Last Days in Babylon: The Story of the Jews in Baghdad / Marina Benjamin grew up in London feeling estranged from her family’s Middle Eastern ways, refusing to speak the Arabic her mother and grandmother spoke at home and rejecting the peculiar food they ate. But when Benjamin had her own child, she realised that she was losing her link to the past. And so, in 2004, Benjamin visited Baghdad for the first time. When Iraq gained independence in 1932, Jews were the largest and most prosperous ethnic group in Baghdad. Just twenty years later, the community had been utterly ravaged, its members effectively expelled from the country by a hostile Iraqi government. Benjamin’s grandmother Regina Sehayek lived through it all: born in 1905, her life of privilege was little affected when the British marched into Iraq. But with the rise of Arab nationalism and the first stirrings of anti-Zionism, Regina began to have dark premonitions of what was to come. By the time Iraq was galvanised by war, revolution, and regicide, Regina was already gone, wrenched from her beloved husband in a hair-raising escape from her homeland.
Benjamin's keen ear and fluid writing bring to life Regina's Baghdad, both good and bad. More than a stirring story of survival, "Last Days in Babylon" is a bittersweet portraitof Old World Baghdad and its colorful Jewish community, whose roots predate the birth of Islam by a thousand years and whose culture did much to make Iraq the peaceful desert paradise that has since become a distant memory.
In 2004 Benjamin visited Baghdad for the first time, searching for the remains of its once vital Jewish community. What she discovered will haunt anyone who seeks to understand a country that continues to command the world's attention, just as it did when Regina Sehayek proudly walked through Baghdad's streets. By turns moving and funny, "Last Days in Babylon" is an adventure story, a riveting history, and a timely reminder that behind today's headlines are real people whose lives are caught -- too often tragically -- in the crossfire of misunderstanding, age-old prejudice, and geopolitical ambition
