In the midst of the sectarian warfare underway in Baghdad prior to his death, Kamal Medhat’s three sons visited him and revealed the collapse of ‘identity’. Meir, the Jew from Iraq who’d emigrated from Israel to the United States, who’d joined the Marines and returned to Iraq as a US Army officer, was the product of his first persona. Hussein, who, after settling in Tehran, had tied himself to his Shia identity and joined the Shia political movement, was the offspring of the second father. Omar, a Sunni trying to bolster his identity in the face of the tragic ousting of the Sunnis from power in Iraq after 2003, was the outcome of the third persona. Each of them stood by a story that was constructed, fabricated and furnished with narrative and imaginary elements. Each of them lived a life they believed to be true.
Kamal Medhat’s life shows that identity is always closely allied to a narrative standpoint. A life is a story that is fabricated, formulated or narrated at a completely random moment, a localized historical instant when others turn into the ‘other’, into strangers, foreigners and even outcasts. The story of this artist shows that identity is a process of adaptation; no sooner has it located itself in one particular historical moment than it changes into a different moment. All these imaginary communities begin with a fabricated, invented narrative which denies that identities blend and overlap, but which at a certain point in time reveals such boundaries to be imaginary, constructed and fabricated, nothing but narrative concoctions. As a community loses its connection with its roots, it attempts to regain its lost horizons, which it may achieve only through storytelling and imagination.
A brief biography
The more I read of Pessoa’s book of poetry, the deeper grew my understanding of the intriguing personality of Kamal Medhat. Before travelling to Baghdad, I’d already collected a great deal of detailed information about his life. And before starting to write his biography, I’d prepared maps of the Middle Eastern cities that he’d passed through on his journey. So I devised a brief biography:
3 November 1926: Yousef Sami Saleh was born into the middle-class Jewish-Iraqi Qujman family. In the year of his birth the Iraqi — British treaty was signed, as an amendment to the 1922 treaty, and was ratified by the Iraqi parliament on 18 January. The same year also saw the births of the most important modern Iraqi poet, Badr Shaker al-Sayyab, and the leading modern Iraqi novelist, Fouad al-Tikerly. Yousef Sami Saleh had lived on Al-Rashid Street in the Al-Torah quarter. One of Baghdad’s oldest quarters, this neighbourhood had been home to many Jewish families before the middle of the last century.
1927: Oil, the liquid destined to play the lead role in shaping the country’s history and future, gushed from the first well in Iraq.
1932: As the first independent Arab state, Iraq became the fifty-seventh member of the League of Nations. The end of the British Mandate was officially declared.
1933: Yousef Sami Saleh learned to play the violin under an Armenian musician, a graduate of Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Also in that year, the first Iraqi Communist manifesto was published, written by Fahd, the historic leader of the Iraqi Communist Party.
1936: Radio Baghdad broadcast its first programmes. Yousef Sami Saleh performed a piece by Mozart. That historic year also witnessed Lieutenant-General Bakr Sidqi’s coup against the government of Yassin al-Hashemi. It was the first military coup in Iraq and the entire Arab world.
10 June 1941: Yousef Sami Saleh met renowned Russian violinist Michel Boricenco, in whose presence he gave his first solo violin performance. In a small hall at Baghdad’s English Club he performed Bach, Paganini and Ysaÿe. As a token of his admiration and appreciation, Boricenco presented him with a violin and bow of the highest quality. In May, the Iraqi — British war broke out, accompanied by a nationalist revolt inspired by Nazism. Wholesale chaos enveloped the country. The Jewish community suffered assault, looting, robbery and murder. Massouda Dalal, Yousef Sami Saleh’s aunt, was burnt alive before his very eyes and her property looted.
21 October 1946: The ninth government of Nuri al-Said was formed. That year also coincided with the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthoum’s arrival in Baghdad in May, where she’d stayed at the Tigris Palace Hotel. She gave a few performances on the occasion of King Faisal II’s birthday. That same year saw the opening of Studio Baghdad, which marked the effective beginning of the history of Iraqi cinema.
1948: The Portsmouth Treaty was signed between Iraqi Prime Minister Salih Jabr and British Foreign Secretary Bevin. Students declared a general strike and peaceful demonstrations for three days. They shouted slogans calling for the dissolution of parliament and the Cabinet. In response, the Deputy Prime Minister issued a statement that infuriated the demonstrators, and then ordered the police to open fire on them. Many students were killed and injured on the bridge. The following day, during the delivery of the bodies, police vehicles stormed the Royal Hospital Building at Bab al-Muazzam, opening fire and killing more students from the Faculty of Pharmacy.
The 1948 war began and the State of Israel was declared, the Arab nakba.
In that same year, Yousef Sami Saleh was awarded the King Faisal Prize for the violin. He embarked on a series of concerts at the English Club, attended by the most distinguished families of Baghdad. His fingers had mastered the violin, especially Bach’s solo Sonata. In that same year, he married Farida Reuben.
1949: The founding members of the Iraqi Communist Party, Yousef Salman (Fahd), Hussein Mohammad al-Shebibi (Hazem) and Zaki Baseem (Sarim) were publicly executed in the streets of Baghdad. At the end of that year, Meir, Yousef Sami Saleh’s only son by Farida Reuben, was born.
21 March 1950: The Afghan King Mohammad Zahir Shah arrived in Baghdad on his way to Europe.
Al-Rowwad, a grouping of a few plastic artists, was established in Baghdad. A law was passed depriving Jews of their Iraqi nationality. Yousef Sami Saleh left for Israel during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, which allowed large numbers of Jewish families to emigrate. Their property and assets were confiscated.
1952: Yousef Sami Saleh moved to Kibbutz Kfar in Tel Aviv.
1953: He travelled to Moscow to attend a concert and to visit the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. There he met the well-known violinist Sergei Oistrakh, who helped him escape to Iran during the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi. On the way, he stopped off in Prague where he met the famous violinist Karl Baruch and began a friendship that lasted until the latter’s death. That same year, he began a new life in Tehran under the name of Haidar Salman and was embraced by the wealthy Iraqi family of Ismail al-Tabtabaei, whose daughter Tahira he married. He gave a series of concerts at the Tehran Opera House and became acquainted with the most renowned Iranian musicians.
1955: The inaugural meeting of the Baghdad Pact countries was held on 21–22 November in Baghdad. It comprised Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. On 25 November, Israeli newspapers reported Yousef Sami Saleh’s death, based on a notice published by his former wife, Farida Reuben.
1956: The Tripartite Aggression was launched against Egypt following the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Vocal demonstrations took place in Baghdad and in most Arab capitals.