Kurdish Immigrants in Baghdad

 

In the early 1930s, in the city of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, a small residential quarter developed, called "Khan al-Muhajirin" – a poor and crowded immigrant neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, near the cemetery, where the houses ended and the desert began.

In "al-Muhajirin," the lowest class resided along with foreign workers engaged in cleaning, housework, and arduous manual labor. Everyone crowded into square residential compounds with a large central courtyard, to which room doors faced.

Among the immigrants was a large number of Kurdistan Jews from all their diasporas – Persia, Iraq, and Turkey. Thousands of Kurdish Jews came from villages and towns to the big city to try their luck and find a good livelihood, a suitable match, or both. Many of them, young men and women, came unwillingly. Their families suffered from poverty and distress in their villages, and they were tasked with earning some money and sending it to their families who could not support their children. Their preferred work was with Jewish employers.

 

Upon their return from a grueling workday to their small rooms, tired and exhausted, the Kurdish immigrants would grumble and tell stories about their Baghdadi Jewish employers who paid them meager wages and often oppressed them. The immigrants, who needed every dinar they earned, did not dare to defy their employers – even when humiliated, when working many hours beyond the norm, and even when given a Sabbath rest and required to return from it and report to work immediately after the Sabbath.

On Sabbaths, they enjoyed a few hours of peace. They gathered for communal meals, broke into melancholic Kurdish songs about life in the mountains, and burst into circular dances to the sounds of Dola and Zurna – an arm resting on a shoulder in a large circle, and song bursting from their throats, making them forget their troubles.