Iraq's a land that devours its inhabitants

With thanks: Janet

Few video clips by Corey Gil-Shuster are quite as remarkable as his interview with Eva, who was born in Basra, Iraq, and left for Israel in 1966.

Eva remembers the terrible events of the 1958 revolution, when members of the Iraqi government and the royal family were brutally murdered with unspeakable cruelty. They included her best Muslim friend and her sister. The prime minister Nuri Said tried to disguise himself as a woman, but was given away by his pyjamas protruding from beneath his abaya. He was lynched and his body cut up into tiny pieces. Eva saw it all.


 Eva's father moved from Basra to Baghdad to escape being hanged. We are not given many details, but he may have been involved in the Zionist underground. Eva was smuggled out of Iraq via Iran. She helped plan the escape of an arabised Jewish woman with 'clear eyes' flee her Muslim husband. Another 'blond with light eyes' which she met en route to Israel complained that she had been kidnapped from her Jewish family. We are not clear exactly what happened, but Eva lifts the veil on what one suspects was a significant issue for Jewish women in Iraq (especially beautiful Jewesses): the ever-present threat of being abducted or forced into a marriage with a Muslim.

 The arabised woman made it to Israel, possibly with her son by the Arab. She was thought to be living on a kibbutz, but Eva has lost contact with them. Corey Gil-Shuster includes an appeal for information about them at the end of the video.


"It is impossible to live with Arab Muslims", Eva tells Gil-Shuster. "Iraq's a land that devours its own inhabitants"...." One minute they can be your best friends,  then, if they get mad, your worst enemies."