AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The war in Gaza has driven a wedge between many Jews and Muslims in the U.S. and around the world. These tensions stretch back decades. But there was a time when Jews and Muslims lived together throughout the Middle East as close friends and neighbors. It's a very personal story for NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi.
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: My father was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq. He likes to tell a good story, and one he always told our family was about his dear college friend Khudr Bassoon. They met at the University of Baghdad in 1967, where they studied chemical engineering. My dad's friend eventually moved to the United Kingdom, and a year later, my dad did too.
FAKHRI AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: That's my 76-year-old father, Fakhri Al-Shalchi, talking to me on the phone recently and retelling the story I know from memory. My dad says, in Iraqi Arabic, "I didn't know the language. I didn't know the country. I didn't know the weather, but he helped me."
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: Bassoon gave him a place to sleep, a tour of campus, showed him where to eat. We're Muslim, and my dad always made a point to remind my sisters and me that his friend Bassoon was Jewish. I think it was my dad's way of teaching us that there used to be a time when Jews and Muslims were neighbors and friends in the Arab world. That was a time before Jews fled or were expelled from Arab countries, and Palestinians were fleeing and forced from their lands as the state of Israel was created in 1948. When I moved to Israel on assignment for NPR last year, my dad surprised me. He said his old friend Bassoon lives there, and I could now meet the man I had heard of for so long.
KHUDR BASSOON: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
BASSOON: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: Bassoon is 76, tall with a shock of white hair and a Hollywood smile. In retirement, one of his passions has become to preserve the history of Iraqi Jews. We met at the Iraqi Jewish Museum near Tel Aviv.
BASSOON: Iraqi Jews were instrumental in building the Iraqi state.
H AL-SHALCHI: He takes me around the museum. It's a three-story building holding treasures like ancient silver Torah scrolls and musical instruments. He points to old black-and-white pictures of Iraqi Jewish politicians and professors.
BASSOON: I am Jewish, but I am proud of my Arabic culture. I am proud of my being an Iraqi. I describe myself as Iraqi, no problem at all.
H AL-SHALCHI: He was actually proud of a country that severely persecuted him, his family and his Jewish community, especially when the Ba'ath political regime rose to power in the 1960s, which eventually gave rise to Saddam Hussein. Iraqi Jews suffered kidnappings, arrests and executions. It got worse after the six-day Arab Israeli war in 1967.
BASSOON: Our phones were cut. They were not allowed to go to university. People were all expelled from jobs in the government.
H AL-SHALCHI: And that repression came to a head in 1969 when a group of Iraqis, including nine Jews, were publicly hanged in Baghdad's Tahrir Square, accused of being spies for Israel. Bassoon, only 20 then, says the next day, his classmates couldn't look him in the face. The danger kept growing, and ultimately, he fled to study in the U.K. but was never allowed back. The Ba'ath Party stopped renewing passports for some Iraqi Jews.
BASSOON: But when the passport finished in two years' time and I sent it to the Iraqi embassy, they just did not return it. So I became straightaway a refugee.
H AL-SHALCHI: Bassoon eventually moved to Israel, and my dad moved to Kuwait first, where I was born, and eventually moved our family to Canada.
BASSOON: OK.
H AL-SHALCHI: About 50 years later, I'm the first in my family to meet my dad's Jewish friend.
Will you tell me that story?
We recently met up again in his apartment just outside Tel Aviv to say goodbye as I wrap up my assignment for NPR. It's sunny, neat and simply furnished, framed photos of his children on the TV console. I move my chair closer to Bassoon, who's on the couch, and we do a video call with my dad in Canada.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGING)
H AL-SHALCHI: My father picks up, holding the screen too close, his face looming large and wobbling all over.
BASSOON: (Non-English language spoken).
F AL-SHALCHI: (Laughter).
H AL-SHALCHI: Hi, Baba (ph).
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: Bassoon makes fun of my dad for still being in his pajamas. They quickly fall into that comfortable banter of longtime friends. And on the phone, they tell stories about their old times together. My father has vivid memories of his friend Khudr Bassoon.
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken). Very popular. (Non-English language spoken).
BASSOON: (Laughter).
H AL-SHALCHI: My dad says Bassoon was very elegant, wore a tie and carried his notes in a file folder. As we were on the phone together, for the first time, they spoke about what it meant to be a Muslim and a Jew growing up together in Iraq. My father describes the diverse Baghdad neighborhood that he grew up in.
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: "Across the way were Christians. To the right, Kurds. Further in were Jews," my dad says. His mother's midwife was Jewish. His uncle ran a business with a Jewish man. Then Bassoon brings up a more painful chapter...
BASSOON: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: ...The hanging of Jews in Baghdad in 1969. My father says it was political.
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: "It was all planned, programmed," he says, "to distract the population, to position the Ba'ath to eventually take power and persecute my own father." He tells the story of a government minder at work who brandished a pistol, following him like a shadow.
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: "He'd write a report about what I did, what I ate, where I went," my dad says. It became unbearable to live in Iraq. And even my dad, who came from a prominent Muslim Baghdad family, had to flee. Bassoon says it was a common story.
BASSOON: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: "Us Jews were tormented," he says, "but then it became the fate of all Iraqis."
BASSOON: (Non-English language spoken).
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: My dad and his friend could talk for hours. I butt in with a last question.
(Non-English language spoken)?
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken)?
H AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: Would you two ever go back to Iraq?
F AL-SHALCHI: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: "Me? No, no," my dad replies. He'd be too shocked by an Iraq he wouldn't recognize after so many wars. And Bassoon?
BASSOON: (Non-English language spoken).
H AL-SHALCHI: "Go back to what?" he says. "It's better for me to keep my memories of Baghdad." My dad in Canada and his friend in Israel keep in touch online now in a group chat, keeping up a friendship that you can no longer find in Iraq - an Iraq that once made it possible for a Muslim and a Jew to be lifelong friends. Hadeel Al-Shalchi, NPR News, Tel Aviv.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUDOVICO EINAUDI'S "ASCENT (DAY 1)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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