Bounding into the literary pages of Haaretz, hard on the heels of Professor Sasson Somekh (item below), comes another talented Iraqi-born writer, Sami Michael. He too reminisces about his earliest work.
"The 1950s were the most tempestuous years of my life. In 1949 I tumbled from the status of a citizen with 2,500 years of seniority in Iraq to the status of an immigrant in a world that was strange to me in its language, customs and culture. During that same decade the sky fell on me when I found out that Communism was not a paradise but rather a tyranny that crushed human dignity.
"As an intellectual, for whom language is the most important tool in his life, my faith in myself was undermined. I spent half of that decade at a moshav and at a kibbutz where the people at that time saw themselves as the elite of Israeli society. I had to find my place among young people whom talented educators had intended as leaders of the country.
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