My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Family's Past

327 Pages·2009·2.87 MB·English

by  Ariel Sabar

MY FATHER’S
PARADISE
A Son’s Search
for His Family’s Past
ARIEL SABAR
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL 2009
“I searched to discover which was the first of all languages. Many have said that
the Aramaic is most ancient, and that it is in the nature of man to speak it
without having been taught by anyone. Further, that if a newborn child were
placed in the desert with no one but a mute wet nurse, he would speak Aramaic.”
—ABRAHAM IBN-EZRA, twelfth-century commentator and linguist
CONTENTS
A Note on Method
Introduction
ZAKHO
1. What’s in a Name
2. An Island in a River
3. A Book with Shining Pages
4. Rotten Corn
5. A Surprise
6. The Dyer’s Son
7. Little Thumb Girl
8. A Woman’s Purpose
9. A Prayer to the Prophet
10. No Wasted Steps
11. Lost in the Land of Assyria
12. Speaking with Angels
13. Arabs Before Jews
14. Plus and Minus
15. The Mountains Are Our Only Friends
16. Freezing in Baghdad
17. Hanging
18. Let the Hajji Speak
19. Can’t Help This Time
20. To Hell with Books
21. Let My People Go
22. A Suitable Level of Civilization
23. God Will Provide
24. Iraqi Stamps
ISRAEL
25. Kissing the Ground
26. Where Are the Jewish Synagogues?
27. Herzl’s Beard
28. Ana Kurdi
29. Some of the Best in Zakho
30. John Savage
31. Sleepwalking out Windows
32. The Brotherhood of Man
33. Gold
ARAMAIC
34. Lishana Deni
35. Cleft Sentences
36. It’s All God’s World
37. Hets and ‘Ayins
38. Abandoning the Fountainhead
39. Exiled and Redeemed
40. Systematic Description of a Living Dialect
41. Getting Lost
YALE
42. Aramaic for Dirges
43. To a Deep Well
44. Missions
45. A Memorial Candle
46. Are They Kings?
47. Some Enchanted Place
FATHER AND SON
48. Speechless
49. Hollywood on the Habur
50. Coming of the Messiah
51. Covenants
THE RETURN
52. River Keeps Flowing
53. Time Travel
54. Habur
55. Kiss the Eyes of Your Sons
56. Turkish Delights or Jordan Almonds
57. Heaven Sent
58. Chasing Phantoms
59. A Disaster, God Forbid
60. Kind of a Problem
61. Breakdown
62. “The girl, the Jew, is alive.”
63. Convenient Truths
CONCLUSION
64. Paradise Lost
65. Ice-Blended Mocha
66. Saba’s Music
Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography
Reader’s Guide
A Note on Method
To RESEARCH THIS BOOK, I interviewed nearly one hundred relatives, family
friends and acquaintances, scholars, and others. I conducted research at libraries,
special collections, and government archives in the United States, Israel, and the
United Kingdom. I traveled to Iraq, Israel, and cities across the United States to
see crucial settings with my own eyes. I collected family letters, diaries,
photographs, and official documents. I read transcripts of my grandmother’s
recorded oral histories. And I spent untold hours harrying my father with
questions. I took pains to find every living relative and acquaintance in a
position to shed light on my family’s story.
But while this book is by and large a work of nonfiction, it is not formal
history or biography. Nor is it journalism. In parts of this story where key
sources had died or where memories had faded, I built on the framework of
known facts and let myself imagine how the particulars of a scene or dialogue
would be likely to have unfolded.
A book on one’s family is by its nature a subjective exercise. But I have tried
in every instance to keep faith with the larger emotional truth of my family’s
saga.
I changed the names of people who were involved in a family controversy in
Israel, because they are dead and did not have a chance to defend themselves. I
created a few minor composite characters in an effort to streamline the narrative.
Also, in the scenes in modern-day Kurdish Iraq, I changed the names of the
people who helped me, out of concern for their security.

My Father’s Paradise