Lisette Shashoua Interview Transcript

Interviewee’s Name: Lisette Shashoua

Reference Number: N/A

Interviewer: Dr. Henry Green

Date of Interview: February 20, 2011

Location of Interview: Fort Lauderdale

Cameraman: Trevor Green

Total time: 1:11:10

Lisette Shashoua: Born in Iraq. Arrived in Tehran at the end of 1969, for two months. Arrived in Israel. Arrived in London (three months). Arrived in Chicago. Arrived in Montreal in 1970 (until 1990). Arrived in Florida. 

I’m here with Lisette Shashoua, it is for the project Sephardi Voices. It’s a project to record and preserve the stories of Jews displaced from North Africa and the Middle East. It is February 20, 2011, we are in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, my name is Henry Green and the cameraman is Trevor Green.

Let’s begin by telling me something about your family background, where your family was from, where you lived.

Both my Grandparents were from very wealthy backgrounds. My father’s father, his name was Shaoul Shashoua, he—his house was very nice, one on the water, and in 1926 or ‘27 when there was a king coming to Iraq, Iraq being part of the Ottoman Empire, had not—was not a capital. Baghdad, I mean, had no homes good enough, you know, palatial homes. And Mrs. Bell, at the time, who was British, chose my grandfather’s house for the king to live in, and they—and I think he gave them the house for a few years until they built a palace for the king. So the king used to come on horseback to meet my grandfather. So both my grandparents were self-made, and they, you know, bought property and worked in commerce and this is how it started. It didn’t stay long.

Do you have personal memories, could you tell me some personal memories of your grandparents?

Yes, well my grandfather was gone when I was born, Shaoul Shashoua, but my mother’s grandparents were there and I have very vivid and fond memories of them, but I remember going by car with my grandmother, Shaoul Shashoua’s wife, and my aunts, my dad’s sisters, we used to go for drives every day, you know, in the car, and once in a while they used to want to go to the house, they used to call it the palace, Casa Shashoua in Arabic. And I didn’t know, I mean I wasn’t—they just said, “Look, this was our home,” but eventually part of it fell in the water, because it was so close to the water that part of it—“That’s the part that fell in the water,” this was our home from far. I remember that. And then maybe years later, there used to be a program on TV, and that was a comedy, and one guy goes on the TV, he says, “Casa Shashoua,” I said, “Oh, what’s that,” it turned out they were talking about our home. Like, this woman who was tired was cleaning the house, and the husband tells her, “You don’t have Casa Shashoua to clean,” and I was so surprised because at home nobody talked about it. Nobody did. And then now I hear more and more about it, it’s written in the archives, there it’s described, and the gentleman who bought it still is trying to make like a museum out of it, and putting plaques in it saying that the kin lived in it and all that. So now it’s become like a heritage piece.

Do you have memories of them in the house at meals or for holidays? 

In this particular house?

When you grew up, I mean.

Yeah, I mean, of course, this particular house was sold and evacuated way before I was born. There was another house that was built after that on the water, and for my grandparents—which, also, there was a tragedy, we lost an uncle and they had to leave—but they rented it to the British consulate, that house that belonged to my grandfather. And I moved in, we moved in with my parents to my maternal grandparents. So we were also on the water on Abu Nawa Street, and of course I have memories of that, and we had a big garden which my aunts, my mother’s sisters, grew up in, and even Ted’s aunts here. His mom, his aunts, everybody. All our aunts and uncles grew up in that garden, they have the best memories ever.

What would happen in the garden? Were there kids playing different activities?

Kids playing, I think in my parents’ time they even had cows, and they had chickens, and they used to milk the cow to have fresh milk. And they used to dress up, we have pictures of his mom and my mom all dressed up, taking pictures like in the movies. I don’t know if they kind of dreamt up little plays and games, they lived in that garden practically, they all came, it was very open house, everywhere, everyone had open homes. But when there’s a big garden and children, you know, there’s no rules, people just came and rang the bell. But I’m talking about my mom’s time, when I grew up in that house, I had friends too, but my grandparents were—my grandfather and my grandmother, my mom’s, were very well educated, they were from the Allianz, they used to read Victor Hugo, La Hotel—and my grandfather’s sister used to live with us, and she used to tell us stories before we went to bed, because I used to sleep in the same room with her, and in the summer we would sleep on the rooftops, under the stars and the moon, and right overlooking the water, and you hear the rippling of the water, and we used to put water in a porcelain, not a porcelain, what are they called, tunga, they called them a tunga, they were made of clay, you put the water in and because the clay is porous, the water evaporates and the water cools down, and this was upstairs on the roof at night. And the water was like the most delicious water I’ve ever had. And the air was kind of, you know, it was dry air, beautiful. And so it is one of my fondest memories ever, you know. 

And you said you slept with your aunt, or—?

My father’s, my grandfather’s sister.

And could you describe what your bedroom was like? Do you remember what it looked like, and—?

I remember what it looked like. It had four beds, because the girls who worked for us in the house slept in the room with us. Because we were many people in the house. There was my parents, my grandparents, my two sisters, so we slept with… there were four people in the room. And it was a very happy, very safe feeling. 

In the garden, were there just—when people would come and visit and play in the garden, was it just Jewish or did also your Muslim friends come and play?

Some Muslim friends would come and play, my parents had a lot of very nice Muslim friends at the time. And the garden, we had grapes, we had apples, we had pomegranates, we had figs, and I climbed on the fig trees. It was delicious, you know, we had a lot of oranges and another kind of orange that’s very sour that I’ve never seen anywhere except in Iraq. And my grandmother used to pick all those oranges and make juice out of it.

[10:05]

Did you learn special recipes or things from watching your mother?

No, not really. We have a book that has recipes, they used to make tomato paste from tomatoes, a lot of tomato paste, they used to make date syrup out of dates, in big vats, you know, in the garden, I mean, it was a very, very happy atmosphere when I was a child.

Did your—tell me then, something about your parents. How did they meet, when did they get married?

My mother was in a play, she was in a play at school. I forget the name of the play, maybe Ted’s mom would remember. And my dad saw her in that play—he was educated in England, my dad. So he came back from boarding school, and when he saw my mom in the play, he fell in love with her and he wanted to marry her.

How old was your mother then?

She must’ve been nineteen or something.

And your dad?

Probably in his twenties.

And did their education—could you tell me something about their education?

Yeah, my dad was educated in England, he went to London School of Economics. He did have to come back to help his dad eventually, I don’t know if… and my mom went to the Allianz and her education was very much French and English. And they were really, my parents were really intellectuals, they were always reading the Times, the Newsweek, the Readers Digests, from cover to cover. Books, my dad used to read a book a day practically sometimes. We had Agatha Christie books, we had James Bond when he first came out, he had all kinds of books, my dad. And they really used to–and my grandparents, my grandfather used to read more French, and always, always reading books.

What language did you speak in the house then?

I was brought up with—my parents spoke to me in English to start, because they wanted me to have good English base. But of course we had, I had, a nanny and we had a cook and a cleaning lady, and a driver. So they all spoke Arabic at home, and we—everybody spoke Arabic to them, when I went to school, everybody spoke Arabic. So I started switching to English and Arabic. And then once a friend of my dad, Maurice Shedad, came over and I was talking and I was mixing English and Arabic. And he told me, “What’s this broken language?” I speak English or Arabic, what—and it seemed like, I must’ve been five, it seemed like kind of a decision I made. Okay, if I have to choose a language by now, Arabic became easier, because it’s in fashion and all my friends speak it. So I switched to Arabic, but at school we had an English teacher who couldn’t speak Arabic. So they used to take me from class to class to translate if she had something important to tell the class. So it felt very good.

What—the nanny, the cook the people who slept in your room, were they Muslims?

No, they were Christian, but at the time of my parents, I think they might have had one or two Muslims. We did have a gardener who was Muslim, and he was very loyal to my parents. At the time of the Farhud—I wasn’t born then—but at the time of the Farhud it was the Muslim gardener that, he didn’t live in the house, this was the house that became the British consulate. They had a little house, a little shed or home, in the garden, and he and his wife and his children lived there for a long time. Even when it was rented out, the British consulate, my dad stipulated that they keep him in the house while they are renting, which he did. And he lived in that house for a very long time. And he was the one who protected my parents in the Farhud.

Your father’s name, could you tell me your father’s name?

Manasseh Shashoua.

And your mother’s name?

Musli Shashoua.

In school—you went to which school?

I went to Menahem Daniel, elementary school, then to Frank Eny and Shamash. They were amalgamated secondary schools. And then I went to university, Al-Hikma University in Baghdad.

Did… in your elementary school and secondary school, were they coed or girls only?

It was coed, it was one Jewish school, we had two Jewish schools, Nahem and the Frank Enie as elementary. And we studied the French, English, Arabic, and Hebrew alphabet in four languages when we were five or six, you know. I mean grade one, by grade one we were six or something like that or seven, and we studied all four languages, but then we were not allowed to continue with Hebrew, more than like half an hour, just to study the Bible or something like that, our Hebrew became much weaker, and we studied everything else in Arabic, English, and French. And we continued in the secondary school, we did the certificate for French, we did the Cambridge for England, and we did… and we did the GCE for England, and then we sat for the SAT exams. So we really studied everything in three languages: French, English, and Arabic. It depended what class we were studying, so geometry, geometry and trigonometry, were in three languages. Each class if we were studying for the certificate in France, we were studying in French. If we were studying for the GCE, we studied in English. And we just switched. From language to language without realizing, you know, and in Arabic, of course, because we had to study all that in Arabic as well.

When you were out of the classroom, what did you and your friends speak?

Arabic. By then it was Arabic, mixed. And my friends used to make fun of me, that I’m what, English? “What do you think you are?” And also, I made a conscious effort to stop mixing the English with the Arabic. And then we went to university, and university was the continuation of Boston College, it was opened by the Jesuit fathers. So it was in English, like mainly in English, and we spoke to the fathers mainly in English, and then everybody started to speak English. Mixing English and Arabic, and it was okay. 

And where did French come in then, if you spoke English and Arabic?

French was the education, really, in school. My mom was strong in French, she used to tutor me every day, and we had a French teacher from France to teach us the French accent, an English teacher from England to teach us the accent, it was very—I realize now—studied, and how rich the whole, you know, the whole system was. I mean we were really being prepared to be anywhere in the world, and it was the best thing, I remember we had an older teacher who used to tell us, “Jews, the only weapon a Jew has is his education.” Not really weapon, that’s not the word she used, but the only strength a Jew can have is his education. And it’s true, because that’s the only thing we were left with by the time we left Iraq. 

What kind of extracurricular activities did you do then after school, with your friends?

We went to movies, we went to movies together, boys and girls. We went to movies, we had parties at the time, dancing parties. We used to go to picnics, but all that before the ‘67 War. Once the ‘67 War came, things started to get really…

And your—you have some siblings, what are their names?

[19:54]

Hilda, and Evelyn.

What’s the order?

Evelyn is my eldest sister, and Hilda is the middle one, and I’m the youngest.

And what was your relationship with your sisters?

Well they were a little older than me at the time, and they left when the leaving was good, they left with a passport. So Evelyn, my sister, left to England, and then moved to Chicago after she got married, and Hilda left, was one of the last Jews to leave, and she went to Chicago and then on to Montreal.

And what years did they leave?

In the sixties, early sixties.

Did your parents belong to certain Jewish clubs or—?

Yeah, there was at the time the Zalro, which was a Jewish club. It was closed after ‘48, or, you know, I don’t know when it was closed, but not in my time. We also belonged to the Mansour club, which was… and my dad used to have racehorses, so he used to go to the races, and he had a lodge right next to the king, a cubicle or whatever. And he had… actually, many of the boys remember the names of our horses, one of them was called Dixie, and he used to win all the time. And somebody must have been paid to trip him and break his leg, and stop winning. 

Did you go to the races and watch Dixie?

Yes, I used to go with my dad when I was a child. And I used to go to the stables, we had stables. And his partner with the horses was a Muslim gentleman. So all that was the happy times, what I’m talking about, before the king was killed. When the king was killed in ‘58, the races were abolished, and my dad had to ship the horse to Egypt, and they were stolen. I mean, everything went downhill.

Can you tell me something about religious life, did you celebrate the holidays at home?

Yes, we celebrated the holidays. All of them, like Purim, Passover, Shavuot. Hanukkah wasn’t a very big deal for us then. They used to give us money on Purim, we used to play cards, it was the only time we could play cards. I remember, when I was a child, we used to go on boats and play cards on the boats. We used to go on picnics, and, you know, the weather was beautiful most, all the time. So it was a very nice life, we didn’t realize how beautiful it was.

Let me take you to a memory, for example, the Passover Seder. What would that have been like, and who would’ve come?

Well, we had—everybody did it with only the family. Because we all… everybody lived with their parents or grandparents, nobody separated. Especially boys, they stayed with the parents. So we lived with my mother’s parents at the time we grew up. So it was my grandparents, my grandfather’s sister, my sisters, mom and dad and myself. And my grandfather’s sister would sit and read up to the end of the Seder, and I used to read with her. And the different generations in the house, I was talking about it, it was amazing. Because I had two examples of couples, my grandparents and my parents, so there was two couples in the house, two marriages. And it’s very interesting and it’s very rich to observe the different relations between people.

Were there special kinds of foods cooked during Passover, do you remember?

We stopped eating bread, no yogurt, no beer. We had only the matzah, but it was homemade. Not by us, but it was made in the synagogue and it was delicious. And my dad used to come up with concoctions, pudding, butter and salt and so on. And of course, we used to make date syrup, the sweets where—we never made cakes, there was nothing like that. No cakes for Passover, it didn’t exist. We did coconut cookies, we did everything was natural like no bread, and then date syrup and nuts. And this was the sweets and fruit, and no cakes.

What kind of meat did you eat for Passover, did you eat meat?

Yeah, we ate rice. The Sephardi or the Iraqis, rice was never not kosher for Passover. Yogurt was questionable, actually yogurt was a no-no, and so was beer. But other than that, everything was—coke, some people were for it, some were not.

And one of the things that you talked about was a kind of family compound. Was it a Jewish neighbourhood, or was it mixed?

No, it was mixed. Jews were near each other, and many Jewish homes were on the water, which is really a lovely, lovely place, on the Tigris River. But we were near each other, but it was not a compound or a ghetto or anything, it was mixed with everybody else.

So there were Jewish shopkeepers, Muslim shopkeepers, Christian?

In my time, there were not many Jewish shopkeepers left, because when I grew up, it was after the Taskrit, the Taskrit was in ‘51, when at least 150,000 Jews left Iraq. When I was growing, we were about seven thousand. And then it dwindled to three, to two, et cetera. One more thing I would like to say about Baghdad was there was the low tide and the high tide, and when it was the low tide, they used to be—the nomads would come and just camp there, and they used to plant zucchinis, and do you remember any of that, and cucumber, and okra, and fava beans, and they used to pick it up at seven in the morning and they came knocking on the door, and they sold it to us, like it was just picked, you know. And that was, I mean, these things were irreplaceable memories.

Did you wear any special dress, or was it western?

Western, absolutely. And my mom and dad were extremely modern, you know, extremely modern, beautiful French halter dresses.

And they bought this in Baghdad?

Yeah, in Baghdad, there were stores that sold it.

Were they involved in any Zionist organizations, or were you involved?

No, no, no, at the time we grew up, the word Zionism was illegal to even be mentioned, and we were scared to even mention Israel at home. We wouldn’t even draw a Star of David. That already is material for hanging, even in the best of times, even when the king was there, no Stars of David, no Zionism, no Israel. Everyone was living there, was brought to feel that Iraq is their country, that’s it. I mean, we knew Israel was Jewish, but we did not talk about Israel. I mean, even the parents were careful not to tell us anything, so that we feel—we don’t endanger ourselves or anything.

So did your parents tell you to hide your Jewishness when you went out, or—?

No, we didn’t have to hide our Jewishness. The way we presented ourselves is, we were Jewish but not Zionist. Because they always associated a Jew with a Zionist, and if you’re a Zionist you’re a traitor, at all times, even at the time of the king. You don’t say—Zionist is a very bad word to say.

So for example when you would have the Passover Seder, and there’s a phase that says, next year in Jerusalem, and—?

Oh, that of course we said. And the prayers, if it says Israel, we say it, you know. It wasn’t, I mean—nobody was policing it, especially in the house, but the prayers are prayers. And anyway, we didn’t understand what we were praying, because we weren’t allowed to study Hebrew much.

Did you learn about Zionism in your schools?

[29:55]

No, never! I mean we barely learned ABCD in Hebrew, and then our Hebrew teacher would just tell us stories of the Bible. Like in Passover, he would tell us a story of Passover. Hanukkah, Purim, that’s all we knew. That’s what kills me. We didn’t even know Abraham was born in Iraq, in Ur. I remember reading the old testament in Arabic, and it says Ur, and I studied Ur in history, because it’s supposed to be one of the first cities in the world, with the queen, and we have that grainy black and white picture of the queen with her daisy flowers, which apparently they still had in Iraq, the flowers of the queen Zenobia, and I did not associate that it’s the same Ur. We didn’t know, we used to have two prophets, one of them was Ezra, and two prophets that are very precious, and we used to go and pray to them. But again I never knew why we had a prophet in Iraq. Nobody explained to me that Judaism started in Iraq or was in Iraq, the Talmud was written in Babylon, I never knew that. And if I did, I would’ve tried to take even more interest. I went to see Babylon, I didn’t know Nebuchadnezzar had brought the Jews and all of that. I was proud of it, Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization, but I never associated Judaism with Mesopotamia, I wasn’t aware.

When you said these two prophets, was there a pilgrimage site you went to?

Yeah, yeah, and there used to be a site they went to in Shavuot. But my parents, never, they weren’t religious. It was near the Hillah, it’s called the Hillah, and there was another. Isaiah, they used to call him Isaiah, which is Ezra. And I forget where the other one was, but it was called the Shifa, and now it’s become a Muslim prophet. And now they were erasing, they had all kinds of programs trying to salvage—the Hebrew writings had been erased, because it was always taken care of by Jews. But the Muslims respected that prophet, our—it became a Muslim prophet for them.

Did you go as a family to go to the pilgrimage site for Shavuot, or did you go with the congregation?

No, I went with my friends, with family friends. My parents didn’t even go. I think since there were bombs in, there was a bomb in the synagogue, I think you heard about it, in ‘51, to get the Jews out or whatever. Since then, my parents didn’t really go to synagogue, my mother was afraid to go. And I remember we used to visit Iran, and that’s when my mother went to synagogue, on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. In Baghdad, she was afraid to go.

But you went in Iran to synagogue?

I went to synagogue in Iran, the first time I went. I must’ve been six years old, and it was in Iran.

Did you decide to leave, or was it your parents? Tell me the story of your leaving, how did it begin, was there discussions over dinner, or—?

Ok, well, first of all, a brief history. In ’58, the king was killed. The king was the king of Jordan’s first cousin. From ‘58 to ’62, there was Abd al-Karim Qasim. Abd al-Karim Qasim was good to the Jews, but he also had a partner with him, who did the ‘58 resolution: Abdul Salam Arif. Abdul Salam Arif turned against Abd al-Karim, Abd al-Karim put him in prison, tried him, he was going to be executed, he then pardoned him. As soon as he pardoned him, let him out of prison, Abdul Salam Arif came back, and killed Karim, and he was a Baathist. So the Baathist movement started in ‘62. From ’62, the Jews were not allowed to leave the country anymore. So all the happy times I talked about, all this was before ‘62. 

’62, the Jews were not allowed to leave the country, they also–I think it was in ’62, when we were not allowed to sell our property, I think it was ‘62, but it was way before ‘67, the ‘67 War. And then when the ‘67 War started, they cut off our phones, saying that all the Jews were spying with Israel. So all our phones were cut off, everybody was fired, anybody who was employed, they sent all the companies letters to fire any Jews they had. So any Jews who was employed was fired. There was no unemployment insurance there, there was nothing. So people who were on salaries were starting to go hungry. At school, kids were starting to faint, they were so hungry. You give them a sandwich, they’ll eat half of it. Why? “Well, my mom needs to eat.” People were too embarrassed to say they had no food left. They were looking in garbage cans at the end. It was just a regression that happened from ’62, but it got much worse after ‘67, after the war, and funnily enough, Saddam was behind the first attempt to kill Abd al-Karim and the second one, he was in the background the whole time. And they followed the Mufti thing and the Mufti was influenced by Hitler, so they really did the same thing which happened to the Jews in Germany, which we didn’t realize, we didn’t want to believe it was happening to us. 

But gradually, all the permits were revoked, money was frozen in the bank of Jewish people, and then they started to come at night, ransack the house looking for evidence of spying, take the husband or sometimes even the child, and you never see them again. They tortured them, et cetera, and then this woman, they took her son, they came for one of her sons, she told them he was studying in England, and they came to see her, the other was sick, they said, “Oh, you have another one, bring him.” She said, “He’s sick, he’s not the one you’re looking for.” “We just want to ask him some questions, we’ll bring him back in two hours.” Well, two months later, after her not being able to see him or visit him in any prison, she was able to finally see him hanging in the square. When she went to cry over her son, they started to throw stones at her, she’s the mother of a spy. 

[37:34] 

Did any of this kind of stuff happen with your family, did they come and ransack your—?

Thank God, they didn’t, but every time I would go to sleep and a car would pass by, I would wake up and kneel and pray that the car doesn’t stop. One, two in the morning, any time a car passed by, and then I kneel and said, “Thank you, God.” I learned, I taught myself to read Shema Israel and the worst of times, or just before, I remember it took me an hour and a half to go through the whole thing. Eventually, I learned it by heart. But I just needed something to believe in.

So the war comes in ‘67, and then after that, your family decides to leave, or do you leave, or—?

No, I was going to university then, in ‘67. We had friends, you know, we made friends with the Christian students, the Muslim students, we were feeling free, we had the Jesuit fathers who treated us like kings, we had self-esteem, because our school was very strict, and here we are going to plays and going to musicals and debates, and, you know, the photography classes and playing tennis and all that, and having new friends. And in ’67, when the war happened… those new friends, the Jewish students were quite good in class. So they used to ask us to explain to them, in order to help them with the school, things like that. The ‘67 War comes, they don’t talk to us anymore. So… most of them, you know. Some of them stayed friends, and then while I had the midterm exams, which is a very important time, it was the 27^th of January, 1969. By then they had already been collecting—I mean, we had no phones, right. So people would come to your house and say, “They just arrested so and so, they just arrested so and so.” And you had no idea where they were, you would just hear, “Oh, we heard so and so might have been killed from torture,” et cetera, this one might have been killed, but it’s all hearsay now. 

Then all of a sudden on TV, we see people we know in this box, I don’t know fourteen, fifteen, sixteen of them, all in a box, and they were all being tried for treason. And some of them are seventeen, some of them are sixteen, that young boy I told you about was one of them, a cousin of ours was one of them, this was another person… anyways, so all of a sudden, they’re all being tried for spying for Israel. Some of them were tried for a bridge they were supposed to have bombed in ‘62. We are now in ‘69, these boys are seventeen. So ‘62 to ‘69, how many years, seven years. So they were what, nine years old when it happened? They didn’t even bother to cover their tracks. They didn’t even bother to, you know—the Mickey Mouse stories they came out, the Mickey Mouse trial and the allegations, they didn’t even cover to make it seem realistic. 

Anyway, so all of a sudden we heard that they tried them to death. But you kind of feel that there’s no crying, et cetera, and I had to wake up and go to school, the cook she still worked for us, who was not Jewish, she came and said, “Don’t go to school, they’re all hanging in the square.” They hanged them! They hanged fourteen people, ten of them were Jewish, you know. And the others were decoys. One of them was Pakistani, the other, they were all decoys, I don’t think they had anything, any of them. Maybe one of them was a rich guy, the Pakistani, the other was just—it was just Saddam starting and the Baath Party starting to get rid of their enemies. 

So they used the Jews first to say that they are spies, anybody connected to the Jews must be a spy, so they want to get rid of, you put them with a Jew, they’re spies instantly. And you know, there were thousands of people dancing around them. Thousands. Dancing around the corpses, touching them, feeling them, breastfeeding. Little girls, ten years old, wearing gold and silver, and running to the square. And the square was like seven minutes away from our house. We used to go in a taxi, six or seven of us. Five of us, whatever. The taxi driver is Muslim, I’m the first one he’s picking up. He’s describing them to me, and he’s so happy they got rid of the spies, he’s describing to me what they looked like hanging. And I can’t tell him to shut up, because if I do, I’m a spy too. I have to sympathize. I think I said, “I’m going to the university,” I mean, they heard the trials, it so obviously doesn’t make sense, doesn’t follow. And when we went there, I go to university thinking there’ll have some people like they’ll be sympathizing. Well, you go there, and they have banners up, and they’re laughing, and they say, “We welcome it, what the government did, we want more.” And they’re looking at us, we’re the next. 

So we were terrified, we were grieving, and we had to pretend we were happy with what the government did, and we had to sit an exam. So this was like the worst day of our lives. We all remember that day, it’s like the black day. Any 27^th of January, every year, I really remember these, this day and those poor people who were killed for nothing. They jacked up their ages to say that they’re eighteen and there could be a trial, they didn’t even give the real age. So this was the beginning of the end. We feel that, you’re either going to have to–so people tried to escape. Before that, in ‘62 when Jews were not allowed to leave anymore, people started to escape through Basra, which was an easier way to go. But by now, Basra was closed, and they started after the ‘67 War, they had people in an armchair sitting in front of the house, writing everything we do. We go for a walk, they write it down. Somebody goes to the house, they interrogate them. They’re following us everywhere, and they’re watching us in armchairs, you know, openly. People started to be afraid to come to the house. My grandfather was having an operation in London during the war, but he decided to come back. When he came back they ran after him, who are you, what are you doing, he’s the owner of the house you know. 

[45:30] 

So it was hard times, and they sent somebody to the house, to check and see that he really did have an operation, he had to show them the stitches, to show that he really did have an operation, he didn’t go to spy. He’s seventy-something years old. So it became intolerable, and then the Jesuit fathers who had our university were kicked out, they said they were spies, they gave them forty-eight hours, or seventy-two hours, to leave. And then they eventually closed the school, at least, I had to move to Baghdad College to finish my school. But the whole time we’re going to university we’re being threatened, “They’re going to get you out of university, you won’t be able to continue,” and each time we went to university we had to pass by a military zone. And with our names, they used to check our IDs. We had university IDs, but if they checked, they could know we were Jewish. Some of us were detained and taken to prison. At university now, they wouldn’t, you know… students started to inform. They informed on one girl, saying she drew a Star of David on the blackboard. Which is something, as I said, that we wouldn’t dream of doing. They took her to prison, and she was the only Jew in class. And he was not Muslim, the guy was Christian, who informed. 

They started to encourage them to talk about the fifth column, and the fifth column was Jews. And for them to ingratiate themselves with the Baath party, which was the “in” party, they started to give away the names of Jewish people they knew, just to have fun. So I had some friends who were kicked in the stomach, in the head, when they were leaving the university, some of them were threatened, you know, “If you come back again, we’ll kill you,” and they stopped coming. Some of them they told them, “We’ll take you, we’ll kill you and throw you in the ditch, you’re a Jew, it’s like killing a dog.” Well, dogs in Baghdad didn’t count for much, unfortunately.

So you’re… your family at this point decided to leave, and—?

My family couldn’t leave. I had my grandmother there, we had a lot of property, as you remember me saying, we were very wealthy. So unfortunately, we had a lot of property, which had been frozen for a while now, from ‘63 practically. And I had a grandmother, and my parents were hoping one day they could sell some property, and the money in the bank was frozen now, and you could only take out three hundred dinars a month to live on, your own money, and so they couldn’t leave, but I had, I was going to go crazy. And I had finished by then, I waited until I finished university, which was the end of ‘69, and I would have really… none of the young could handle it anymore. So I decided to go, and my dad was very scared, because you are taking a chance with your life and your parents’ life. Because if I managed to escape unscathed—which is a chance you are taking, because they had arrested many people before me—they could still come and arrest my parents, they could still come back to my parents and they can be in trouble for sending a girl away. But I was over eighteen, so that’s what my dad told me, they came and asked him. And he said, “She’s over eighteen, she went and ran away.” But he took a chance by letting me go.

And how did you go, or where did you go?

I escaped with another family. And Marseille Shamash took me, who told my dad, “I’ll take care of her,” and that’s why I’m very grateful to her. And we went through Iran.

How did you get to Iran?

We had to pass eight checkpoints, Iraqi checkpoints.

[50:04] 

By car, did you walk?

We had to go by car, we had to dress in a hijab. And it was like a movie, you know, there was a driver who was helping us get to Arbil. And we had to go at the time that he was leaving, he was leaving at twelve so we had to be there at that time. And it was like, you fill up your car and you go, but we had to be planned, it was a family, we had to be together. It was the lady, her children, her husband, myself, so we were six people. We were three adults, and three children. So there was still space for another adult to sit up front. And the driver knew he was taking us, so he tried to bring someone, not an official, like an Arab or Kurd, to sit up front so we’d look like his family. But before that, there was a general, standing to take the car that’s going up to Arbil. He was going to come up with us, we were shaking, but the baby started to cry, so the general said–oh, thank God for that. So the general left and the driver went to go grab someone to play the part, like an Arab with the big turban, and then we passed the first checkpoint. And the baby was asleep, miraculously. So they saw the baby blissfully asleep and left us alone. The second one, the baby was crying. They saw the baby crying, they didn’t want to deal with it, so they left us alone. And each time we would approach a checkpoint, we started praying. And we had, you know, we kind of–all I had was my driver’s license, I had no IDs, I didn’t even bring money with me because my dad was afraid to give me money if they find too much money on me, because I’m escaping. They already arrested one hundred and fifty people this month before, and this is a story also for you. 

So we ended up going to Arbil, to the driver’s house, who made food for us, and we didn’t know how long we were going to stay there. And finally… and he kept saying, “I don’t know, an hour, two hour, today tomorrow, I don’t know.” And it was hot, and a few hours later, somebody else came to pick us up. And he was kind of a smuggler. And we were joining the husband of the lady with the kids, he went ahead of time in case he gets caught, so that his children and family doesn’t get caught. So he was waiting for us in Kurdistan, with Barazani. And we went the day before, because there was going to be a coup d’etat, so my dad said, “I’m not going to send her,” so we didn’t go. But then the lady said they’re going the next day, and my dad nearly was not going to send me, I thought I lost it. And miraculously, he had the courage, and he realized that if he doesn’t do it now, I’m probably not going to have another chance. So the husband–there were no phones in Kurdistan, there, anyway. He freaked out because we came a day later, he thought something happened to us. So he was like all shaky. And another guy came with us, and we ended up in the jeep, and there was no roads, no lights in the middle of the night. 

We got lost, and we saw some army people who came to see us and told, “Oh, what are you doing here,” and they knew the smuggler and all. He said, “Oh, I’m taking the family out for a drive in the middle of then night,” and one way for my dad to know that we really did arrive safe was, he cut off a quarter of a dinner. And he had one quarter with the numbers, and the lady we were with had to give the other quarter to show that we arrived safely. While she was doing that, there was a strong wind, the quarter blew away. 

[54:50]

I didn’t have the quarter anymore, there was no light to see and find it, it’s windy. Anyways, so we left a note, “The quarter is lost, but don’t worry, we arrived.” And we heard so much about that log they keep talking about at the border, but finally, all it was was a twig that the guy had to kind of push over. But they had to know, the Sochnut, they had to have our names, they had to know we were coming, and it was organized by now. And we were able to cross to Iran, and from Iran, I forget where we were. A place, I think you never forget it. The place we crossed in Kurdistan was called Darband. No, I don’t know, I’m sorry I forgot. 

And then from there, you went where?

From Iran to Tehran. And I stayed in Tehran for two months. And it looks like, well Israel wanted all the youth because we were all educated by now, they wanted them all to go there, so they didn’t want us to go anywhere else. I was going to go to Canada because my sister was there, but Canada wouldn’t give me papers right away. So I was lucky enough that I had my other sister in the States, and we were very grateful that they managed to get me a green card in two months. I mean, the green card they did very quickly. 

In Tehran, they got the green card?

While we were in Tehran they got me the green card, because I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I didn’t want to go to Israel, for sure, because my parents were there. Iraq, I mean. My parents were in Iraq, so it would endanger them if I was to go to Israel. So the last place I wanted to go was Israel. And then I went to London.

From Tehran.

Tehran, I actually did stop in Israel to visit, and then I went to London for three months, stayed with my aunt there, the… Israel, I just went for a very short time, like a week or so.

You flew direct from Tehran to Tel Aviv?

Yes, and then to London. I stayed three months In London with my aunt, and then I went to Chicago, and then eventually from Chicago to Montreal, and then to Florida.

And why did you go from Chicago to Montreal? Was that from one sister to the other?

Yeah, because I think initially I found it easier to be in Montreal, because I didn’t need a car, it was a smaller place, I had a lot of family there. So I went to Montreal and that’s it, now I’m in Florida.

Let me ask you a few questions about this experience of leaving. Did you know that JAIS or the Sochnut were involved in all this, or did you—?

We didn’t know anything when we were in Baghdad, and they were. They paid for each of us, and they paid the government for each of us, the government knew we were leaving, but they didn’t want to make it easy. And plus, they’re getting paid for each head, you know. But we also had to pay, so someone was taking money from both sides. And it wasn’t the Kurds, it was the smugglers. When Barazani’s son found out, he was very upset that they are taking money too, because some people couldn’t afford to pay.

So at the very end, when you were crossing into Iran, you began to understand that it was Sochnut or JAIS or—?

We knew that somebody was watching out, somebody was helping, but we only found out about–as soon as we got to Iran, somebody came in the bus with us, but didn’t talk to us. I think we were just being guarded, or I don’t know, we just realized that somebody was keeping us, I don’t know. I didn’t realize, but the gentleman we were with said, “This guy is watching us.”

When you went to Tehran.

We got to Tehran and then we saw the Sochnut and the JAIS and the–because I have an uncle there too. I was lucky enough to have an uncle in Iran, an aunt in London, a sister in Chicago, I was amongst the lucky ones. Many people had no choice, and they had to go to Israel and make the best of it. And they did, and they offered a lot to Israel, and they did a lot of good things.

[59:41] 

And in Montreal when you came, you were how old, roughly?

My early twenties.

You were married, not married?

No, I wasn’t.

So can you tell me something about coming to Montreal, and fining your husband, or—?

Well, Montreal was heaven, it was paradise, I mean what is there not to like about North America? Chicago is also paradise, London was paradise. Everything outside Iraq, the freedom, was incredible. I mean when we were in Iran, we had never seen snow in our lives. We started to ski, we didn’t know how to ski, we went with our winter clothes, with our pants, we skied, rented skis and we skied in the parking lot and we thought we were skiing. We went ice skating and we went to theaters, I mean, freedom was amazing. Finally, you could breathe, because once the ‘67 War came, we couldn’t meet anywhere, it was only in each other’s homes. There was no more meeting, no more activities, no clubs, we were kicked out of all the clubs in Baghdad, so you know, so this was freedom, coming to Canada was wonderful. I eventually became a flight attendant, and I could fly all over the world, except Baghdad, to see my parents, who were still left behind. My parents stayed twenty years behind. No telephones for twenty years, we couldn’t speak to them. They would write a letter, it would take three weeks to arrive. When I opened the letter, I don’t know if now, reading the letter, they are alive today, you know, while I’m reading the letter, or they’re gone. Because after we left, there were mass executions, you know, they went to homes and they killed whole families in their homes. There was a lot of terrorism happening, they were terrorizing people. And I didn’t talk about the torture, they were torturing all those people before hanging them, they arrested more people and tortured them, and the whole thing was done, I found out later with an East German doctor around. So it was all the same, that was done in Germany.

Did your parents finally get out of all that?

My parents, luckily – there was an Iran-Iraq War, where no Iraqis could leave anymore. Iran-Iraq War was over in 1990, twenty years later, they kind of… there were very few Jews left, so they treated them like everybody else. So they got their passport. So they decided to come for a visit, and then go back, and maybe sell some property, because now they can sell, maybe, twenty years later. So they came out, and the war started, against Iraq, thank god. So we kept them. But my dad, who was one of the wealthiest, son of the wealthiest Jews in Iraq, came out at age eighty with nothing. His brothers and sisters who left Iraq at different times, the forties, the fifties, the sixties, they never had any, they were not able to sell their land, because they were now denationalized when they left Iraq. And so, my dad came out with nothing, and my mom too. And both their parents were amongst the richest. And they still had land and property in their names.

And they lost everything.

They lost everything. And when they left, it was still in their name. I don’t know whose name it is now. And we were denationalized the minute we left. Me, when I escaped, I was denationalized ten days later. My sisters lost their passports eventually, and they were denationalized. And I don’t know if you know, in ‘51, all the Jews that left Iraq, were denationalized. So any Jew that left Iraq from ‘51 upwards that didn’t come back or renew their passport–and they wouldn’t renew your passport–they became denationalized and they lost everything. So my parents waited twenty years of missing weddings of their own children, the bar mitzvahs, the bat mitzvahs, they missed everything, and they came out with nothing at the end.

When they came, you had already been living twenty years in Montreal. 

Yes.

So when did you get married then?

I got married after they came out, I was lucky.

After they came out?

Yes. I had a small marriage and a divorce before. So they didn’t’ see that one, but they saw–it was a dream, I couldn’t dare dream of them one day walking me down an aisle. But they walked me down an aisle one day in 1993.

[1:05:00]

When you were living there between ‘70 and ‘90 in Montreal, did you spend time with the émigré community, other Iraqis, or—?

Yes, it was like a big family. I was friends with the people I worked with, the people I flew with. I intermingled with all the Canadians, with the Jewish communities, you know.

What were like the major problems you faced during those years? You spoke French, so—?

I had no problems, it was paradise. I mean, what problems do you have coming to North America, to Canada, to the United States, what problem can you have, what problem is there if you speak the languages, and this is what our education helped with. Here I am, I have rights, I have a job, I have respect, I have a passport, what more can you expect?

So now, we’re 2011, how do you see your identity now, how would you see yourself? If you described your identity to someone—

I see myself as North American, you know. I lived in – and I’m Canadian, I live in the States. And I see myself as North American Jewish background, and for the longest time when people would ask me where I was born, I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t talk about it, because I couldn’t say I’m born in Iraq, but I’m Jewish, I just didn’t want to get into it, and I didn’t want to label myself, but I do–and I am very proud to be of Iraqi Babylonian origin, but the trauma never leaves you. The trauma never, never, never leaves you. You’re always careful, you’re always scared, you’re always worried about… you know, it was very traumatizing, it was very bad experiences, it was terrifying, horrifying, and it never leaves you.

Is there anything special about your Sephardi heritage that you kept in Montreal, or that you think of in terms of your history?

Well, I only realized that, as I said, the Talmud was written in Babylon, I only started being proud of that, being of Sephardi origin. I didn’t think that we should be proud of being Sephardi, I always thought, I mean, everything that was western was more glamorous and more advanced, and more modern than us, and while we were there, we tried to be very modern, we had our parties, you know, our dancing parties. And some Iraqis who were out way before didn’t allow their children to go to dancing parties. Some, you know, very few, but still. And we were trying to keep up, and–I’m very proud of who I am, but the trauma, I feel that I am, I mean when especially when my parents weren’t around, it was like somebody cut me in the heart, because I couldn’t see them. I had parents, I couldn’t speak to them, my mother I worshipped and I couldn’t see her. I had a father who loved us, and I couldn’t see him. So… but, I mean even talking about it now, it feels a very heavy feeling. You feel marked.

I can understand. What message would you like to give to anyone who would listen to this or watch this, this video?

I am so afraid of history repeating itself, and I’m seeing it happening. And it’s very scary, but people don’t seem to understand. They keep saying it won’t happen here, it won’t happen there. People don’t believe. And I’m seeing many signs that are scaring me.

And is there anything you want to add that I didn’t ask?

I’m sure many people will be talking about the hard times in Baghdad as well. I mean, the torture and the stuff is not to be diminished, it’s a story by itself that we all lived through. I myself, thank God, personally wasn’t tortured. I did take sleeping pills with me when I was escaping, in order to commit suicide if I was caught. But what can I say? We should never underestimate the freedom of living in North America, we should be grateful, which we were and we are, and I wish everybody realizes what a privilege it is to live in this country to have rights. And I just hope to God that nobody usurps it or takes it for granted, to the point where we start losing it, and that’s what I’m afraid of.

Thank you, Lisette, for sharing your story with us. And on behalf of Sephardi Voices, I look forward to giving you the DVD so you can share it with your family.

Thank you very much.