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    The Strangers We Became: Lessons in Exile from One of Iraq's Last Jews
    The Strangers We Became: Lessons in Exile from One of Iraq's Last Jews
    The Strangers We Became: Lessons in Exile from One of Iraq's Last Jews
    Ebook288 pages5 hours

    The Strangers We Became: Lessons in Exile from One of Iraq's Last Jews

    By Cynthia Kaplan Shamash

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    This riveting and utterly unique memoir chronicles the coming of age of Cynthia Shamash, an Iraqi Jew born in Baghdad in 1963. When she was eight, her family tried to escape Iraq over the Iranian border, but they were captured and jailed for five weeks. Upon release, they were returned to their home in Baghdad, where most of their belongings had been confiscated and the door of their home sealed with wax. They moved in with friends and applied for passports to spend a ten-day vacation in Istanbul, although they never intended to return. From Turkey, the family fled to Tel Aviv and then to Amsterdam, where Cynthia’s father soon died of a heart attack. At the age of twelve, Sanuti (as her mother called her) was sent to London for schooling, where she lived in an Orthodox Jewish enclave with the chief rabbi and his family. At the end of the school year, she returned to Holland to navigate her teen years in a culture that was much more sexually liberal than the one she had been born into, or indeed the one she was experiencing among Orthodox Jews in London. Shortly after finishing her schooling as a dentist, Cynthia moved to the United States in an attempt to start over. This vivid, beautiful, and very funny memoir will appeal to readers intrigued by spirituality, tolerance, the personal ramifications of statelessness and exile, the clashes of cultures, and the future of Iraq and its Jews.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrandeis University Press
    Release dateOct 6, 2015
    ISBN9781611688061
    The Strangers We Became: Lessons in Exile from One of Iraq's Last Jews

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    Reviews for The Strangers We Became

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      This was a memoir about a Jewish woman born in Iraq whose family managed to escape when she was a child. The story starts with their first failed attempt at escaping Iraq. The story then follows her family as they successfully escape from Iraq and live as refugees. While the author lived briefly in Turkey, Israel, and England, she spent most of her time in Amsterdam. I found her story captivating. I had never before read about Iraqi Jews living in Amsterdam and the story was eye-opening. It was definitely the subject matter that kept me wanting to keep reading.
    • 5/5
      I read this book just coming off of reading A Bear A Backpack and Eight Crates of Vodka. Memoirs written about similar situations although different in their effetcs on the writers.The Strangers We Became shares with the reader the journey of one of the last Jews to escape Iran. The other book tells of a Jewish family escaping from the Soviet Union. Both are written from the point of view of a child. This book shares how the author grew in her love of her Judaism. The other shares how the author is deeply hateful of his Jewishness. I recommend anyone reading this wonderful book also reads the other. Both very difficult and important journeys.
    • 4/5
      The topic of how we are formed as people has always fascinated me. I enjoyed Shamash's memoir because it embraces the idea that we are made of our experiences- that what we do with those experiences and how we use them helps define us. I had very little knowledge of the Jewish population in Iraq before reading this memoir so I found it also to be informative and eye opening.
    • 4/5
      What a beautifully written book! I very much enjoy reading about modern journeys people take and I read this book during Passover, the Jewish story of exodus. This was a timely tale and a beautifully written narrative about this woman's journey out of Iraq and to where she is today, struggling still between an Orthodox Jewish world and a secular world.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this book, and found it quite informative. In this memoir, the author, Shamash tells of her family's ordeals in Iraq in the 1960's, and of their escape, first to Israel and then to Holland, where they settled and gradually built a new life as exiles. Shamash struggles with the concept of exile, especially since as a Jew her traditional identity is caught up inextricably with the idea of the Jews as a people in exile from Jerusalem, a city her family could have settled in after their escape. Instead they chose to leave Jerusalem and settle as refugees in a place where no one speaks Arabic, to live as outsiders in a place where most people are not Jewish, devout or otherwise.
      This story offers a lot of insight into what it means to belong (or to not fit in), what place religion has in modern life, and how children can assimilate into new cultures without completely losing their identities. I liked, as well, how Shamash calls out the sexism of the traditional culture she was raised in, though by the end of the book she is still struggling to work out a stable compromise that she won't feel guilty about, to raise her daughter without the sexism, but with more of her family's cultural heritage than Shamash's fragmented childhood offered.
      The last chapters of this book are weak, like they were just tacked on after the rest of the book was polished and ready to print. The transition from dental college and root canals to married life in New York is abrupt, and Shamash's storytelling before and after this point seems markedly different, as if the story up to this point is well rehearsed and polished, while everything after this point is a chaotic muddle. No doubt this is in part because while the majority of the book covers her earlier life, which she has had years to think about and come to terms with, she has yet to develop much perspective on her present state, so it is harder for her to tell the story of what her life looks like now. As a literary work, I'd prefer if this last part was as polished as the rest of the story, but as a memoir by a woman who is not dead yet and who is still developing the rest of her life-story, it works.
    • 3/5
      " The Strangers We Became" was a very interesting of the lives and culture clashes that the Iraqi Jews faced in their search for religious freedom and to live their lives free of anti-Semitic violence. The fates of the Jews from the Arab lands is not often written about and they are referred to as the Forgotten Refugees.Most information tells the story of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe. The memoir is beautifully written,an incredible journey,showcasing the family of Cynthia Kaplan Shamash and her family. Thank you to LibraryThing for the chance to preview this book.
    • 3/5
      A story of one Jewish family's escape from Iraq. After the first chapter, I found it very hard to follow. I find the writer's story intriguing, but I was unable to engage with her story. Having said that, I feel it is important that these stories of perserverance are told and I am glad that Cynthis Shamash has done that.
    • 4/5
      This is a good read. Well written, heartfelt and honest. It's not easy to leave everything behind for a better life but Shamash tells a story of forced migration and how she responds and tries to understand different cultures-some times successfully, sometimes not. The only reason I did not give this 5 stars was I wish she would have included more information about her adjustment to American society.
    • 4/5
      Cynthia Shamash's memoir, The Strangers We Became, delves into cultural clashes that occur for many immigrant groups. As a Jew born into the repressive Iraqi regime, Shamash recounts her journey from Iraqi to Turkey, then Holland, England, and the United States. There is great irony in the fact that she escapes Iraq to pursue religious freedom, and then is held back by the customs and mores of the various Jewish communities she encounters. The memoir is a thoughtful exploration of her feelings and experiences. This is the first time I have read about the plight of Iraqi Jews and it was quite interesting.
    • 4/5
      Learning what it was like to grow up Jewish in Iraq was both frightening and enlightening. I am glad Shamash and her family managed to escape to live much better lives, briefly in Israel staying with her parents' relatives, then to Holland for much longer, briefly to England and then to the US. Cynthia has never forgotten or forgiven Iraq for jailing and tormenting the family for weeks after their first attempt at leaving. Though now "free," life in her new countries was bewildering with regard to language, culture and mores. Nothing was what she expected; everything was shocking and different. Adding to her worries was her father's deteriorating health, depression and the estrangement from her much younger mother. Cynthia's life in England with an ultra-orthodox family helped soothe and center her, providing motivation to do better in school and study to become a dentist. An engaging and enjoyable read.
    • 4/5
      An interesting perspective on the various ways we craft our personal/cultural identity.
    • 4/5
      Cynthia Kaplan Shamash was the youngest of four children in an Iraqi Jewish family. By the time of the author's birth in 1963, there were only about 10,000 Jews left in Iraq. In the years following her birth, Iraqi Jews lost more and more of their rights. The family finally made a decision to leave Iraq in 1972. After an aborted attempt that resulted in a brief imprisonment for the children as well as the parents, the Shamash family was able to leave Iraq for Turkey, then Israel, and finally Holland. The author shares her earliest memories from her childhood in Iraq, the family's reunion with relatives in Israel who had left Iraq decades earlier, and the often painful adjustments to Dutch culture in Amsterdam. It was difficult for Kaplan Shamash to succeed in school in the absence of language and cultural support. This neglect is surprising since the family had an assigned social worker. An extended stay with an Orthodox family in London and Kaplan Shamash's desire to become a dentist provided the motivation she needed to succeed in her schoolwork in a second language. The bulk of the memoir focuses on the Shamash family's transition to life in Amsterdam. The ending seems rushed in the author's attempt to describe the remainder of her educational path into professional dentistry and her young adult life. This memoir is recommended for readers interested in Jewish history and culture, Iraq and/or Middle Eastern history and culture, and immigrant experience narratives. This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

    Book preview

    The Strangers We Became - Cynthia Kaplan Shamash

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