Cleaned by: Marika Lapointe August 9, 2021
Transcribed by: Marika Lapointe August 9, 2021
Interview date: Unknown
Interviewer: Lisette Shashoua
Location: Montreal, Canada
Total time: 00:59:24
Interview begins 00:00:13
[00:00:13] Interviewer: Please give us your full name at birth, where you were born, how old you are and where you were born.
[00:00:21] Joe Faraj: I was born in Bagdad, Iraq in August 4th, 1934 and I’m 85 years old now.
[00:00:30] Interviewer: Bless you.
[00:00:32] Joe Faraj: My name was Joseph Faraj. Faraj is my grandfather’s name.
[00:00:42] Interviewer: His first name.
[00:00:46] Joe Faraj: Joseph.
[00:00:46] Interviewer: Your grandfather’s first name was Faraj.
[00:00:48] Joe Faraj: No. My grandfather’s first name was Faraj. So when we left Iraq they gave us the grandfather’s name as a family name.
[00:01:02] Interviewer: That’s interesting, it happens. Can you tell us something about your family’s background Joe, please?
[00:01:14] Joe Faraj: My father was in charge about the asset of the Jewish community in Iraq. He was most of his life working completely for the Jewish community as an administrator of the asset of the community.
[00:01:45] Interviewer: The assets such as the…
[00:01:48] Joe Faraj: Properties, farms, whatever.
[00:01:51] Interviewer: Schools?
[00:01:52] Joe Faraj: Yeah. He was collect the rent and distribute the fund to the proper charity.
[00:02:02] Interviewer: To the charities.
[00:02:04] Joe Faraj: Yeah.
[00:02:04] Interviewer: Okay. Which would be…Do you know what the charities would be?
[00:02:10] Joe Faraj: The hospital, the school. They subsidized the school, the hospital and whatever else they needed.
[00:02:23] Interviewer: So the school was the Alliance Française?
[00:02:25] Joe Faraj: Alliance was one of them that received. But there were several schools. Not only the Alliance, there were several schools there that the community subsidized the cost of running it.
[00:02:40] Interviewer: Do you have an idea how many schools there were?
-[00:02:44] Joe Faraj: I can’t - no.
[00:02:47] Interviewer: No. Okay. How about the hospital. It was Meir Elias Hospital you’re talking about?
[00:02:59] Joe Faraj: There was several hospitals, Meir Elias, there were the one for the eyes and there was another one, a main hospital as well.
[00:03:14] Interviewer: Another one?
[00:03:15] Joe Faraj: Meir Elias I don’t think it was the biggest one.
[00:03:21] Interviewer: It was the only one left afterwards and then it was also confiscated.
[00:03:28] Joe Faraj: Well, the confiscated after 1950, after I left. So I’m not really aware of the confiscation.
[00:03:37] Interviewer: Can we start with your grandparents as well? Can you tell us about what you remember, your vivid memories of your grandparents, what they did?
[00:03:49] Joe Faraj: Not really.
[00:03:52] Interviewer: They were born in Iraq, Baghdad?
[00:03:53] Joe Faraj: Yeah. I was born in the house that my father was born in and we had it in the family over 200 years.
[00:04:04] Interviewer: Do you know where that was? The address?
[00:04:08] Joe Faraj: Tahes Takia [ph], the area was Tahes Takia [ph].
[00:04:16] Interviewer: And when you left Iraq…
[00:04:18] Joe Faraj: We we left Iraq I was living on…17 over 16…Tahes Takia [ph] too.
[00:04:34] Interviewer: Also Tahes Takia [ph], not the same house.
[00:04:37] Joe Faraj: Not the same house, not far from the house.
[00:04:41] Interviewer: And that particular house was sold?
[00:04:43] Joe Faraj: No, the last house that I lived in was a rental house. We didn’t own it.
[00:04:50] Interviewer: The first one you owned.
[00:04:51] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:04:55] Interviewer: Can you please tell me what you remember of the schools in Iraq and if you remember where your sisters went to school?
[00:05:07] Joe Faraj: I went to the Alliance School for boys. My sisters went to the Alliance School for girls. And it wasn’t far from where we lived. We used to walk to the school every day and we walked back from the school.
[00:05:29] Interviewer: Was it tight streets to get there?
[00:05:34] Joe Faraj: There were like three of four different streets that we had to go through in order to reach the school.
[00:05:42] Interviewer: Now let’s get to your parents. Do you know how they met? How they got married? Their names, your dad’s name, your mom’s name?
[00:05:53] Joe Faraj: I think my father met my mother on her birthday.
[00:05:59] Interviewer: How old was she?
[00:06:02] Joe Faraj: How old he was?
[00:06:03] Interviewer: How old was he? How old was she?
[00:06:07] Joe Faraj: I think he was about 30 years old when she was born, when she was born.
[00:06:18] Interviewer: And when they met?
[00:06:19] Joe Faraj: Sorry, no, 20 years old.
[00:06:28] Interviewer: He was 20 when she was born?
[00:06:29] Joe Faraj: They were born in the same house. The house that we had in the family, they were living probably over 50 people. It was a huge compound.
[00:06:41] Interviewer: And they were cousins.
[00:06:46] Joe Faraj: Were cousins...Not really first cousins. But related some way.
[00:07:03] Interviewer: So they were born in the same house.
[00:07:07] Joe Faraj: Yeah.
[00:07:07] Interviewer: So your dad met your mom when she was born.
[00:07:10] Joe Faraj: Right.
[00:07:11] Interviewer: Okay. So when did they decide to get married, or when did their parents decide to pair them off? How did they end up getting married?
[00:07:23] Joe Faraj: I think my father proposed at that time to her mother and father and they agreed, and they had married in the same house.
[00:07:38] Interviewer: How old was she when she got married?
[00:07:53] Joe Faraj: Probably 18 or 19 years old.
[00:07:56] Interviewer: Wow. That’s late in those days.
[00:07:59] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:08:01] Interviewer: Ok, can you also give me the names of your grandparents.
[00:08:06] Joe Faraj: My grandfather’s name is Faraj Haïm. They had two names. My father’s name was Saleh and his grandfather, my father’s grandfather, his name is Abdallah Youssef.
[00:08:30] Interviewer: Okay. And your grandmother and your mother? Their names?
[00:08:35] Joe Faraj: My mother’s name is [inaudible] and her mother’s name is Misoda [ph].
[00:08:41] Interviewer: Okay. And so they all lived in the same house.
[00:08:46] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:08:54] Interviewer: What did your father do in Iraq?
[00:08:57] Joe Faraj: What he was doing?
[00:08:58] Interviewer: Yes.
[00:08:59] Joe Faraj: I said, administrator of the Jewish assets.
[00:09:04] Interviewer: Sorry, yes. What about his father?
[00:09:08] Joe Faraj: I’m not sure what he did.
[00:09:11] Interviewer: Ok, can you tell about your brothers and sisters? When were they born? Their names?
[00:09:21] Joe Faraj: I had an older sister, Suzanne. She passed away in Iraq. She was about 19 years old. She had an operation, tonsil operation but from the…she never woke up from the anaesthetic.
[00:09:51] Interviewer: Tragic. Was she older than you?
[00:09:52] Joe Faraj: Yes. She was the oldest. I am the youngest in the family. She was the oldest daughter. Then I had Valentine [ph], Selim [ph] and Gracie [ph] and myself.
[00:10:09] Interviewer: Selim.
[00:10:10] Joe Faraj: Selim was my brother and then Gracie and myself, I was the last child.
[00:10:20] Interviewer: Ok. And so you all grew up int he same house with all the cousins around you.
[00:10:26] Joe Faraj: Right.
[00:10:29] Interviewer: Did you mix with a lot of people from outside? I mean you were [inaudible] a big family.
[00:10:35] Joe Faraj: Well, we had the house until 1939. In 1939 the water level rose up and the house was built with Gyproc so the wall started to crumble and we had to move. So we abandoned the house in 1939. All the cousins and the rest of the family had to leave as well. [00:11:09] We moved to a house not far from where we used to live.
[00:11:15] Interviewer: What happened to that house? Were you able to sell it?
[00:11:18] Joe Faraj: That was my father, then they sold it because there were several people that owned it. Literally over 200 people were members of that family that they had a part of the house.
[00:11:39] Interviewer: Must have been huge.
[00:11:40] Joe Faraj: A huge house.
[00:11:42] Interviewer: Do you remember any part of it? Anything about it? Anything you did there in that house?
[00:11:47] Joe Faraj: I remember it was a house that had mostly two bedroom upstairs and a kitchen downstairs and it was built in a round courtyard. And we had one big living room where the family got together there on Shabbat and any special occasion for birth, bar mitzvah, weddings, they all made it in that living room. It was a huge living room.
[00:12:24] Interviewer: Was the living room open-air?
[00:12:27] Joe Faraj: Yes. Not open air, it was under a bedroom. So it was closed and if there was too many people then they sat in the garden.
[00:12:40] Interviewer: Okay. So it was not in the courtyard?
[00:12:43] Joe Faraj: No.
[00:12:44] Interviewer: On the side.
[00:12:44] Joe Faraj: On the side.
[00:12:46] Interviewer: Okay, and the social circle your parents belonged to…
[00:12:49] Joe Faraj: They were members of a club, of the Zorah [ph] club.
[00:12:55] Interviewer: Yes.
[00:12:56] Joe Faraj: And my father used to go there every night. At the beginning he used to go with my mother but later on my mother didn’t want to go so he used to go by himself.
[00:13:11] Interviewer: Why did she not want to go? Any reason?
[00:13:15] Joe Faraj: I think after she lost her oldest daughter, she became more…reserved and she didn’t want to socialize as much as before.
[00:13:32] Interviewer: Oh, I’m sorry. Did you have non-Jewish friends? The family?
[00:13:44] Joe Faraj: Not in Iraq because we went to a Jewish school, and everybody there was Jewish.
[00:13:54] Interviewer: And your parents also did not socialize with non-Jews? They didn’t have non-Jewish friends, the parents.
[00:14:01] Joe Faraj: Sure. Because he had to deal with the farmers that they were non-Jewish. He dealt with tenants that were non-Jewish. He had several buildings that there were tenants there with all kinds of religions, not only Jewish.
[00:14:23] Interviewer: But socially, they did not mix.
[00:14:26] Joe Faraj: No, because the club was just a Jewish club.
[00:14:29] Interviewer: Yeah. And the language you spoke at home?
[00:14:31] Joe Faraj: Arabic.
[00:14:32] Interviewer: Any Hebrew spoken?
[00:14:34] Joe Faraj: No.
[00:14:36] Interviewer: Did you have any favourite expressions from home or…a nice saying or a nice story that you can remember?
[00:14:58] Joe Faraj: I think we had a very protected life. And we always had family reunions sort of because I had three pants that they lived there and very often they came to us with their children and we always had a happy time together.
[00:15:28] Interviewer: Do you remember anything about the school? About any messages given in the school?
[00:15:45] Joe Faraj: It was a very pleasant school. I enjoyed it very much and had a lot of friends from my class there and we kept quite a bit of contact with them.
[00:16:01] Interviewer: Up to now?
[00:16:02] Joe Faraj: Up till now.
[00:16:03] Interviewer: That’s wonderful. Other than the [inaudible] did you belong to any sports clubs? Did you go to any sports clubs back then?
[00:16:13] Joe Faraj: We went to the YMCA to play tennis.
[00:16:16] Interviewer: And swim?
[00:16:17] Joe Faraj: Swim in the river.
[00:16:21] Interviewer: Can you tell us about that?
[00:16:23] Joe Faraj: I used to go swimming every morning with two neighbours that we have. So they were two brothers and another neighbour so there were three guys and myself, we used to go swim, cross the river and cross back every day. So we did that early mornings before they went to work.
[00:16:51] Interviewer: What, at seven in the morning?
[00:16:53] Joe Faraj: I think before seven.
[00:16:57] Interviewer: Before the sun…
[00:16:57] Joe Faraj: It was still dark when we left.
[00:16:59] Interviewer: And what about in winter?
[00:17:01] Joe Faraj: Winter we didn’t swim. But in Iraq, in Baghdad mostly it’s summer. So we did it more than six months a year.
[00:17:15] Interviewer: Fantastic. Tell me about sleeping on the roof.
[00:17:23] Joe Faraj: It was warm during the summer so at night we went on the roof, because it was cooler, it has a little bit more…
[00:17:38] Interviewer: Breeze.
[00:17:39] Joe Faraj: Breeze yeah.
[00:17:41] Interviewer: Okay, and in the lunchtime, where did you go? You had to sleep in lunchtime, didn’t you? It was too hot in the summer.
[00:17:49] Joe Faraj: In the summer? At lunch? At noon? We slept in the basement. It was cooler.
[00:17:55] Interviewer: And in winter you slept in the bedroom.
[00:17:59] Joe Faraj: In the bedroom yes.
[00:18:02] Interviewer: Okay. So we all had three sets of beds. In the roof, in the basement and in the bedroom. Okay, the area where you were Tahes Takia [ph], it was not mainly Jews, was it?
[00:18:17] Joe Faraj: It was always Jewish area.
[00:18:19] Interviewer: Really?
[00:18:19] Joe Faraj: Yeah.
[00:18:21] Interviewer: Okay. So it was - was there a synagogue nearby?
[00:18:25] Joe Faraj: Across the street.
[00:18:27] Interviewer: Do you know which one it was?
[00:18:28] Joe Faraj: Hasqel [ph]
[00:18:29] Interviewer: Hasqel [ph]. Do you anything about Slat el-kabiri [ph] the big synagogue?
[00:18:41] Joe Faraj: That was in front of the school, of the girl’s school. Alliance school, there.
[00:18:48] Interviewer: And how big was it?
[00:18:50] Joe Faraj: I can’t recall because I don’t think I ever went there.
[00:19:06] Interviewer: Tell me about the food that you remember there. Do you still eat the same food here?
[00:19:12] Joe Faraj: The same food, exactly. We used to make beet with the kebab, with the meatballs. We used to have meatballs with okra. We used to have chicken with soup and sometimes we had fish that had been grilled and on Saturday we had tbit, which is chicken and rice cooked from Friday, we ate in on Saturday noon and we had the brown eggs, we had it Saturday morning with salad.
[00:20:08] Interviewer: And you do the same here?
[00:20:10] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:20:12] Interviewer: I heard you’re a very good cook.
[00:20:13] Joe Faraj: Well…
[00:20:16] Interviewer: So you cook all these yourself?
[00:20:18] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:20:20] Interviewer: Fantastic. Tell me about Shabbat and the holidays. Was Shabbat very - did you go to the synagogue on Shabbat?
[00:20:34] Joe Faraj: I didn’t go and my father stopped going as well. When he was a child the rabbi told them, if you drop one drop of natillah [ph] on your clothes for when you die for seven years you will [inaudible], for seven years you will be a crawler and for seven years, 49 years total you’ll be different animal crawling on the street. [00:21:08] So he said, I don’t want to go to the synagogue anymore and he stopped going.
[00:21:14] Interviewer: How old was he?
[00:21:16] Joe Faraj: Probably he was sort of teenager.
[00:21:20] Interviewer: Wow. What’s a natillah?
[00:21:23] Joe Faraj: It’s the first morning when you wash your hands, they call it the natillah [ph].
[00:21:30] Interviewer: And if it drops on his clothes?
[00:21:31] Joe Faraj: If you drop one drop of it on your clothes, for 49 years you’ll be an animal going on the - crawling on the street.
[00:21:41] Interviewer: That’s for sure some superstition.
[00:21:46] Joe Faraj: That turned him off completely.
[00:21:46] Interviewer: I don’t blame him. Okay, did you have a bar mitzvah in Baghdad?
[00:21:53] Joe Faraj: Everybody had a bar mitzvah except me. Because in ’47 I was 13. ’47 they decide Israel is becoming a, a country. So we had a lot of Hebrew books at home and we decided to burn them. Because if they see so many Hebrew book, they think that you are a spy or that you belong to Israel. [00:22:28] And they didn’t want to have any teaching of Hebrew at that time. But basically, when you have a bar mitzvah, it’s the first time that you put the tefillin on. In Israel, when I put the tefillin, that was my bar mitzvah.
[00:22:48] Interviewer: Wow. How old were you then?
[00:22:51] Joe Faraj: I was about 17 years old.
[00:22:53] Interviewer: Let’s go back to - do you remember any prominent Jewish organizations where you were? Zionist organizations and all that, when you were growing up in Baghdad?
[00:23:16] Joe Faraj: I think the only organization we had, we had like, the…the Jewish community that we had the rabbi as head of it. Beside that I can’t recall any other, B-side running the school and the hospital I can’t recall any other organization.
[00:23:52] Interviewer: No Zionist organisation that you were aware of?
[00:23:56] Joe Faraj: Pardon me?
[00:23:56] Interviewer: Zionist organisations?
[00:23:58] Joe Faraj: No, no Zionists.
[00:23:59] Interviewer: Okay, now I want to go back to the Farhoud.
[00:24:02] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:24:04] Interviewer: In 1941, you were seven years old.
[00:24:06] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:24:07] Interviewer: Can you tell about it? What happened and what you saw happen.
[00:24:11] Joe Faraj: Okay. We were close to the Shorja where all the shopping used to be there, the stores. So a lot of people at the Farhoud, they were breaking into stores and stealing merchandise. And they passing it through out street. My father was sitting on the window and watching the people, how they are passing there.
[00:24:41] Interviewer: On the window of your house.
[00:24:43] Joe Faraj: Of the house.
[00:24:44] Interviewer: Inside the house.
[00:24:45] Joe Faraj: Inside the house. A policeman come in and he put his gun toward my father.
[00:24:56] Interviewer: From outside?
[00:24:57] Joe Faraj: From the street to shoot him because he was on, like, the second floor of the house. My aunt was watching from the room behind it, she saw him. She came running, she pulled him out of the window. So then he came back and he put his hand to pull the curtain. The minute he pulled the curtain, the guy shot him. [00:25:30] He didn’t shoot him directly, but it hit the bar on the window and pieces of steel wen on his face and he was bleeding from his face quite a bit. The shrapnel from the window, not the actual bullet that hit him.
[00:25:52] Interviewer: Oh the window that broke.
[00:25:55] Joe Faraj: There was steel bat on the window and the shrapnel, when the bullet went, it hit the bar. So pieces of steel went on his face and he used to shave and as he shave he get different pieces of the iron that was on his face.
[00:26:21] Interviewer: Iron, not the glass.
[00:26:22] Joe Faraj: No glass, no, no, from the window bars.
[00:26:28] Interviewer: So that stayed for how long in his face?
[00:26:31] Joe Faraj: It stayed quite a bit, probably about a month, okay? And we couldn’t take him to a hospital because if you go on the street you be killed at that time…during the Farhoud.
[00:26:46] Interviewer: If you go to the hospital probably…
[00:26:48] Joe Faraj: You can go to the hospital. You can’t walk out of your house.
[00:26:51] Interviewer: So you had food in the house?
[00:26:53] Joe Faraj: We had food in the house, always there is food in the house because when they buy, they buy quite a bit and so we don’t have to go shopping every day.
[00:27:05] Interviewer: Did you have help in the house?
[00:27:07] Joe Faraj: They used to come during the day but they leave in the evening.
[00:27:12] Interviewer: And cooking, who did the cooking?
[00:27:15] Joe Faraj: The help.
[00:27:16] Interviewer: The help did the cooking and your mother told them what to do.
[00:27:19] Joe Faraj: Exactly.
[00:27:20] Interviewer: Okay. So this is the Farhoud. Any other - did you feel persecution in any other way as a Jew?
[00:27:32] Joe Faraj: Really didn’t, I didn’t feel much because I was young. I left at 16 and I didn’t…I didn’t sort of experience any specific problem.
[00:27:58] Interviewer: But your dad did, in the Farhoud.
[00:28:00] Joe Faraj: Sure.
[00:28:01] Interviewer: And you remember being afraid to leave the house.
[00:28:04] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:28:04] Interviewer: And what else do you remember from that period? Were you scared as a 7-year-old?
[00:28:12] Joe Faraj: I was dead scared. Seeing my father bleeding for all his face, you know? And you can’t do anything and people are going outside…you know? You’re afraid. You put sort of, you try to put some furniture against the door of the house in order not to break it.
[00:28:44] Interviewer: They didn’t come to your house though?
[00:28:46] Joe Faraj: No.
[00:28:46] Interviewer: But they did break into may other homes.
[00:28:49] Joe Faraj: They broke into a lot of houses and they killed a lot of people.
[00:28:53] Interviewer: In your area?
[00:28:56] Joe Faraj: Not the immediate area but not far.
[00:29:00] Interviewer: So tell me, you left in 1950 with the tasghir [ph]. Tell us about it. Thell us why you left and how come so many people left.
[00:29:11] Joe Faraj: Well, in 1950, I think Iraq made a deal with Israel for the Jews to leave but they had to leave without passports. So they gave us laissez-passer. In June of 1950 my two sisters left to go to Israel. In September my brother left and I wanted to leave as well. But I was 16 so I couldn’t leave by myself. They gave me a new identity card. They made me 19 and I got a laissez-passer on the basis of 19 years old and I elf tot go to Cyprus and from Cyprus we had to change aeroplane to go to Israel.
[00:30:07] Interviewer: You mean, you did not go with the Ezra Nehemia lift that went directly to Israel?
[00:30:17] Joe Faraj: No.
[00:30:18] Interviewer: They all went to Cyprus.
[00:30:19] Joe Faraj: No, in December we went to Cyprus, got out of the plane. We went into another plane that took us to Israel.
[00:30:27] Interviewer: And that was an Israeli plane.
[00:30:29] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:30:32] Interviewer: Was it a normal plane or a cargo plane? What was it? With seats and seatbelts?
[00:30:39] Joe Faraj: Yeah, regular plane.
[00:30:47] Interviewer: Tell us about that. Tell us about it. They gave you a laissez-passer. Your parents stayed behind.
[00:30:54] Joe Faraj: My parents stayed there until 1955.
[00:30:58] Interviewer: Okay. And the one who were leaving in ’51, they have to leave everything behind?
[00:31:03] Joe Faraj: Everything. The only thing they allowed us to take is 50 dinar.
[00:31:07] Interviewer: And how many suitcases?
[00:31:10] Joe Faraj: How many…
[00:31:10] Interviewer: Suitcases.
[00:31:12] Joe Faraj: One suitcase.
[00:31:14] Interviewer: And they -
[00:31:15] Joe Faraj: And when I went there I had some khaki shorts, khaki pants, they took it all from me at the airport.
[00:31:24] Interviewer: Why?
[00:31:25] Joe Faraj: Because they think it’s going to be army in Israel so they took all the khaki clothes that was with me.
[00:31:36] Interviewer: So all the beige colour outfits.
[00:31:39] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:31:39] Interviewer: That could be an army uniform.
[00:31:42] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:31:44] Interviewer: Ok. Did they check your luggage?
[00:31:49] Joe Faraj: Yes. Yes, they opened it, they checked everything and whatever they think they took it off.
[00:32:00] Interviewer: Like what?
[00:32:01] Joe Faraj: The clothes, the khaki clothes.
[00:32:05] Interviewer: How about watches, Jewelry?
[00:32:08] Joe Faraj: I didn’t have Jewelry. I just had one watch, that’s all but they didn’t take it.
[00:32:14] Interviewer: Tell me, once you got to Israel, now you had to continue studying.
[00:32:19] Joe Faraj: When I arrived to Israel, I went to agriculture school and I was there for a year in the school. Then I left, I went to Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv I went to work as a mechanic and I studied at night mechanic in Max Fine for two years. [00:32:51] I graduated from the school as a mechanic and…then I went to the army, spent two and a half years in the army, went back -
[00:33:09] Interviewer: Can you tell me when you were in the army, did you go to a war?
[00:33:14] Joe Faraj: During the regular service I didn’t go to war but after six months when I got released, went to Meloïm [ph] which is…it was in October ’56 that they had the Six-Day War with Egypt and Jordan. Then I was at that war.
[00:33:47] Interviewer: What capacity?
[00:33:51] Joe Faraj: Since I speak Arabic and Hebrew, I went looking into different units for some…secret papers that they left it, that the army left there.
[00:34:16] Interviewer: So you were not fighting.
[00:34:18] Joe Faraj: Not a fighter, no. But…intelligence.
[00:34:25] Interviewer: So now you went to the army, you went back to the war so how many years have you been in Israel now?
[00:34:34] Joe Faraj: Nine years.
[00:34:35] Interviewer: Nine years. So what else, after the army you continued studying?
[00:34:41] Joe Faraj: After the army I went to work in the same place. I worked for about a month and then I left. I went to school to study for the high school and at the same time I took accounting, bookkeeping. I took a course of bookkeeping as well and when I finished the high school I went to England in January ’59.
[00:35:25] Interviewer: And you studied…
[00:35:27] Joe Faraj: In England for one year I studied English and the second year I was studying math and physics.
[00:35:38] Interviewer: Okay and after that you…
[00:35:39] Joe Faraj: After that I came to Canada. In 1960, October 1960. I wanted to go to Concordia but I missed it by five days. So I had to wait till 1961. In 1961 I registered and I went to Concordia for two years.
[00:36:05] Interviewer: And you studied…
[00:36:08] Joe Faraj: Economics.
[00:36:11] Interviewer: So you were studying all along.
[00:36:14] Joe Faraj: Always, yeah.
[00:36:16] Interviewer: And once you graduated….?
[00:36:18] Joe Faraj: I didn’t graduate from Concordia because they wanted me to study, to have one of the courses as literature. And I didn’t want to take any literature so they let me stay for two years. The third year they insisted I should take one course of literature, I said no. So I left.
[00:36:44] Interviewer: And after that you started to work?
[00:36:47] Joe Faraj: I was working the whole time because I went to school at night.
[00:36:53] Interviewer: So tell, do you have any feelings about the war, I mean the war that you were in? How did it affect you? How did it affect your family?
[00:37:04] Joe Faraj: The ’56?
[00:37:05] Interviewer: Yes.
[00:37:12] Joe Faraj: It was such a fast war, six days and it was over.
[00:37:16] Interviewer: It was also six days?
[00:37:17] Joe Faraj: Yeah. So really we didn’t feel it much.
[00:37:24] Interviewer: And in Israel it wasn’t felt much?
[00:37:26] Joe Faraj: No. The only thing, one Egyptian ship came to Tel Aviv and they surrendered. They didn’t have white flag so they took an underwear and they put it up for sign of surrender.
[00:37:49] Interviewer: They Egyptians did?
[00:37:50] Joe Faraj: Yeah. And then Israel took it over and turned it into their own ship.
[00:37:58] Interviewer: Was the underwear white? The underwear was white? [laughs] Okay. So when you were travelling, when you went to London, when you came here, did you come by boat, by ship, by plane?
[00:38:18] Joe Faraj: I went by plane from Israel to England and from England to Canada I came by plane as well.
[00:38:27] Interviewer: Okay. And did you get any help for any Zionist organisation to settle in Canada?
[00:38:42] Joe Faraj: Not really, no.
[00:38:47] Interviewer: What was your first impression about Canada when you arrived?
[00:38:52] Joe Faraj: Cold.
[00:38:54] Interviewer: You arrived in winter?
[00:38:55] Joe Faraj: October.
[00:38:57] Interviewer: Oh boy.
[00:38:58] Joe Faraj: October. Only thing I remember, I used to take a shower in the morning and go out and the one day I’m going and suddenly I feel my head into a presser. The water that was still on my hair froze and started pressing on my head. So I had to go into a lobby and dry my hair a little bit more. I got out and it was frozen again so I went into another lobby and dried it up again. Then I stopped taking a shower in the morning, I start taking it at night. [00:39:37] Not to freeze my head in the morning.
[00:39:42] Interviewer: What year was that? ’62?
[00:39:44] Joe Faraj: ’60, 1960.
[00:39:49] Interviewer: That’s an adjustment. Did you have to have to adjust to - other than the cold - anything here in Canada? Was there any adjustment for you?
[00:39:59] Joe Faraj: Well, I tried to get a job and everybody, when I applied to a job they asked me for Canadian experience. And since I came here I had no Canadian experience. So finally I worked for charted accountant and I start taking courses in chartered accounting, and that gave me the experience to work as a Canadian experience.
[00:40:30] Interviewer: Wow. And you were the first to come from your family?
[00:40:34] Joe Faraj: No, I was the last one. Because my two sisters and brothers came here first. Sorry, my two sisters came - first sister came in, then I came in.
[00:40:47] Interviewer: Which one?
[00:40:48] Joe Faraj: Pardon me?
[00:40:49] Interviewer: Which sister?
[00:40:50] Joe Faraj: Val.
[00:40:51] Interviewer: Okay.
[00:40:51] Joe Faraj: She came here a year before me and then I came with my mother here and then my brother came and then my other sister came here.
[00:41:05] Interviewer: So when you were in Israel, the whole family was together in Israel?
[00:41:08] Joe Faraj: No. My brother and my mother were in Israel. Val came to Canada, I was in England and my other sister was in Brazil.
[00:41:25] Interviewer: And…
[00:41:26] Joe Faraj: And my sister she wrote, she said, we are all over the world. Would you like to come to Canada? So my sister from Brazil, he said yes, my brother from Israel and my mother, they said yes. And they sent me. I said, okay, I’ll come too. So then we came all in ’60 and ’61.
[00:41:48] Interviewer: Tell me, when you were in Israel, did you go to a Ma'abarot? Or did you get a house right away? What was your - when you get to Israel, how was the settlement there?
[00:41:57] Joe Faraj: My two sisters, they had an apartment, they rented an apartment in Israel.
[00:42:03] Interviewer: Which ones?
[00:42:06] Joe Faraj: Val and Gracie.
[00:42:07] Interviewer: Okay.
[00:42:08] Joe Faraj: Okay?
[00:42:08] Interviewer: they were single then? No, they were married.
[00:42:10] Joe Faraj: No, they were not married.
[00:42:13] Interviewer: Okay.
[00:42:14] Joe Faraj: Okay? And when I came, I stayed with them for a few days and then I went to go to agriculture school, we lived there.
[00:42:25] Interviewer: Ah, boarding.
[00:42:26] Joe Faraj: Boarding school.
[00:42:29] Interviewer: And then your parents came out in ’54.
[00:42:33] Joe Faraj: ’55.
[00:42:34] Interviewer: ’55. They followed you to Israel.
[00:42:37] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:42:37] Interviewer: And they stayed where?
[00:42:39] Joe Faraj: They stayed in my sister’s house because my sister left to Brazil. So they stayed in her house.
[00:42:48] Interviewer: House or apartment?
[00:42:49] Joe Faraj: An apartment.
[00:42:51] Interviewer: Can you tell me about life in Israel when you arrived there? I mean, Israel was very young then, it was less than…what?
[00:42:58] Joe Faraj: There was nothing. There was nothing. You couldn’t buy anything. Everything was rations. You got a book and if you want to buy milk or bread or anything, it was all rations. So but in the school we used to produce some vegetable so we had some vegetables from the production of the school.
[00:43:26] Interviewer: To eat.
[00:43:27] Joe Faraj: To eat.
[00:43:30] Interviewer: And to sell?
[00:43:32] Joe Faraj: I don’t know if we had enough to sell because there were quite a few students there.
[00:43:43] Interviewer: So why did you leave Baghdad in 1950 to start with? Because your sisters left already?
[00:43:50] Joe Faraj: Well, we all wanted to leave because Israel became a state so we wanted to go to live there rather than live [overlap]
[00:44:00] Interviewer: Ideal situation, but not because you felt persecuted in Iraq.
[00:44:04] Joe Faraj: Right.
[00:44:04] Interviewer: Or did you feel persecution in Iraq?
[00:44:07] Joe Faraj: Well, we thought that it’s not our country because we were different religion than the majority there.
[00:44:17] Interviewer: And when you went to Israel, how was the reception, as Sephardi Jews in Israel?
[00:44:28] Joe Faraj: At the beginning we felt welcome but afterward we felt the second-rate citizen. Because we felt the Ashkenazi treated the Orientals as second-rate citizens. That was one of the reasons that I left Israel.
[00:44:50] Interviewer: Can you give me an example?
[00:44:53] Joe Faraj: Well, an example, for instance in the agriculture school a Polish student had an accident. The principal took him to the hospital, stayed with him and then he stayed for a few days and then he brought him home. I had an accident a few months later.They sent me with the driver to…uh…[copat halim], it’s like a…
[00:45:31] Interviewer: Pharmacy?
[00:45:32] Joe Faraj: Not a pharmacy, like a…
[00:45:40] Interviewer: Clinic.
[00:45:40] Joe Faraj: Like a clinic, to a clinic. And then they driver brought me back the same day, the same time. And I think for two or three days, until the principal come. He said, “I heard that you had an accident. So…
[00:45:58] Interviewer: What kind of accident?
[00:45:59] Joe Faraj: I cut my finger.
[00:46:02] Interviewer: Woooh. And it got cut?
[00:46:05] Joe Faraj: Yeah.
[00:46:07] Interviewer: And this other guy, what was his accident?
[00:46:09] Joe Faraj: Exactly the same thing, he cut a finger.
[00:46:15] Interviewer: Big difference.
[00:46:18] Joe Faraj: So that was sort of a beginning. Then if you work in a place and you go to the army they have to take you back and when I went back the guy didn’t want to take me because the manager left they have a new manager and the…he said, I don’t have to take you. [00:46:47] So...I went to the army, they forced him to take me and…I think he made a deal with them, if I missed one day he can fire me. And when my father passed away -
[00:47:02] Interviewer: Oh!
[00:47:04] Joe Faraj: I wasn’t there for a week so when I came back he said, “You cannot work here.”
[00:47:12] Interviewer: That is criminal.
[00:47:13] Joe Faraj: Yeah. So I said, in this case I’m not staying in this country.
[00:47:22] Interviewer: So Israel lost you. And that’s when you went to London, England.
[00:47:27] Joe Faraj: Yeah.
[00:47:34] Interviewer: Okay tell if you found, when you came to Canada, other than having to adjust to the snow, was there other things to adjust to?
[00:47:46] Joe Faraj: Well, it was difficult to start with because I couldn’t work in accounting and finally I started working in real estate. So after about three months, I decided to work in real estate and at that time I start making money and at the same time going to school at night.
[00:48:22] Interviewer: And tell me, your life, how did it develop in this new country? Professionally, privately? So professionally you started with real estate and you got married here?
[00:48:35] Joe Faraj: I got married here…since I started in real estate I stayed the whole time working in real estate until I retired.
[00:48:53] Interviewer: and when did you retire?
[00:48:56] Joe Faraj: I think about 5, 7 years ago.
[00:48:59] Interviewer: Can you tell me about your children? Their names, your grandchildren, how many?
[00:49:06] Joe Faraj: I have three daughters, and four grandchildren. The oldest one, Naomi [ph] she worked with me and she’s in real estate at the moment. Second daughter, Nancy, she is a dietician. And…
[00:49:35] Interviewer: Where does she live Nancy?
[00:49:38] Joe Faraj: In NDG.
[00:49:40] Interviewer: Oh. She was in Japan wasn’t she?
[00:49:42] Joe Faraj: Pardon?
[00:49:44] Interviewer: Japan, wasn’t she in Japan at some point?
[00:49:46] Joe Faraj: She was in Japan for several years. Yeah and then she was in Hawaii for several years as well. And now she’s back home. And Nadine, she’s the youngest, she’s an artist and you see her paintings around the house. [00:50:09] [Is given water] Thank you.
[00:50:11] Interviewer: Now tell me about your Sephardi heritage. What did you keep from that, how did you keep the traditions? What do you do? How important is it to you?
[00:50:44] Joe Faraj: In Iraq we observed the tradition of Jewish tradition because the Jewish community in Iraq, they have been there for thousands of years. So, we - my father, we kept the shabbat…and he went to synagogue only New Year and Yom Kippur. [00:51:17] So we kept all the traditions but he wasn’t sort of over-religious that he went to the synagogue every day.
[00:51:30] Interviewer: When you say he kept shabbat, you mean Friday night for you meant shabbat lunchtime?
[00:51:34] Joe Faraj: Right. We didn’t put the fire or the stove on Saturday. We started it from Friday night.
[00:51:44] Interviewer: And the big get-together was lunchtime.
[00:51:46] Joe Faraj: Lunchtime, yeah. Breakfast -
[00:51:48] Interviewer: [overlap] Friday night.
[00:51:49] Joe Faraj: Breakfast and lunch. Breakfast was together and lunch was together.
[00:51:54] Interviewer: And breakfast was bera [ph] tbit.
[00:51:55] Joe Faraj: That’s right. Of course…
[00:51:58] Interviewer: Brown eggs.
[00:51:59] Joe Faraj: Brown eggs Saturday morning. And Tbit for lunch.
[00:52:05] Interviewer: Where was the eggplant? The eggplant [inaudible].
[00:52:10] Joe Faraj: Eggplant with the breakfast.
[00:52:14] Interviewer: So tell me about the breakfast please.
[00:52:16] Joe Faraj: Well the breakfast was mainly salad, brown eggs and eggplant, fried eggplant. I personally like the raw eggplant so they kept pieces for me raw.
[00:52:33] Interviewer: Ah, raw? With salt on it?
[00:52:35] Joe Faraj: No salt.
[00:52:38] Interviewer: Okay. What about the tbit? Can you tell us about the tbit? Because it’s different than other non-Sephardi or non - you know, even non-Iraqi.
[00:52:49] Joe Faraj: The tbit, basically, you cook the chicken with the rice. And you leave it on a very low heat overnight. So you start Friday afternoon and you leave it on charcoal and it stays warm until Saturday noon. And Saturday noon you eat it.
[00:53:14] Interviewer: And what you cook the chicken -
[00:53:15] Joe Faraj: And when you cook it overnight it gives it a try nice…taste.
[00:53:26] Interviewer: And what do you do with the chicken? You stuff the chicken?
[00:53:30] Joe Faraj: Yeah, you stuff the chicken with a rice and meat and spice.
[00:53:38] Interviewer: Tell me now, you remember the taste of being overnight with charcoal. Have you done it here in Canada?
[00:53:46] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:53:46] Interviewer: In the oven?
[00:53:47] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:53:47] Interviewer: Does it taste the same?
[00:53:49] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:53:50] Interviewer: It does?
[00:53:51] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:53:52] Interviewer: It tastes the same as the charcoal?
[00:53:53] Joe Faraj: Yeah. Well, not, you don’t have the charcoal taste but basically what I do here, I cook the - I like turkey instead of chicken. I cook it in a pressure cooker and I leave it on low heat and it gives it the same taste as overnight. Then I take it and I put the rice with it and it will have the same taste as the tbit.
[00:54:25] Interviewer: You cook the rice after the chicken?
[00:54:27] Joe Faraj: Yes.
[00:54:27] Interviewer: Not together?
[00:54:29] Joe Faraj: No.
[00:54:32] Interviewer: And when do you cook the rice?
[00:54:34] Joe Faraj: The - I cook the turkey in a pressure cooker.
[00:54:40] Interviewer: Okay.
[00:54:40] Joe Faraj: And I leave it there for six, seven hours in the pressure cooker on very low heat. The pressure cooker gives it the taste of overnight cooking. Then I take it and put it in a different pot with the rice and leave it for about an hour and the rice be ready.
[00:55:07] Interviewer: And this is a recipe your sisters follow too? Only you?
[00:55:10] Joe Faraj: Me.
[00:55:11] Interviewer: Only you.
[00:55:12] Joe Faraj: Yeah.
[00:55:13] Interviewer: Okay, because I don’t know that recipe. You have to teach it to me. Okay now I’d like to know how you describe yourself in terms of your identity. What do you feel? Jewish? Canadian? What’s your identity?
[00:55:33] Joe Faraj: My identity is Canadian with the Jewish religion and not a Jewish with Canadian. First thing is Canadian. I feel Canadian. With the religion of Jewish.
[00:55:50] Interviewer: And do you consider yourself a refugee or an immigrant?
[00:55:55] Joe Faraj: Do I consider…?
[00:55:56] Interviewer: Do you consider yourself like a Jewish refugee that came here or an immigrant?
[00:56:02] Joe Faraj: Immigrant. Not a refugee.
[00:56:06] Interviewer: Where is home for you?
[00:56:07] Joe Faraj: Montreal.
[00:56:11] Interviewer: And what identity do you want to pass on to your children?
[00:56:22] Joe Faraj: Only think I would like to leave to them is the golden rule. To follow through their life. Because this is what my father said: follow the golden rule and I will be very happy to see you - to have a straight, honest person.
[00:56:44] Interviewer: What’s the golden rule?
[00:56:45] Joe Faraj: Don’t do to the [inaudible] what you don’t want done to you.
[00:56:51] Interviewer: And the language you speak to the children?
[00:56:57] Joe Faraj: English.
[00:56:59] Interviewer: And the grandchildren?
[00:57:00] Joe Faraj: I guess English and French.
[00:57:03] Interviewer: And French, good. Well you obviously have never been back to Baghdad but were you back to Israel?
[00:57:11] Joe Faraj: A few times.
[00:57:13] Interviewer: And how do you feel about it now?
[00:57:18] Joe Faraj: As a visitor, I don’t mind. To live back there, I have my doubts.
[00:57:23] Interviewer: Why would you say that?
[00:57:24] Joe Faraj: Because I still feel there is aflaya [ph], which is discrimination against the Sephardi.
[00:57:37] Interviewer: I think now there is many more Sephardi [inaudible] statistically. So you don’t think -
[00:57:46] Joe Faraj: I think if my memory is right Herzl said he hates the Arab because they look like the Sephardi.
[00:57:57] Interviewer: Oh you mean he hates the Sephardi because they look like Arabs.
[00:58:00] Joe Faraj: No. He doesn’t like the Arabs because they look like the Sephardim.
[00:58:06] Interviewer: Herzl said that?
[00:58:07] Joe Faraj: Yeah.
[00:58:08] Interviewer: And we consider him a hero? Okay, last question, what message would you like to give anyone who would listen to this interview?
[00:58:23] Joe Faraj: Be straight, honest in your life. And have a straight life and not a crooked life.
[00:58:32] Interviewer: And for your children?
[00:58:34] Joe Faraj: The same thing.
[00:58:38] Interviewer: Thank you very much Joe. Thank you for your participation with Sephardi Voices. Thanks for a lovely, lovely interview. And thanks for teaching us a few lessons in life. And…you are all a beacon to all of us who followed.
[00:58:56] Joe Faraj: Thank you very much.
[00:58:58] Interviewer: Thank you.