Forget Baghdad: Roundtrip to the Promised Land

Memory is an empty plate, scarred by scratches from the knife on its skin.

—Ronny Someck, "Baghdad," in The Milk Underground¹

In his film Forget Baghdad (2003), Samir aims to compensate for the historical "abyss of abandonment" (Hess 1993:7) that looms between the Zionist official story of Israel and its Iraqi chapter through the intimate and poignant reminiscences of five individuals of Baghdadi origin.² He does this in part by closing in on the faces of the five "actors"—Shimon Ballas, Moshe Moussa Houri, Sami Michael, Samir Naqqash and Ella Shohat –for whom the film offers permission and a vehicle to travel to their ancestral homeland and, to a certain extent, to the self. What have been, in the Israeli rhetorical climate, spurned fragments in a linear journey—a one-way-ticket to the Promised Land—is transformed into a roundtrip journey, characterized by endless loops and coils. Significantly, the film opens with a top-down view of a man's suited legs walking through an airport; in the background is heard an announcement of the imminent departure of an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. Airport sounds merge and then give way to Lebanese composer Rabih Abou-Khalil's multicultural jazz instrumental, "Got to Go Home," which is somewhat reminiscent of the "Pink Panther" theme song. Both the music and the audible display of the film's title and credits, by way of typewritten font, clinch the detective story-like documentary nature of Samir's nearly two-hour film.³

This essay attempts to contribute to increasing the visibility of Baghdad as an originary site of Israeli and US Jewish minorities. In "Forget Baghdad," the hybrid, hyphenated identity of Iraqi-Jews or Arab-Jews is presented within the context of European colonialism and modernity, and situated on the extended cultural map of the Jewish diaspora in the "East" from Baghdad to Teheran and Mumbai. I aim to expand the visual archive of ethnography and its representation beyond "writing culture" or "reading culture" to include viewing as an important aspect of the discursive practices of cultures. Ever since Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the media representation of Iraq and Baghdad has been ideologically veneered by US foreign policy, contributing to an essentialized, Orientalist portrait of what is in reality a finely textured "culturescape." As a visual ethnography that takes memory as its subject, "Forget Baghdad" redresses the tendency to represent Iraq and its Jewish minority culture as abstractions, as a chapter in Jewish history that lacks historical context and legitimacy.

It is one thing to return to a place that is associated with violence, collective or personal, and another to return to the place that was forsaken for the hope of a better one. The viewer quickly discovers that Baghdad is a place that invokes both trauma and solace. The trauma of Baghdad inheres in the fact of its exile from Israeli memory, but, as the film underscores, it is only through memory that Baghdad can be recuperated and reclaimed as part of Israeli cultural history. Baghdad appears in the film as a place of origin, a cultural reference, and a genealogy.⁴ But, as I highlight in this essay, the film is not so much about Baghdad and everyday life there prior to emigration, but about the memory of the city as it is informed by the experience of being Israeli today, fifty-two years or so later. The idea of "going back," therefore, is part of a wider discussion of discursive legitimacy and recently invented strategies to effectively participate in the public debates on ethnicities and cultures of origin.⁵ The key questions are what kinds of narratives are produced from this cinematic site, and what is the nature of this memory? The main issues at stake are not only the permission to go back, in conjunction with the nostalgic and sentimental value inherent in going back, but...