The Wolf of Baghdad: An Iraqi Jewish Memoir

2020

Illustration of a woman in an abaya standing on a balcony, peering into a room. Inside, a man in a yamulke reads a book. — 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.

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Credits

Carol Isaacs, illustration from The Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Homeland (Brighton: Myriad Editions, 2020). Used with permission of the publisher.

Discussion Questions

In this image, the daughter of Iraqi Jewish parents returns to her family’s place of origin as a ghost dressed in an abaya, the traditional Iraqi clothing for Muslim women. Why does Carol Isaacs depict her this way?
What can you learn about Isaacs’s father from the way he is drawn in this image?
What themes or concepts from the story do you see reflected in the composition of the cartoon?