When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad [Hardcover]

Mona Yahia (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 23, 2007

Winner of the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize for Fiction.

In this vivid story of growing up in Baghdad, Mona Yahia tells a very personal story set against the backdrop of political upheaval and an increasingly fractured society. Lina clings to childhood and the security of her youth during the last peaceful period for the 2500-year-old Jewish community in Iraq. When that peace begins to crumble, the usual uncertainties of adolescence are augmented by growing fear following the increasingly anti-Semitic rhetoric from the government and outbreaks of violence which ultimately drive out nearly all of the remaining 150,000 Jews in Baghdad. As Lina struggles to understand these dark changes in Iraq, her first love is forced to flee, her father loses his job, her brother is arrested, and her young friend must search among the bodies of hanged Jews for his imprisoned father. As violent coups, arrests, and executions become everyday occurrences, Lina's family must leave the country they have called home for generations. In the dangerous flight to the border, they must evade the security police, traverse perilous mountains, and entrust their lives and safety to strangers. The book will resonate with audiences of all ages.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born in Baghdad in 1954 and a refugee to Israel with her family in 1970, Yahia makes her impressive debut with this sharp recollection of the virulently anti-Semitic Iraq of the l960s through the eyes of a teenaged Jewish girl. Thirteen-year-old Lina identifies herself as Iraqi first, albeit a member of a minority, and is more curious than fearful about the word "persecution," often whispered in the Jewish community in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War. The definitions she learns won't be subtle: her older brother, Shaul, will be imprisoned for drawing a Star of David on a chalkboard; her father will lose his accounting job; and her swimming teacher and a schoolmate will be tortured and publicly executed on trumped-up charges by the new Baath regime. The only hope of evading the security police, who often drive gray Volkswagen Beetles, is to make the dangerous flight through Iran. As Lina's family gradually plans their escape, she experiences the whims and pangs of growing up, a first love, sibling rivalry. The novel's beginning feels choppy as the narrative jumps from scene to scene of Lina's early childhood, but the vividly realized detours enrich the reader's understanding of Lina's suffering at her country's betrayal. (Apr.)
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Review

Yahia's writing evokes both the sensuality of domestic intimacy...alongside the horror of public hangings...politically sophisticated...also most poignant. -- Alev Adil, Times Literary Supplement

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 344 pages
• Publisher: George Braziller (May 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080761582X
• ISBN-13: 978-0807615829
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,567,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant and lyrical, May 27, 2003

By 

Gift Card Recipient (Chevy Chase, md USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad (Hardcover)

This book should be required reading for all students of international affairs--and human nature. The writing is nothing short of lyrical, evoking all the visceral emotions and profound ambivalence of a teenage girl living in brutal times. I recommend it highly, and I truly wish someone would re-issue this book in the United States: I had to mail-order my own copy from Europe. I couldn't put this volume down.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LOVED IT, July 6, 2008

By 

DM (ORegon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad (Hardcover)

Very enjoyable read about being jewish in Baghdad in the 60-70 from the view of a teenage girl. How her family and others make their escape. This book needs more publicity. It's very good. Very important too. With all this other BS going on in Baghdad / Iraq, I totally forgot about the Jewish community that's been there "forever". Well this book fills you in.

Since there are no detailed reiviews of this book and I couldn't write a worthy review I'm going to copy and paste one from another site, austinchronicle.com, BY a RAYYAN AL-SHAWAF

"Before their mass exodus in 1950-'51, Jews were an integral part of the Iraqi social fabric. At the close of World War I, more than one-third of Baghdad's inhabitants were Jews; by 1950, they still constituted one-sixth of the capital's rapidly expanding population. Several novels and memoirs by Iraqi Jews vividly depict Baghdad before the midcentury exodus. The University of Texas Press recently published the third installment of Israeli intellectual Nissim Rejwan's memoirs, the first volume of which deals almost exclusively with his life before he left Iraq in 1951. Yet what of those Jews - about 5,000 - who stayed behind?

Little of note has been written about the dwindling Iraqi Jewish community of the 1960s and 1970s. Mona Yahia's semiautobiographical novel, When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad, helps fill this lacuna by portraying the blossoming of a young Jewish woman in a climate of rising anti-Semitism. The result is a profoundly moving coming-of-age tale infused with valuable historical insight. Lina, the narrator, grapples with adolescence as her country embraces jingoistic ethnic chauvinism. Of the martial music so often played on the radio, she observes: "It used to electrify me, too, especially the marches. But now that it shuts me out, the cannons and missiles evoked by the music seem to be aimed in my direction."

Deprived of telephone lines, denied passports, and forbidden from traveling, many Jewish families regret not having left when given the chance and scramble for a way out of Iraq. Yet avoiding detection proves difficult. Indeed, the title of the book refers to the Volkswagens driven by members of the domestic intelligence service, a ubiquitous presence in the nerve-racked lives of the Jewish community. Soon, Lina's older brother, Shuli, is arrested on suspicion of Zionist activity. He will be released, but others won't be so fortunate, as becomes apparent from the moment their trial begins. "The defense counsel, a civilian appointed by the court - opens his speech with an apology for having to plead for the traitors of the country."

When, in 1969, the Baath regime executes several such alleged traitors - most of them Jewish - banners raised at the public hanging read: "This Is Only the Beginning. The Squares of Our Noble Iraq Will Be Filled With the Corpses of Spies." Lina's sarcastic friend Dudi, whose father has been detained, says, "[W]hat will they do when they run out of Jews to hang?" Very soon, the rest of Iraq's population will find out.

Like the novel's protagonist, Yahia was born in Baghdad in 1954 and escaped to Israel in 1970. The years in between were marked by mounting insecurity and alienation. Consequently, her book differs markedly from the nostalgic reminiscences of Jewish life in Iraq before the mysterious bombings and sudden exodus of 1950-'51, an era largely distinguished by the assimilation of the Jewish community. Yet Yahia's caricaturesque depiction of most Iraqis as boors devoid of redeeming qualities, a clear indication of the continued rawness of the author's pain, proves unsettling. Fortunately, the story remains enthralling despite this serious limitation. Raised in an Arab country passing through the height of its Blut-und-Boden phase, Yahia memorably dedicates this book "To my parents, who gave me languages instead of roots." "