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Outcast
Haroun Soussan, narrator of Outcast and a Jewish convert to Islam, is a civil engineer and historian who’s just completed his life’s work, The Jews and History. The book opens with him getting an award from Saddam Hussein during the time of the Iran-Iraq war. Written in the form of an autobiography, the narrative moves in and out of the present, the recent, and more distant past, providing a unique and intimate chronicle of Iraq’s contemporary political history. Shimon Ballas was born in Baghdad in 1930 and immigrated to Israel in 1951.
- GenresFictionMiddle East
210 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 20, 2014
I am having an extremely difficult time trying to decide how I feel about this book: that tells me that I've definitely landed on an important one. In the words of the narrator Haroun Soussan, this is a story about yearning for love and yearning for the soil of one's homeland. He asks, how can one explain that which goes beyond logic? Part of the drive that animates the story is that the narrator continually rejects everything meant to be important to him, his Jewish family, his home of al-Hila, eventually his wife, but never his drive toward honesty, all for reasons of justice, to transcend, to reach out beyond tribal loyalties that are fracturing the Middle East as we speak. Does this man's moderate, liberal sense of personal freedom serve him well? That's the question at the center of the tale.
To begin with, it is completely refreshing to me that we are reading the story of a successful and influential man, a Jew born in Baghdad, a civil engineer and historian. On the opening page he is giving an important, televised speech at the presidential palace; but oh no, he has forgotten his reading glasses and cannot see his text, and compelled to admit it everyone laughs as if it's a joke. The President laughs too. After the ten-minute - now impromptu - speech the President gets up to shake his hand, embracing him, adding, "We are all honored to have a man like you among us." You suspect it, until later on it's only confirmed... wait a second, that man with the generous sense of humor is none other than Saddam Hussein.
Throughout the novel I was having difficulty trying to connect to the tale told. Part of this is political (what should my response be?); part of this is due to ignorance (I do not live anywhere near the Middle East). Only now that I have finished it do I realize the sophisticated technique Shimon Ballas has used to prevent me from passing judgment on what I've been reading, something that has become all too easy for me to do when reading novels. Thanks to Elena Ferrante and Gerald Murnane lately, the bar is set very high now for stories told in first-person narrative. Fresh from this reading I would put Shimon Ballas in that class. I was extremely hesitant reviewing this book because it contains anti-Zionist views, and Israel hasn't really embraced him. But in the magazine Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life there is a very favorable review that quotes Ballas saying that his aims are the following,
"I am not in dialogue with the nationalistic or Zionistic point of view. If anything, I am in dialogue with language itself. On the one hand, I am trying to fend off, avoid or neutralize ideological connections or associations within the language. On the other hand, I am probably trying to bring my Hebrew closer and closer to Arabic. This isn’t done through syntax, but maybe through some sense of structure or way of approaching things."
The reviewer concludes his review with this thought,
"In the end, though, I think of what Walter Benjamin said about translation: how the translator brings together two fragmentary human languages in order to suggest the shape of the perfect divine language, the vessel of meaning before it was broken. It’s a noble ambition, and, if you want to be cynical about it, a very Jewish one, also."
Another difficulty is the jumpiness of the narrative. The writing is clear and fluid but at times you are not sure where you are, what country or what decade. This is justified by you seeing the narrator sitting at his desk writing out his reflections as they come, not meant for publication. And yet we are reading them. And yet this is not a memoir. It's a fictionalized one on an actual person who was used by the Baathist regime, Ahmad (Nissim) Soussa. A liberal man, and a moderate in politics, you never get the sense he is on the side of repression; in a way, here might be the Graham Greene or Endo Shusaku of the Middle East. Ballas is able to say controversial opinions he might not be able to say under his own name. And yet he too was a Jew born in Baghdad, displaced due to political schisms. These confusions evaporate, though, and what you end up seeing of the landscape is an outstanding shadow history of the Middle East from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the beginnings of the Iranian Revolution. That's one way of looking at it, or you can see it, ultimately, as a more straightforward novel, an elegy for the narrator's American wife Jane, a woman he didn't sacrifice enough for as much as she did him. There's plenty of regret in this novel, and not just for what the Middle East has become.
I would be doing a disservice giving away the content of the book - it is best that you actually create that for yourself, which Ballas's brilliance sets up for us to explore. As for ostensible content anyway, "life provides an odd amalgamation of events that sometime seem to act as if they were depicted by writers of cheap novels," he says at one point ruefully. Though for now a taste of Ballas's style, a lyrical passage on his wife first, followed by an example of his honest, yet controversial reflections written under the assumption that he has already left this earth,
"Two ports, two pictures with us in them, and Jane in my arms, penetrating my soul, the odor of her hair, soaked in sea wind, setting my passions afire. I told her, I see you drawing farther from me in the port of New York and alighting from the ship with your nanny in the port of Beirut, I want to remember no other image. I told her, let's think of our next meeting in Beirut. All the while I felt like someone else was speaking from within me. I wanted to believe it would be so, that so it must be. And Jane wept, and promised. But on my own in New York, and on boarding the ship, I was trapped in the thicket of my doubts and overtaken by the melancholy air of one who leaves his past behind, his most beautiful years, embarking on a road of no return. A chapter in my life had ended, and even if I found myself in Jane's company once again, I told myself, I would no longer be the same passionate, carefree young man."
"After more than six years of study in America, the tour in Europe reinforced my conviction regarding Islam's supremacy over Christianity. For while Christianity made do with spiritual preaching, and instructed believers to say 'Let Caesar have his due', Islam was founded on the unity of believers, regardless of race and language, on faith in one god. This unity prevented the growth of a clerical power next to the government, as in the case of the church in Christianity and the priesthood in Judaism; on the other hand, Islam endowed men of religion with the authority to create legislation in the spirit of Islamic principles, which condemn tyranny and social injustice, and are based on care for the general good, without depriving the individual. The laws of Islam, even if they were partly rigid and arbitrary, were fundamentally open to social change and therefore did not pose an obstacle to progress or create a divide between faith and a changing reality. Europe needed centuries to liberate itself from the tyranny of the church and only after successfully separating the church from the state did it embark upon the high road for the new age of modernity and individual liberty. But this democracy proved false as well, leaving the individual at the mercy of an authority that was no longer in the hands of a king or a tyrant, but the hands of financial barons and politicians. Worst of all - this democracy divided people internally and left the individual with no faith.
Passages like the second have an authority knowing that they were originally written in Hebrew and under no promise whatsoever they'd ever find an English-speaking audience. You can read it for analysis on its own terms, or for the sociopolitical atmosphere that defines this key 20th century tale.
To begin with, it is completely refreshing to me that we are reading the story of a successful and influential man, a Jew born in Baghdad, a civil engineer and historian. On the opening page he is giving an important, televised speech at the presidential palace; but oh no, he has forgotten his reading glasses and cannot see his text, and compelled to admit it everyone laughs as if it's a joke. The President laughs too. After the ten-minute - now impromptu - speech the President gets up to shake his hand, embracing him, adding, "We are all honored to have a man like you among us." You suspect it, until later on it's only confirmed... wait a second, that man with the generous sense of humor is none other than Saddam Hussein.
Throughout the novel I was having difficulty trying to connect to the tale told. Part of this is political (what should my response be?); part of this is due to ignorance (I do not live anywhere near the Middle East). Only now that I have finished it do I realize the sophisticated technique Shimon Ballas has used to prevent me from passing judgment on what I've been reading, something that has become all too easy for me to do when reading novels. Thanks to Elena Ferrante and Gerald Murnane lately, the bar is set very high now for stories told in first-person narrative. Fresh from this reading I would put Shimon Ballas in that class. I was extremely hesitant reviewing this book because it contains anti-Zionist views, and Israel hasn't really embraced him. But in the magazine Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life there is a very favorable review that quotes Ballas saying that his aims are the following,
"I am not in dialogue with the nationalistic or Zionistic point of view. If anything, I am in dialogue with language itself. On the one hand, I am trying to fend off, avoid or neutralize ideological connections or associations within the language. On the other hand, I am probably trying to bring my Hebrew closer and closer to Arabic. This isn’t done through syntax, but maybe through some sense of structure or way of approaching things."
The reviewer concludes his review with this thought,
"In the end, though, I think of what Walter Benjamin said about translation: how the translator brings together two fragmentary human languages in order to suggest the shape of the perfect divine language, the vessel of meaning before it was broken. It’s a noble ambition, and, if you want to be cynical about it, a very Jewish one, also."
Another difficulty is the jumpiness of the narrative. The writing is clear and fluid but at times you are not sure where you are, what country or what decade. This is justified by you seeing the narrator sitting at his desk writing out his reflections as they come, not meant for publication. And yet we are reading them. And yet this is not a memoir. It's a fictionalized one on an actual person who was used by the Baathist regime, Ahmad (Nissim) Soussa. A liberal man, and a moderate in politics, you never get the sense he is on the side of repression; in a way, here might be the Graham Greene or Endo Shusaku of the Middle East. Ballas is able to say controversial opinions he might not be able to say under his own name. And yet he too was a Jew born in Baghdad, displaced due to political schisms. These confusions evaporate, though, and what you end up seeing of the landscape is an outstanding shadow history of the Middle East from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the beginnings of the Iranian Revolution. That's one way of looking at it, or you can see it, ultimately, as a more straightforward novel, an elegy for the narrator's American wife Jane, a woman he didn't sacrifice enough for as much as she did him. There's plenty of regret in this novel, and not just for what the Middle East has become.
I would be doing a disservice giving away the content of the book - it is best that you actually create that for yourself, which Ballas's brilliance sets up for us to explore. As for ostensible content anyway, "life provides an odd amalgamation of events that sometime seem to act as if they were depicted by writers of cheap novels," he says at one point ruefully. Though for now a taste of Ballas's style, a lyrical passage on his wife first, followed by an example of his honest, yet controversial reflections written under the assumption that he has already left this earth,
"Two ports, two pictures with us in them, and Jane in my arms, penetrating my soul, the odor of her hair, soaked in sea wind, setting my passions afire. I told her, I see you drawing farther from me in the port of New York and alighting from the ship with your nanny in the port of Beirut, I want to remember no other image. I told her, let's think of our next meeting in Beirut. All the while I felt like someone else was speaking from within me. I wanted to believe it would be so, that so it must be. And Jane wept, and promised. But on my own in New York, and on boarding the ship, I was trapped in the thicket of my doubts and overtaken by the melancholy air of one who leaves his past behind, his most beautiful years, embarking on a road of no return. A chapter in my life had ended, and even if I found myself in Jane's company once again, I told myself, I would no longer be the same passionate, carefree young man."
"After more than six years of study in America, the tour in Europe reinforced my conviction regarding Islam's supremacy over Christianity. For while Christianity made do with spiritual preaching, and instructed believers to say 'Let Caesar have his due', Islam was founded on the unity of believers, regardless of race and language, on faith in one god. This unity prevented the growth of a clerical power next to the government, as in the case of the church in Christianity and the priesthood in Judaism; on the other hand, Islam endowed men of religion with the authority to create legislation in the spirit of Islamic principles, which condemn tyranny and social injustice, and are based on care for the general good, without depriving the individual. The laws of Islam, even if they were partly rigid and arbitrary, were fundamentally open to social change and therefore did not pose an obstacle to progress or create a divide between faith and a changing reality. Europe needed centuries to liberate itself from the tyranny of the church and only after successfully separating the church from the state did it embark upon the high road for the new age of modernity and individual liberty. But this democracy proved false as well, leaving the individual at the mercy of an authority that was no longer in the hands of a king or a tyrant, but the hands of financial barons and politicians. Worst of all - this democracy divided people internally and left the individual with no faith.
Passages like the second have an authority knowing that they were originally written in Hebrew and under no promise whatsoever they'd ever find an English-speaking audience. You can read it for analysis on its own terms, or for the sociopolitical atmosphere that defines this key 20th century tale.
August 14, 2017
I picked up this book from a used books sale. I opened doors to a new unexplored territory for me. That territory is history of Iraq for most of the 20th century. It specially unspools the various tangled threads and fault lines of Iraq. Some of these are Shia-sunni disputes, jews/Christian minorities vs Muslim majority, iran/Iraq, communists/Baathists, massacres of Assyrians, exodus of Iraqi Jews to Israel etc.
I found book to be interesting.
I found book to be interesting.
June 29, 2021
An incredible exploration of identity and its conflicts.
November 27, 2023
4 1/4 stars
February 9, 2017
Good, but not up to expectations
Perhaps some of the lyrical aspects of the writing has been lost in the translation to English. The book meanders through the life of of Haroun Soussan a Jewish convert to Islam in Iraq. I agree with the previous reviewer that the lack of chapter headings and jumping back in forth in time makes the book difficult to follow - I'd recommend reading it in a single sitting rather than multiple sessions as I did. Someone unfamiliar Iraq over the last 70 years would have difficulty reassembling the historical background. The style does augment the notion that Haroun is a static and lonely character who ages slowly but changes little as the world changes around him.
For me the book centres around the notion of personal identity and its relationship to others. Soussan defines himself as a Muslim and converts on principles of generality because Islam is presented as the alternative that embraces the culture at large and because he fails to connect to his brother Reuben and the Jewish community. In spite of this he concerns himself with Zionism and his life's work is a book "The Jews In History", the focus of which Ballas has unfortunately decided to hide from the reader. Yet his disappointment shows through between his imagined ideals of Islamic community and the reality of political and social life. This comes to the fore in the episodes of the 2 farhuds (progroms) against the Jews of 1941 and 1947 where his uncertainty of how he fits in with both communities and his discomforture that his granddaughter by Hamida his 2nd wife, was given the Jewish name of Sarah and the unexplored question of whether or not Jane, Haroun's first wife, raised his son Jamil as a Jew.
Biographical fiction is not my usual fare and I was motivated to read Outcast through Ballas' appearance in the (excellent) documentary Forget Baghdad. A more precise rating I would give this book is 3.75 stars. I would probably not recommend it to others but it is interesting and discussable.
Perhaps some of the lyrical aspects of the writing has been lost in the translation to English. The book meanders through the life of of Haroun Soussan a Jewish convert to Islam in Iraq. I agree with the previous reviewer that the lack of chapter headings and jumping back in forth in time makes the book difficult to follow - I'd recommend reading it in a single sitting rather than multiple sessions as I did. Someone unfamiliar Iraq over the last 70 years would have difficulty reassembling the historical background. The style does augment the notion that Haroun is a static and lonely character who ages slowly but changes little as the world changes around him.
For me the book centres around the notion of personal identity and its relationship to others. Soussan defines himself as a Muslim and converts on principles of generality because Islam is presented as the alternative that embraces the culture at large and because he fails to connect to his brother Reuben and the Jewish community. In spite of this he concerns himself with Zionism and his life's work is a book "The Jews In History", the focus of which Ballas has unfortunately decided to hide from the reader. Yet his disappointment shows through between his imagined ideals of Islamic community and the reality of political and social life. This comes to the fore in the episodes of the 2 farhuds (progroms) against the Jews of 1941 and 1947 where his uncertainty of how he fits in with both communities and his discomforture that his granddaughter by Hamida his 2nd wife, was given the Jewish name of Sarah and the unexplored question of whether or not Jane, Haroun's first wife, raised his son Jamil as a Jew.
Biographical fiction is not my usual fare and I was motivated to read Outcast through Ballas' appearance in the (excellent) documentary Forget Baghdad. A more precise rating I would give this book is 3.75 stars. I would probably not recommend it to others but it is interesting and discussable.
May 1, 2012
This fictional memoir by Israeli writer Shimon Ballas interweaves a broad cast of characters with 70 years of Iraqi political history. Meanwhile it's also a very personal story that centers around three boyhood friends from a village near Karbala - two of them Arab Jews and a third Muslim. While their lives diverge over the decades following WWI, they remain bonded by their love of homeland and their deep desire to devote their lives to what each considers to be its brightest hopes for the future and independence from western colonialism - the control of the British in particular.
Advocating a secular government built on the ideals of an inclusive social order that grants advantages to no one, regardless of ethnic identity, the narrator Soussan finds himself at odds with the aims of Zionism and its aggressive separatism. Believing Islam to be more receptive to his political beliefs, he converts to Islam, alienating himself from his family, the Jewish community, and his old friend, the Jewish poet Assad. When anti-semitism grows in Iraq in the 1940s, Assad joins the 100,000s who leave the country for the new state of Israel. Their other friend, Kassem, becomes an ardent communist, whose life is spent in and out of prisons, finally fleeing into exile in Eastern Europe.
Educated in the U.S. and briefly married to an American, the narrator chooses to return to Iraq, leaving behind wife and son. They do not follow him as he hopes, and after years of a solitary life, working as a civil engineer in Baghdad, he marries again and fathers a daughter, while never ceasing to love his ex-wife. The commitment of his life to his homeland, even to the extent of adopting its religion, leaves him something of an exile in his own country, and there is a degree of melancholy as he remembers a life given to his country at the expense of love and lost friends. Yet Ballas leaves him with an assurance of his own integrity, and not a trace of bitterness or regret. Readers, however, may take less solace in the ending, as it closes just short of Saddam Hussein's war with Iran.
There's a lot of history compressed into this short novel, and the telling of it flows freely back and forth over decades of time. The personal and the political are also intimately interwoven, one always having an impact on the other. References to historical events may send readers to the Internet for background, but the occasional difficulties are well worth the effort to unravel. As the story of Arab Jews is not widely known or understood in the West, it's important to hear their voice. Beautifully translated.
Advocating a secular government built on the ideals of an inclusive social order that grants advantages to no one, regardless of ethnic identity, the narrator Soussan finds himself at odds with the aims of Zionism and its aggressive separatism. Believing Islam to be more receptive to his political beliefs, he converts to Islam, alienating himself from his family, the Jewish community, and his old friend, the Jewish poet Assad. When anti-semitism grows in Iraq in the 1940s, Assad joins the 100,000s who leave the country for the new state of Israel. Their other friend, Kassem, becomes an ardent communist, whose life is spent in and out of prisons, finally fleeing into exile in Eastern Europe.
Educated in the U.S. and briefly married to an American, the narrator chooses to return to Iraq, leaving behind wife and son. They do not follow him as he hopes, and after years of a solitary life, working as a civil engineer in Baghdad, he marries again and fathers a daughter, while never ceasing to love his ex-wife. The commitment of his life to his homeland, even to the extent of adopting its religion, leaves him something of an exile in his own country, and there is a degree of melancholy as he remembers a life given to his country at the expense of love and lost friends. Yet Ballas leaves him with an assurance of his own integrity, and not a trace of bitterness or regret. Readers, however, may take less solace in the ending, as it closes just short of Saddam Hussein's war with Iran.
There's a lot of history compressed into this short novel, and the telling of it flows freely back and forth over decades of time. The personal and the political are also intimately interwoven, one always having an impact on the other. References to historical events may send readers to the Internet for background, but the occasional difficulties are well worth the effort to unravel. As the story of Arab Jews is not widely known or understood in the West, it's important to hear their voice. Beautifully translated.
January 3, 2008
i am reading this book in the bathtub squinting in the dim light at a heavy subject, an iraqi jew who does not believe in israel as THE HOMELAND. he provides a lot of history about middle eastern jews, how home is a concept that the zionist used for their own selfish reasons.
it's good to have relaxed muscles while reading "outcast." a man who grew up along side muslims but was not allowed to eat their food. he does anyway when his father is away.
eventually he becomes a muslim i believe, his people feel betrayed.
written by an iraqi jew who lives in israel, this book is a refreshing read. triple sighted, deep and a good story.
it's good to have relaxed muscles while reading "outcast." a man who grew up along side muslims but was not allowed to eat their food. he does anyway when his father is away.
eventually he becomes a muslim i believe, his people feel betrayed.
written by an iraqi jew who lives in israel, this book is a refreshing read. triple sighted, deep and a good story.
Read
February 9, 2012I had to read this book for school, as I am writing my Master's Report on it, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Maybe its a very region-specific interest (the Middle East) but I found it well written and interesting.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews