So what was this character like?
Yousef was born in the Al-Torah quarter of Baghdad on 3 November 1926. His father, Sami bin Saleh, who came from the Qujman family, worked as an assistant at the Juri pharmacy in Al-Karradah. His mother was Huri bint Rahamin Dalal. Her father had been fairly wealthy in his early years, when he worked at the Spice Market and later at the Grocers’ Market in Baghdad. But in the aftermath of World War I, he’d fallen on hard times. His slightly tattered childhood photograph portrayed him as a small boy with delicate features and black hair falling on his forehead. He wore shorts and a large white shirt over his skinny body.
Yousef’s grandfather, Saleh, sold sesame paste at a shop on the left-hand side of Al-Rashid Street near Al-Murjaneya School. In that area, known as Al-Shurja market, were several oilseed presses owned by Jews. He then worked for a time pruning palm trees at the Mamou date grove. In the interwar period, he started brokering the date trade between merchants from Basra and Baghdad. Saleh’s brother, Rabbi Shmuel Qujman, was the author of Judaism and Life, which was printed at the Shuhait Press and which later appeared in Hebrew in the thirties. Yousef never forgot his grandfather’s house. In fact, for many years, he continued to remember the warmth of his grandfather’s hand, which he’d held so tightly for fear of losing him in the crowd as they walked along Al-Rashid Street. He remembered the pungent smell of mothballs from the cupboard in which his grandfather hung his suits and the black caps that Baghdadis traditionally wore. His grandmother’s carefully painted face and her sad, black clothes instilled fear in his heart. In her high-ceilinged room, she would maintain her silence. Her debilitating illness imposed a silence on the whole family. In his letters to Farida, Yousef never forgot her wrinkled, white face. In a letter dated 1954 he wrote that he would go into her room in the company of his mother. While his mother cleaned the room with a feather duster, his grandmother would keep her eyes shut as if she were dead.
Despite their poverty, his was an educated Baghdadi family, which had been hit by the post-World War II slump. All the members of the family used to read books, newspapers and magazines. Their small house was full of manuscripts and huge tomes. In one of his letters, Yousef said that books were everywhere: between drawers, on walls, beneath the stone banisters and even in the large rooms with their decorated ceilings. This was a source of humour and laughter among the Jewish families that had made their fortunes from business after the establishment of the Iraqi state in the twenties and thirties. However, this family grew ever poorer and had to sell the house. Nothing remained of their old wealth except Kashani rugs and Persian cutlery.
Throughout her life, his mother, Huri bint Rahamin Dalal, was plagued by a vague but deep anxiety. At the turn of the twentieth century she had studied at the school for girls run by Madame Danon. As a seamstress in the workshop at the Laura Khedouri Club she had acquired a reputation for embroidering pillows using gold and silver thread. In the thirties King Faisal I had paid tribute to her when he visited the club. Her family was proud of the fact that long ago the famous Turkish traveller Olia Djalabi had once stayed at their house on a visit to Baghdad. Not only had he enjoyed their hospitality for a long period, but he had also eaten from their tebit meal, which Jews customarily made on the Sabbath.
In a letter dating from his first trip to Iran in the fifties, Yousef gave a vivid portrait of his mother. She was like a frail chrysalis, always seeking solitude, for she had lost any joy in her work. Her naive smile, her quiet, pleading movements and her general weakness made her a complex mixture of the superficial and the tragic. On the large sofa in the small living room that was filled with colourful rugs she would sit quietly and peacefully, holding her needles and embroidering a satin pillow. The colourful woollen yarns rolled beneath her feet where little Yousef sat, overwhelmed by her silence and grief. He would try out some tunes on his violin, especially after taking lessons with Aram Garabian, the famous Armenian violinist in Baghdad. And as soon as the melody rang out in the living room of that little house, his mother would listen, as calmly and as silently as a statue.
The single photograph of Yousef’s mother, which was included by Farida in the envelope handed to me by Boris Naumkin at the agency, showed the woman’s personality clearly.
She was of average beauty, with fine features and very thin. Her beautiful eyes were covered by a film of translucent sorrow. She was in her thirties and wore small, round glasses. She was modestly dressed and stood beside her husband, Sami. He was a thin, tall man who towered above her in his old-fashioned check suit. His white shirt was ironed and his tie was as narrow as a piece of string. He had a long nose and a high forehead.
On the back of the photograph was written: ‘Sami Saleh and wife, 1942. Photograph by Hajj Amri Salim at Ibrahim Twaiq’s home.’
This photograph, as well as the letters written by Yousef to Farida and the testimony of Yousef’s friends such as Kakeh Hameh, gave me a vivid picture of what Yousef would become in the future. I was able to refer not only to this important picture, which I kept with me for such a long time that I knew its details by heart; there were also the other pictures that interested me before I started on my journey. If I were to mention just one of them, it would be the only photograph I know of that depicts a group of Baghdad communists in the forties. It was a very rare photo with tattered edges and dated 3 August 1946 on the back. It showed Victor Menasha Yousef sipping a cup of coffee, Saida Sassoon looking cheerful, Zanoun Ayoub in short sleeves revealing his famous muscles and Sami Saleh, Yousef’s father, standing tall and very thin, and staring with deep eyes into the unknown. They were all gathered in the living room of Victor Menasha’s house and in the background one could see the arches of the house and its internal columns. There were also two pinewood columns by the wall.
The photograph showed very clearly the father in his youth. As a young man, Sami looked very much like his son was to become. His posture and self-confidence revealed his firmness and his ability to gather his strength before forging ahead. The picture also communicated to me his profound faith and how much he’d struggled to free his soul of all the harmful weeds that had threatened to choke it. His was a heart that tilled and sowed the void, in total ignorance of its destiny. Yousef referred to this in one of the important letters he’d written from Tehran, where he’d talked with great enthusiasm about his father, describing him as a role model who had held fast to his belief in human justice. Yousef even stated clearly that throughout his life he’d never met a man as principled as his father. So what was the father like?