Who is Abu-Moch? Is he Kadouri Kudsi Zada, a hard-working Jewish businessman from Baghdad? Or is he a Muslim dervish named Nur El Din Khan? Find out when you read this spellbinding true-to-life tale of a shoemaker from Baghdad who, when forced to flee for his life, finds refuge in Iran as a Shi'ite Muslim. Readers of this gripping novel about the inimitable Abu-Moch will gain insight into the Muslim culture that features so prominently in the news. Watch as events move between Iraq and Iran and you will discover the complexity of life for Jews in Muslim countries. When relationships between Jews and Muslims deteriorate in Iraq, the hero and his family are forced to relocate to the newly created State of Israel. The difficulties they face are revealed in their desperate attempt to be absorbed into the Jewish State. As fast-paced as any thriller, this biographical novel offers a penetrating study of immigration. It should be required reading for anyone interested in Middle-Eastern culture!
AWARDS RECEIVED In addition to being selected a finalist in Foreword Magazine, the book also won the "2005 Distinguished Honor Award" from the Military Writers Society of America. The link can be viewed at www.militarywriters.com/awards.htm Introduction Full Circle: Escape from Baghdad and the Return chronicles a prominent Iraqi Jewish familys escape from persecution, through the journey of one family member, a young boy, who witnesses public hangings and the 1941 Krystallnacht (Farhood) in Baghdad. After a dangerous escape from Iraq akin to a Sephardic Schindlers List, this ten-year-old begins a lifelong search for meaning and his place in the world. This journey takes him to the newly-formed nation of Israel, then to Brazil, and eventually to the United States, where he serves in the US Army in Korea, works in top level positions with three Fortune 500 companies, starts several businesses, and volunteers to assist the FBI after September 11, 2001. This chronicle strives to explore questions of meaning such as: Does hardship taint the lure of adventure for any young man? What sustains hope? Does a persecuted Jew ever feel at home anywhere? This young mans journey and subsequent identity crisis interfaces with historical happenings in the world and brings an understanding of the culture and contributions of Sephardic Jews. There has been much written about the Jewish population in Germany and Europe and what they suffered, but little is known about Sephardic Jews who have also been persecuted in other countries, especially in Iraq, a country of which we as Americans have some familiarity, but know very little about. PRESS RELEASE CONTACT: Saul Silas Fathi (631) 232-1638 [email protected] Full Circle: Escape From Baghdad and The Return Published Author by Saul Silas Fathi December 5, 2005 (Central Islip, NY) Historical conflicts, persecution and social unrests have always forced people to leave their homeland and move towards uncertainty. And because of these, the search for meaning only becomes more difficult and sometimes impossible. One man however overcame great odds and found meaning at last when he completed his great journey of life, and readers can experience it all by reading author Saul Silas Fathis amazing new book Full Circle: Escape From Baghdad and The Return. Epic in proportion, Full Circle tells the full life journey of the author who witnessed public executions as a young boy and escaped with his Iraqi Jewish family from certain persecution in Iraq during the mid twentieth century. At the age of ten, the author began an ambitious personal journey to find the meaning of life as well as his place in the world. Through the years, he traveled to the newly-formed Israel, to Brazil and eventually to the United States of America and in each country he learned and experienced a lot about life, culture, knowledge and survival. Determined to excel, Saul completed his education, joined the U.S. Army and ultimately he became an American citizen as well as a high-level executive working with Fortune-500 companies. Aside from his struggles and achievements, Sauls book explores the depths of mans search for meaning, which includes his insights about hope, his Sephardic Jewish heritage, the impacts of 9/11 and the Gulf War, identity crisis, and more. Readers will be astonished with the great
In this often moving, sometimes wry account of life in Baghdad during the first war on Iraq and in exile in the years following, Iraqi-born, British-educated artist Nuha al-Radi shows us the effects of war on ordinary people. She recounts the day-to-day realities of living in a city under siege, where food has to be consumed or thrown out because there is no way to preserve it, where eventually people cannot sleep until the nightly bombing commences, where packs of stray dogs roam the streets (and provide her own dog Salvi with a harem) and rats invade homes. Through it all, al-Radi works at her art and gathers with neighbors and family for meals and other occasions, happy and sad. In the wake of the war, al-Radi lives in semi-exile, shuttling between Beirut and Amman, travelling to New York, London, Mexico and Yemen. As she suffers the indignities of being an Iraqi in exile, al-Radi immerses us in a way of life constricted by the stress and effects of war and embargoes, giving texture to a reality we have only been able to imagine before now. But what emanates most vibrantly from these diaries is the spirit of endurance and the celebration of the smallest of life’s joys.
A compelling account of growing up during the mid-twentieth century in the two oldest and once vibrant Jewish communities of Iraq and Iran--the first now obliterated, the second eroded. From Baghdad to Kokomo is part memoir, part history in which momentous events are interwoven with the author’s own family biography: Iraq’s transition from Ottoman and British rule to hopes for building a democratic nation-state; the emergence of extreme nationalism that ends centuries-old Arab-Jewish co-existence; the Farhoud pogrom in 1941; and the tumultuous exodus of an entire community. In Iran, too, the Shah’s modernization policies clash with nationalist and Islamist opposition forces leading to the Islamic Revolution and millions leave or flee the country to settle abroad. This book also shows the fortuitous circumstances how one pen pal correspondence brought the author from Tehran to the American midwestern city of Kokomo, Indiana, where he arrives penniless as a teenager and resumes his studies after a four year hiatus. "The Exodus from Iraq, the cradle of civilization, meant the destruction of Babylonian Jewry with its rich history of nearly 2,600 years. Lives were shattered and families scattered. Many of its time-honoured values and traditions --the glue that held it together and gave its unique identity--are now rapidly fading away under the pressure of Westernization...." Excerpt from the book.
To Rule Jerusalem is a historical and ethnographic account of the twentieth-century struggle for Jerusalem. The volume examines how Jerusalem is doubly divided. On the one hand conflict exists between Israelis and Palestinians, each of whom ground their national identities in the city. On the other, conflict exists within each nation, between Zionism and Judaism on one side and between Palestinian nationalism and Islam on the other. Based on hundreds of interviews this book evokes the ways in which these conflicts are experienced and managed in the life of the city.
This book examines the politics of Jerusalem since 1967 and the city’s decline as an Arab city. Covering issues such as the Old City, the barrier, planning regulations and efforts to remove Palestinians from it, the book provides a broad overview of the contemporary situation and political relations inside the Palestinian community, but also with the Israeli authorities.
"Every man who undertakes the journey to the Our Lord's Sepulcher needs three sacks: a sack of patience, a sack of silver, and a sack of faith."—Symon Semeonis, an Irish medieval pilgrim As medieval pilgrims made their way to the places where Jesus Christ lived and suffered, they experienced, among other things: holy sites, the majesty of the Egyptian pyramids (often referred to as the "Pharaoh's granaries"), dips in the Dead Sea, unfamiliar desert landscapes, the perils of traveling along the Nile, the customs of their Muslim hosts, Barbary pirates, lice, inconsiderate traveling companions, and a variety of difficulties, both great and small. In this richly detailed study, Nicole Chareyron draws on more than one hundred firsthand accounts to consider the journeys and worldviews of medieval pilgrims. Her work brings the reader into vivid, intimate contact with the pilgrims' thoughts and emotions as they made the frequently difficult pilgrimage to the Holy Land and back home again. Unlike the knights, princes, and soldiers of the Crusades, who traveled to the Holy Land for the purpose of reclaiming it for Christendom, these subsequent pilgrims of various nationalities, professions, and social classes were motivated by both religious piety and personal curiosity. The travelers not only wrote journals and memoirs for themselves but also to convey to others the majesty and strangeness of distant lands. In their accounts, the pilgrims relate their sense of astonishment, pity, admiration, and disappointment with humor and a touching sincerity and honesty. These writings also reveal the complex interactions between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Holy Land. Throughout their journey, pilgrims confronted occasionally hostile Muslim administrators (who controlled access to many holy sites), Bedouin tribes, Jews, and Turks. Chareyron considers the pilgrims' conflicted, frequently simplistic, views of their Muslim hosts and their social and religious practices.
