- ʿAlī Badr (?, Iraq) – Ḥāris al-Tabagh (2008, English trans. The Tabacco Keeper, 2011). After the US-led invasion of Iraq, the hero of this novel is asked to write up the life of the composer Kamal Madhat. Writing up his biography reveals his forced migration to Israel as an Iraqi Jew in 1950, his subsequent move to Tehran and his eventual return to Baghdad as a musician respected by Saddam Hussein. His life history reflects on the history of Iraq, Iran, Israel, and Syria from the 1920 onwards. It paints a life full of travelling, drinking, and the company of women, showing the existence of a tolerant, liberal and internationalist class across the Middle East and in Baathist Baghdad (also in 1948: al-Nakbah: Migration of Arab Jews to Israel).
- Muʿataz Futayha (1987-, Egypt) – Akhir Yahūd Iskandariyya (‘The last Jews of Alexandria’, 2008). This novel is set in Alexandria in the 1940s, at the start of World War II, until the end of the last century (reference). It describes a love story between two characters, the Muslim woman from an aristocratic family, Sārah, and Yūssuf, who comes from a Jewish family, before this latter’s forced migration to Israel after the war (also in 1940 – 1945 World War II).
- Khawlah Ḥamdī (1984-, Tunisia) – Fī Qalbī Unthā ʿIbriyyah (‘In my heart is a Jewish girl’, 2012). Aḥmad, a Muslim, knocks on a Jewish family’s door seeking for help after he got hurt in the fights between the Lebanese resistance and Israeli soldiers. He then becomes romantically involved with one of the family’s daughters, Nīdā. However, he suddenly disappears and Nidā decides to travel to Tunisia and Europe on a search for her own identity. When she returns, she converts to Islam and joins the Lebanese resistance (reference).
- Ḥajī Jābir (1976-, Eritrea) – Raghwah Sawdāʾ (2018, English trans. Black Foam, 2023). This novel follows a group of Ethiopian Jews, the Falash Mura who flee to Israel in search for a better life but are confronted with the racism existing in Israel against dark-skinned immigrants. Its main protagonist is Dāwīt, a young Eritrean man who changes his name and his religion to blend in with the Falash Mura. The novel not only brings to attention the discrimination of black Jews in Israel, but also the life of Ethiopian refugees who, if necessary, will change their identity if that means they will be safe, and their life will be stable (reference) (also in W: Outside of the Arab World: Sub-Sahara and West Africa: Ethiopia).
- Walīd Usāmah Khalīl (1966-, Saudi Arabia) – Aḥbabtu Jahudiyyah (‘I loved a Jew’, 2014). When a friend suggests to the widow Muʿīn, a Palestinian-British Muslim living in London, to go on a blind date, Muʿīn meets the Jewish Maryam. They start dating, overcoming their initial hesitation towards each other, and eventually marry despite the refusal of her family. When Maryam receives the joyful news of her pregnancy, she cannot wait to tell Muʿīn. However, when she learns on the television news about a terrorism explosion and sees her husband between the victims on the screen, everything changes.
- Albert Memmi (1920-, Tunisia) – La Statue de Sel (1955, English trans. Pillar of Salt, 1992). Set in French Tunisia during interbellum, this novel is the coming-of-age of the Jewish Alexandre. Raised in a poor family, he becomes increasingly alienated from his religion and environment while identifying with the French colonizer (reference). That is, until he is sent to a labour camp during World War II, when he starts to address the anti-Semitism and Nazi occupation of Tunisia (reference). The novel sheds light on both the effects of colonialism on the suppressed individual, as well as the political and social developments in Tunisia in the period between 1920 and 1943. It also describes the hero’s upbringing in a Jewish family, of which the illiterate mother spoke Judeo-Arabic (also in F: Family Life: Children and Adolescents: Bildungsroman and 1940 – 1945 World War II).
- Aḥmad Muḥsin (1984-, Lebanon) – Wārsū Qabla Qalīl (‘Warsaw a Little While Ago’, 2014). A Jewish pianist, Yūzīf, flees the Nazis from Poland to Israel, but soon ends up in Beirut, Lebanon, where he meets Mārī with whom he has a son, Fādī (reference). After the murder of his son and death of his wife, only his grandson survives, a grandson who inherits his musical talent and Jewish identity, but is raised in Beirut. They return to Poland together when the 2006 Lebanon War breaks out (see 2006: Lebanon War) where the grandson lives a similar sense of alienation as his grandfather did (reference) (also in W: Outside of the Arabic World: Europe: Poland).
- Samīr Naqqāsh (1938 – 2004, Iraq) – Nuzūlah wa Khayṭ al-Shayṭān (1986, English trans. Tenants and Cobwebs, 2018) and Shlūmū al-Kurdī wa Ana wa al-Zaman (‘Shlomo al-Kurdi, myself and time’, 2004).
Nuzūlah wa Khayṭ al-Shayṭān is set against the background of the Farhud Pogrom in 1941, when mob violence against Iraqi Jews erupted in Baghdad, and includes several Jewish Arab characters living in the city in the 1940s. The novel describes the changing relationship between the Jewish characters who refuse to leave the city when the state of Israel was founded in 1948, and a mass exodus of Iraqi Jews that followed (reference). The author himself was an Iraqi Jew who moved to Israel when he was thirteen. The novel uses Baghdadi Jewish dialect (reference) (also in 1948 al-Nakbah: Migration of Arab Jews to Israel).
Shlūmū al-Kurdī wa Ana wa al-Zaman centers the Jewish-Kurdish Shlūmū, who through flashbacks narrates different parts of his life story. He spent his youth in Iranian Kurdistan, which was part of the Ottoman empire and during World War I was invaded by the Russian army. He fled to Baghdad, a period of his life which he describes with great joy, but is eventually exiled to Teheran in 1961, and then again to Tel Aviv. The novel highlights the massacres of Jews at the hands of the Russians and Ottomans, and the forced deportation of Jews from Iran and Iraq in three different periods (reference).
- Ḥabīb al-Sāʾiḥ (1950-, Algeria) – Ana wa Ḥāyīm (‘Me and Haim’, 2018). This novel follows two Algerian friends, the Muslim Arslān and the Jewish Ḥāyīm, as they grow up to be a philosophy teacher and a pharmacist, respectively, while the country transitions from French colonialism to independence (reference). The two, who come from different religious and class backgrounds, each in their own way become involved in the Algerian independence movement (reference). Arslān joins the armed resistance, while Ḥāyīm smuggles medicine (also in 1954 – 1962 French Algerian War and Algerian Independence).
- Alīkandrā Shrītiḥ (1987-, Lebanon) – ʿAlī wa Ummuhu al-Rūsiyya (2010, English trans. Ali and His Russian Mother, 2015). Following the Israeli invasion of 2006, an unnamed female character and ʿAlī, both of Russian mothers and Lebanese fathers, join Russian nationals on an evacuation journey organized by the Russian Embassy (reference). The novel describes ʿAlī’s struggle with the death and destruction of the war and with his homosexuality, mixed ethnicity, and Jewish heritage. In the context of ‘Jews’ bombing Lebanon, ʿAlī feels ashamed to acknowledge he was born to a Jewish mother (reference). Contrary to his homosexuality, ʿAlī makes explicit that he has not embraced his Jewish heritage (also in L: Love, Lust, and Relationships: LGBTQ+: Male Homosexuality and 2006 Lebanon War).
- Kamāl Ruḥayyim (1947-, Egypt) wrote a trilogy discussing the Jewish identity in the Arab world. The titles of the trilogy are: Qulūb Munhikah (2004, English trans. Diary of a Muslim Jew, 2014), Ayām al-Shatāt (2008, English trans. Days of the Diaspora, 2012) and Aḥlām al-ʿAwdah (2012, English trans. Menorahs and Minarets, 2017). The trilogy is centered on Jalāl, whose mother is Jewish and father is Muslim (trilogy is also in F: Family Life: Parent and Child: Mother and Child).
Qulūb Munhikah is narrated by an adult’s voice and depicts baby Jalāl born in mid-twentieth-century Egypt to a Jewish mother and Muslim father in a period when life for Jews becomes more and more unbearable. His father died in the Suez War of 1956, and he is raised a Muslim by his mother. Tensions arise between Jalāl and his mother while he grows up, not in the least because of his stigmatization as the son of a Jew. The novel ends with Jalāl and his mother moving to Paris and his attempt to return to Egypt, which failed when he found himself at the airport unable to step on to the plane.
The second novel, Ayām al- Shatāt, tells of Jalāl’s life in Paris, and how he deals with his feelings of nostalgia towards the neighbourhood he grew up in in Egypt (reference). It also depicts him finding his way between the two religions, as well as his position towards the political developments taking place between Egypt and Israel and Palestinians and Israel. The novel, like Qulūb Munhikah, ends with Jalāl at Orly airport.
Refrences:
In order of appearance
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- Jamāl Nāfiʿ. 2014.“‘Fī Qalbā Unthā ʿIbriyyah’… !” www.gate.ahram.org, 31 December 2014 https://gate.ahram.org.eg/daily/News/51412/44/351515/%D9%83%D8%AA%D8%A8/%C2%AB%D9%81%D9%89-%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8%D9%89-%D8%A3%D9%86%D8%AB%D9%89-%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9%C2%BB.aspx (last accessed 23 November 2021)
- Sulaymān Ḥājj Ibrāhīm. “‘Raghwah Sawdāʾ’ lil-Riwāʾī al-Irītriyyi Ḥajjī Jābir, Tʿariyyah al-Zayf al-Isrāʾīlī wa Faḍaḥ Usṭūratyahūd al-Falāshā.” www.alquds.co.uk, 18 November 2018 https://www.alquds.co.uk/%EF%BB%BF%D8%B1%D8%BA%D9%88%D8%A9-%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%8A-%D8%AD%D8%AC%D9%8A-%D8%AC%D8%A7/ (last accessed 5 November 2021)
- Ursula Lindsay and Marcia Lynx Qualey, hosts. 2020. “The Pillar of Salt.” Bulaq Podcast, The Arabist, 10 October 2020. https://www.sowt.com/episodes/bulaq-bwlq—the-pillar-of-salt (last 6 February 2025)
- “The Pillar of Salt.” World Literature and Its Times: Profiles of Notable Literary Works and the Historic Events That Influenced Them. Encyclopedia.com. 16 October 2020, https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/pillar-salt (last accessed 9 December 2020)
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