Outcast

by Shimon Ballas

Book Overview

"Tells more about Iraq than many commentaries being offered up these days." --Le Monde

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872864812
• ISBN13: 9780872864818
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: City Lights Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Fictional memoir . . .

This fictional memoir by Israeli writer Shimon Ballas interweaves a broad cast of characters with 70 years of Iraqi political history. Meanwhile it's also a very personal story that centers around three boyhood friends from a village near Karbala - two of them Arab Jews and a third Muslim. While their lives diverge over the decades following WWI, they remain bonded by their love of homeland and their deep desire to devote their lives to what each considers to be its brightest hopes for the future and independence from western colonialism - the control of the British in particular. Advocating a secular government built on the ideals of an inclusive social order that grants advantages to no one, regardless of ethnic identity, the narrator Soussan finds himself at odds with the aims of Zionism and its aggressive separatism. Believing Islam to be more receptive to his political beliefs, he converts to Islam, alienating himself from his family, the Jewish community, and his old friend, the Jewish poet Assad. When anti-semitism grows in Iraq in the 1940s, Assad joins the 100,000s who leave the country for the new state of Israel. Their other friend, Kassem, becomes an ardent communist, whose life is spent in and out of prisons, finally fleeing into exile in Eastern Europe. Educated in the U.S. and briefly married to an American, the narrator chooses to return to Iraq, leaving behind wife and son. They do not follow him as he hopes, and after years of a solitary life, working as a civil engineer in Baghdad, he marries again and fathers a daughter, while never ceasing to love his ex-wife. The commitment of his life to his homeland, even to the extent of adopting its religion, leaves him something of an exile in his own country, and there is a degree of melancholy as he remembers a life given to his country at the expense of love and lost friends. Yet Ballas leaves him with an assurance of his own integrity, and not a trace of bitterness or regret. Readers, however, may take less solace in the ending, as it closes just short of Saddam Hussein's war with Iran. There's a lot of history compressed into this short novel, and the telling of it flows freely back and forth over decades of time. The personal and the political are also intimately interwoven, one always having an impact on the other. References to historical events may send readers to the Internet for background, but the occasional difficulties are well worth the effort to unravel. As the story of Arab Jews is not widely known or understood in the West, it's important to hear their voice. Beautifully translated.

Good, but not up to expectations

Perhaps some of the lyrical aspects of the writing has been lost in the translation to English. The book meanders through the life of of Haroun Soussan a Jewish convert to Islam in Iraq. I agree with the previous reviewer that the lack of chapter headings and jumping back in forth in time makes the book difficult to follow - I'd recommend reading it in a single sitting rather than multiple sessions as I did. Someone unfamiliar Iraq over the last 70 years would have difficulty reassembling the historical background. The style does augment the notion that Haroun is a static and lonely character who ages slowly but changes little as the world changes around him. For me the book centres around the notion of personal identity and its relationship to others. Soussan defines himself as a Muslim and converts on principles of generality because Islam is presented as the alternative that embraces the culture at large and because he fails to connect to his brother Reuben and the Jewish community. In spite of this he concerns himself with Zionism and his life's work is a book "The Jews In History", the focus of which Ballas has unfortunately decided to hide from the reader. Yet his disappointment shows through between his imagined ideals of Islamic community and the reality of political and social life. This comes to the fore in the episodes of the 2 farhuds (progroms) against the Jews of 1941 and 1947 where his uncertainty of how he fits in with both communities and his discomforture that his granddaughter by Hamida his 2nd wife, was given the Jewish name of Sarah and the unexplored question of whether or not Jane, Haroun's first wife, raised his son Jamil as a Jew. Biographical fiction is not my usual fare and I was motivated to read Outcast through Ballas' appearance in the (excellent) documentary Forget Baghdad. A more precise rating I would give this book is 3.75 stars. I would probably not recommend it to others but it is interesting and discussable.

a good read for you historical/political buffs

Outcast is a political story about the works of Haroun Soussan who is supposed to be based on a historical character Ahmad Soussa. Soussan is a Jewish man who converted to Islam. The story gives in inside look into life in Iraq before the war, leading up to and during Saddam Hussein's reign. Soussan has trouble grappling with the fact that there is a lack of loyalty for Iraq from fellow Jews in his country, and he tries to promote full integration and the revocation of minority privileges. The character appears to be strong in his beliefs and his loyalty to Iraq, causing him to leave his American wife and their two-year-old son behind in America. Here we follow this man's journey as he watches Iraq shift, change and develop, although not into what he'd hoped. Soussan is a civil engineer and, later, an historian. The book is definitely geared toward an audience who is into Iraqi historical fiction. The book follows no conventional measures, and it is hard to follow at times due the author's tendency to go off into tangents. There are no defined chapters in the book, and the story is told in no distinct chronological order. A good read for you historical/political buffs. Check it out.