The Wolf of Baghdad: An Iraqi Jewish Memoir
In The Wolf of Baghdad, British artist Carol Isaacs retraces her Iraqi Jewish roots through a haunting graphic memoir that bridges memory and imagination. Subtitled Memoir of a Lost Homeland, the work takes readers on a journey through Baghdad’s vanished Jewish world, as Isaacs—drawn wearing an abaya—walks unseen among the ghosts of her ancestors. Neither fully present nor past, she embodies both exile and remembrance, bearing witness to a once-vibrant community now lost to history.
Credits
Carol Isaacs, illustration from The Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Homeland (Brighton: Myriad Editions, 2020). Used with permission of the publisher.
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Conversation with a Countryman
An old Jew asked me near the Jaffa Gate:
“Is the Saxon Garden still there? The same as ever?
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In the old days confectioners had a shop there…
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Behold her blood flows in my blood,
Behold her voice within me sings—
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Raḥel—mother’s mother.
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About two weeks before the birth was due, Grandfather Zisskind appeared in Raya and Yehuda’s home for the second time. His face was yellow, angry, and the light had faded from his eyes. He greeted…
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At the time for words, father, my adonai, leave it in my hands, the
shame that I don’t feel, and assign to me the job of justification,
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The fact is that every land has its…
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