraq's Jews chose to
leave the country. Two more of Nana's children joined the
exodus. However, Nana, her husband and four eldest children,
stayed behind. The following years set the pattern of
relative material comfort, denial of identity, fear and
repression, which was to characterize the Jews of Iraq until
persecution, poverty and terror became their lot in the late
60's. Many restrictions were placed on movement, employment,
communication and education. The Jews remaining in Iraq
could not visit or even communicate with relatives in
Israel. Many received no news from friends and family for
years at a time. The fear of reprisal was so great that even
when an Iraqi Jew left the country for a holiday or business
trip he or she still scrupulously avoided even indirect
contacts with Israel. So, for example, when Nana was in
London in 1957, she was afraid of placing a phone call to
Israel for fear of it being traced. In 1963, Jews were
stripped of their passports and additional restrictions were
put in place.
In 1967, literally within minutes of her husband's death,
the secret police came to take Nana's oldest son, Victor, to
prison. He was held for several months on trumped-up charges
of conspiring to aid the enemy. A period of constant
mourning and terror ensued. One by one friends and family
members, including two more of Nana's children, were rounded
up and detained in miserable conditions. Many of them were
tortured before being condemned to death, and then strung up
for display in Baghdad's main public square. All this
because they were Jews.
When a possibility for escape finally presented itself in
1970, Nana fled with two of her children and their families,
despite enormous risks. By the mid 1970's, less than a
hundred Jews, out of a total once numbering over 170 000,
remained in Iraq.
Today, in addition to small groups dispersed around the
world, there are large communities of Iraqi Jews in Israel,
London, Montreal, New York and Los Angeles. Nana lives in
Tel Aviv, Israel.
