The Dove Flyer

Eli Amir

helmi 2014 · New York Review of Books

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The Dove Flyer tells the story of the last years of the Jewish community in Baghdad, before their expulsion in 1950 and settlement in Israel. The young narrator, Kabi, watches as the members of his extended family each develop different dreams and a different sets of fears throughout these tumultuous, transitional times: his mother wants to move out of the new Jewish quarter and back to their old Muslim neighborhood where she felt safer; his father wants to emigrate to the promised land, the new State of Israel, where he will farm and grow rice; his uncle Hizkel, a Zionist, is arrested and taken off to prison to await trial and a possible death sentence; his headmaster, Salim, believes in the equality of Arabs and Jews; and his uncle Edouard just wants to hang out on the rooftop with his doves. Meanwhile, as World War II draws closer and Israeli statehood seems more assured, a noose begins to tighten around Jewish Iraqis. Houses are appropriated, Jews are beaten in the streets and hung in public, and young Kabi watches as the storied legacy of the Jewish community in Baghdad is dismantled piecemeal and finally decimated.  As for the land of milk and honey, there is neither milk, nor honey. It is a desert, a place as barren and coarse as the community Kabi and his family left behind was vibrant, bountiful, and dreamy.

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Eli Amir was born in Baghdad in 1937 and emigrated to Israel two years after the creation of the state in 1950. In addition to being an award-winning novelist, Amir has been a civil servant, working with refugees, the Jewish Agency, and as a special advisor on Arab affairs to the Israeli president. Amir is a political activist, advocating on behalf of Palestinians and against the Occupied Territories.
 
Hillel Halkin is a critic, writer, and translator of both Hebrew and Yiddish. Born in America in 1939, Halkin studied English literature at Columbia University and emigrated to Israel in 1950.  His 2010 biography of Yahuda Halevi won the National Jewish Book Prize.