Baghdad Twist

Baghdad Twist opens with a scene from a wedding reception: well-dressed couples twirl in pairs around a dance floor. One pair looks directly into the camera and smiles. Eerie, electronic music hums as the dance scene cuts to images of the streets of Baghdad blanketed with the snow of a once-in-a-lifetime storm. The 33-minute film is narrated by the disembodied voices of Valentine Balass, the mother of Iraqi Canadian filmmaker Joe Balass, and Joe himself, as he asks her to recount her life story leading up to their departure from Iraq in a blend of English and Judeo-Arabic. Baghdad Twist, Balass’ fourth film, contributes to the growing body of work that tells stories of the modern Jewish experience through the lens of family history. Baghdad Twist joins documentaries like Next Year in Argentina (2005) and Where the Heart Is (2012), which explore the lives and afterlives of Jewish diaspora communities, and is in step with increasing efforts to center the voices and histories of Jews of all backgrounds.Visually and auditorily, the film is a collage of family photos and footage, archival images, and video reminiscent of public broadcasting documentaries. The film intersperses footage of weddings, family life, and children playing with aerial shots of Baghdad and tanks rolling through its streets. Baghdad Twist gives little context to the visual elements beyond Valentine's narration or the audio of a news report, which creates a disjointed picture of a world that no longer exists. The film's sound design is also remarkable, as the music of the opening scene transforms into a distant adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. Descriptions of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that flow through Baghdad are accompanied by sounds of water flowing and crickets chirping. The sound of Valentine's microphone clicking off gives way to a twist song.Valentine says her first language is “Jewish Arabic” and recalls her first memory at 4 years old. Her mother made her a blue taffeta dress with a large bow “like Shirley Temple” to celebrate the birth of her younger brother. Valentine lived with her parents and five brothers on the riverside in Baghdad. Her father allowed her brothers to swim in the river but forbade Valentine from swimming. Recalling how her mother encouraged her to stand up to her brothers, the film contextualizes Valentine's story with footage of young women training to work as chemists and nurses. An unnamed narrator with a mid-Atlantic accent describes the surprise of these students’ mothers as their daughters prepare for jobs previously unimaginable for women. While the film here points to the broadening of opportunities available to all, especially women, in the twentieth century, it implies that modernity moved only in the direction of secularism and away from domesticity.The conversation between the narrators traces the complexity of feeling Iraqi and Jewish as the conditions in Iraq became increasingly untenable for the Jewish community in the 1950s and 1960s. As Valentine recounts this dissolution, the conversation between narrators becomes one between a parent and a child. In 1963, their lives were in peril during the military coup d’état. In 1965, they celebrated a family member's wedding. After the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Valentine recalls that “everything collapsed.” In between these moments of instability, Valentine recounts how life returns to normal. This is the “twist” of the Jews of Iraq, the oscillation between normalcy and nightmare. She describes how non-Jewish Iraqis gradually distanced themselves from their Jewish neighbors, the government made radio announcements against Jews, and someone cut the family's phone lines. After the Iraqi authorities repeatedly arrested Joe's father and the 1969 public hangings of 14 alleged spies for Israel, including nine Jews, three Muslims, and two Christians by Iraqi authorities, the Balass family fled Iraq.Amid these recollections of trauma, Baghdad Twist conveys a yearning for a past that those in the diaspora can visit only in memories, photos, and videos. Valentine and Joe try together to remember the words to a lullaby they sang decades ago. News reports detailing the events of the 1958 coup play over family photos. Joe recalls the skin that formed on top of boiled milk; Valentine recollects the freshness of the hand-delivered milk. The narrative is as fragmented as memories, but both Joe's and Valentine's vulnerability is poignant. At the 19-minute mark, Valentine turns the questions on her son, asking: “Maybe you want a memory for yourself of Iraq, no?” This question captures the essence of Baghdad Twist. A mother and son piece together both bitter and sweet memories, an exercise that is one of remembering and making sense of a place that was the site of both joy and pain.Baghdad Twist demonstrates that memories are communal both in their formation and recollection, and will be of interest to folklorists interested in how tradition and family stories evolve in diasporic cultural communities and throughout lifetimes. Instructors who want to encourage students to think about and generate their own familial and cultural folklore might use the film as a model for self-reflection or conducting family interviews. All viewers will step away with a deeper understanding of this family and all immigrant, exile, and refugee communities. As Baghdad Twist tells the story of Iraqi Jews in the twentieth century through the experiences of the Balass family, it also captures the transcendent experience of all who are estranged from their homes, searching for their family history, and longing for a place to which they cannot go.

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