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Fantasy as ‘Recovery, Escape andConsolation’ in the Short Stories ofIsaac Bar MosheGeula ElimelekhPublished online: 22 Apr 2014.

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Fantasy as ‘Recovery, Escape andConsolation’ in the Short Stories of IsaacBar Moshe

GEULA ELIMELEKH*

In reconstructing the literary history of the Iraqi Jews, the Israeli Arabist and historian

Reuven Snir refers to the historian Yusuf Rizq Allah Ghanimah (1885–1950). Writing

as an outsider to the Jewish community in his book A Nostalgic Trip into the History

of the Jews of Iraq, first published in 1924, Ghanimah sheds a unique light on the revo-lutionary events that were affecting the lives of the community’s members, particularly

those of Baghdad’s Jewish intellectuals in the early twentieth century. One thing Snir

quotes is the author’s observation that in the 1920s the Jews worked widely in every

useful occupation, but did not involve themselves in Arabic journalism or literature.

Commenting on Ghanimah’s remark, Snir writes that a process of secularization

and modernization in Jewish life had been unfolding gradually since the mid-nine-

teenth century. But in contrast to his predecessor, he pinpoints the 1920s as the

decade marking the turning point when Baghdadi Jewish thinkers and writers brokeinto journalistic and literary writing in Arabic.1

As the Baghdad-born Hebrew University Professor (Emeritus) of Arabic Shmuel

Moreh writes:

The first generation of these writers received a western education, studied Euro-

pean languages and knew classical and modern Arabic well, which enabled

them to pioneer in bringing modern western influences to Iraqi literature. These

writers excelled in a fluent Arabic style, which was characterized by humanist

romanticism, revolutionary ideas and patriotism towards Iraq. This served to

suppress or hide their Jewish personalities and aspirations, and blurred the Jew-ish atmosphere, customs and characters in their works. We can see that the Jew-

ish writers tried to strike roots in the literary life of their country of birth and its

culture, economy and society. They wanted to create a typical Arabic-Iraqi liter-

ature and to bring about a cultural revolution.2

The mass immigration of Iraq’s Jews to Israel in 1950–51 put an end to the idea of

integration into Iraqi society and culture.3 What is more, many of the immigrant

*Department of Arabic, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel 52900. E-mail:geula180@gmail.com

� 2014 Taylor & Francis

Middle Eastern Studies, 2014

Vol. 50, No. 3, 426–441, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2014.886567

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Iraqi intellectuals faced deep discouragement in the difficulties they encountered in

Israel: the economic hardship, the difficulty of integrating into a new society and

gaining fluency in a new language. Meanwhile, their love for Arabic culture was so

strong that many sought to continue writing in Arabic. The 1950s saw a significant

increase in the number of Iraqi-born Israeli authors and journalists who published intheir native tongue. Most addressed urgent social and political issues, rather than the

themes that traditionally concerned them in Iraq – love, universal social and moral

issues, the status of women, and the like. But lacking a viable audience for their Ara-

bic writing, most of these authors quickly shifted to writing in Hebrew.4

In his study of Arabic short stories by Iraqi-Jewish immigrants between 1922 and

1972, Muklif Hamad Mudhi divides this period into three stages in terms of the gen-

re’s development:5

� The 1950s, in which the prominent writers were Sami Michael, Ibrahım Musa

Ibrahım (Ibrahım ʿAqari) and Shimon Ballas. Their writing was mostly realis-

tic, the main theme being the difference between the lives of the Iraqi Jews in

Israel and their previous lives in Iraq.

� The 1960s, during which the prominent writer was Shimon Ballas. His stories

from this period deal mostly with the life of Iraqi Jews before their immigration

to Israel.

� The early 1970s marked the period when the Jewish-Iraqi short story reached itspeak in terms of literary quality with the advent of Samır Naqqash and Isaac

Bar Moshe. They dealt with human problems, moving between the individual

and the collective, the private and the universal, and explored human suffering

and the conflict between good and evil, war and peace, man and his soul.

According to Snir, the works of the last two writers are surprising in their quality and

timing, and reveal a rich cultural world that came out in their works when circum-

stances – in particular the subjective circumstances – allowed it.6

Of these two superior representatives of Iraqi-born writers in the Arabic idiom, this

article focuses on Isaac Bar Moshe (1927–2004), and specifically on his approach to

fantasy in the short story and the influences on this aspect of his literary output.

Born and raised in Baghdad, he studied in Jewish schools and later attended the Law

College. As a young man, he published some poems and short stories under a pseu-

donym in the Iraqi press.7 In 1950 he immigrated to Israel, and in the next two deca-

des he held various posts in Israel’s Arabic-language media. Only in the early 1970sdid he begin to devote himself to literary writing.

Bar Moshe’s stories are set in the 1940s, a difficult and fateful decade in the history

of Iraqi Jewry. It began with the Gailani pro-Nazi coup in 1941, and ended with the

establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The latter triggered a wave of arrests and

public hangings of both Jews and non-Jews, based on alleged communist and Zionist

activity and on various trumped-up charges. Jewish civil servants were dismissed

from their posts and Jewish traders were prevented from doing business. Youths and

riffraff attacked Jews in the streets and threw stones at synagogues. Many Jewsfound themselves in a Kafkaesque nightmare, arrested and imprisoned for no reason

other than their being Jewish. The Jews saw the ground crumble under the feet of

The Short Stories of Isaac Bar Moshe 427

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their ancient community, traceable back to Babylonian times, which for generations

had been a dominant cultural and economic force in early modern and modern

Iraq.8 Shmuel Moreh notes that this traumatic period forms the backdrop of Bar

Moshe’s literature. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that his works, which have

many autobiographical aspects, describe a forbidding world in which only dreamsand imagination offer any hope of escape.9

Moreh also notes that, though Bar Moshe’s personality was shaped in Iraq, and

though he tried his hand at poetry and short stories before his immigration, his liter-

ary style evolved only when he started writing in Israel, 22 years after his arrival in

the country. Interestingly, he chose to write in Arabic, unlike most other Iraqi immi-

grant writers in Israel; most realized it made no sense to go against the dominant cul-

ture so they learned and wrote in Hebrew, especially if they had not started writing

articles or fiction in Iraq. Snir also notes that Bar Moshe’s choice of language clearlystemmed from a conscious personal and cultural preference, rather than from any

material consideration.10

Perhaps Bar Moshe’s most famous work is his autobiographical novel A House in

Baghdad,11 which portrays three generations in his family: his own, his father’s and

his grandfather’s, and reflects the patriarchal atmosphere in his familial setting dur-

ing his childhood. The most dominant character in the book is the grandfather Isaac,

after whom Bar Moshe was named, and who left an indelible mark on him even

though the child knew him only briefly. The house in Baghdad is described as a safeplace, where the well-defined roles of each family member and the firm authority of

the father and grandfather created a stable and supportive environment. The family

members believed in demons and spirits, but these were not perceived as evil or

destructive forces; on the contrary, they embody spiritual wholeness and beauty. The

novel portrays the life of the Jewish community in Iraq as peaceful for many genera-

tions, and relations with their Muslim neighbours as cordial and even warm. Hence,

Jewish emigration from Iraq was minimal until the Second World War era.12

Little wonder, then, that Bar Moshe’s stories reveal a preoccupation with ghostsand the hereafter, coupled with dreams and the mysteries of the human psyche. He

moves between the real and the unreal, trying to capture the essence of worlds we

can sense but cannot understand.13

This writer’s interest in ghosts and the afterlife is rooted, to some extent, in folk

beliefs about demons (jan) and spirits that prevailed among all Middle Eastern peo-

ples, including the Iraqi Jews. Demons of various kinds are mentioned in the Muslim

religious texts (the Koran and Koranic commentaries) and in Jewish scriptures (the

Bible and Talmud, as well as the Zohar and other Kabbalistic texts), a fact whichstrengthened the belief in them. Demons are also mentioned in Arab history books

and play important roles in innumerable folktales, such as A Thousand and One

Nights. In his book The Greatness that Was Babylon, H.W.F. Saggs argues that the

notion of demonic possession actually originated in ancient Babylon.14 The Sumerian-

Babylonian religion, which was essentially animistic, maintained that man is sur-

rounded by a multitude of spirits, demons and gods; these pose a constant threat of

possession because they can take over a person’s soul, especially if he is vulnerable –

alone in the wilderness, asleep, or similar. Saggs argues that, though the belief indemons was present in the Semitic world at large, it was not originally an important

component of Judaism. These concepts acquired a much more central place in Jewish

428 G. Elimelekh

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culture and religion during the Babylonian Exile under the strong influence of Babylon

on their captive nation.15

Moreh argues that the belief in demons among Iraqi Jews was also enhanced by

the environment and atmosphere in Iraqi cities. The narrow and dimly lit alleyways,

teeming not only with people but with cattle and various vermin, frightened peopleand led them to imagine goblins and demons.16 In his book The Socio-Cultural

Development of the Iraqi Jews, Yosef Meir makes a similar claim. He states that the

folktales about the demon Tantal17 and other demons emerged in periods when Iraqi

towns had narrow, twisting alleys and large houses with dark cellars, which gave rise

to hallucinations and fears.18 The question is what lies behind Bar Moshe’s fantasy

stories and his exposure of spiritual worlds.

Apparently, one of the factors that prompted Bar Moshe to begin writing 22 years

after his arrival in Israel was his yearning for the old world, which was complete andharmonious, or at least appeared to be. It was a world where religious, social and cul-

tural values were clear, giving people a sense of security and protection from any

external factor that could disrupt their calm existence. Bar Moshe’s fantasy stories

express his longing for this ‘once upon a time’ world. In addition, his turning to fan-

tasy is also a response to the complex reality that emerged in the late twentieth cen-

tury which, according to Michael Keren, led many authors to take a similar turn.19

The twentieth century was a century of world wars, of horrific ideologies that

fomented mass murders, and of a growing alienation from and abuse of the world ofnature. All this led many, including writers, to turn to mysticism and fantasy.20

Apparently, Bar Moshe, to free himself of the miseries in this world, allowed him-

self to reconstruct an illusory reality according to his personal fantasies, as is clearly

reflected in his stories.21 According to Mudhi, Bar Moshe’s preoccupation with the

mysterious stems from his desire to escape the material world and the bleak situation

in which the Iraqi Jews found themselves after their immigration to Israel. He states

further that, in their fantastical dimension and in their yearning for the past, Bar

Moshe’s works were influenced by those of Kafka, who constructs an imaginaryworld to reflect the complexity of reality and the alienation of man.22 Mudhi empha-

sizes that Bar Moshe’s stories resemble the world of Kafka, where people live in con-

fusion and can find their only escape in dreams. Moreover, like Kafka, Bar Moshe

combines direct and realistic narrative with dream-like sequences, and, like Kafka’s

characters, his heroes are often na€ıve, simple folk who find themselves coming up

against a cruel and unreasonable officialdom.23

At this point I review in some detail a number Bar Moshe’s fantasy stories in order toshow their content and to introduce their literary and psychological elements for fur-

ther discussion below in light of J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay ‘On Fairy-Stories’.

Bar Moshe’s first book of short stories, Behind the Wall , came out in

1972. It was soon followed by his second, The Polar Bear , and a third,

The Dance of Rain , published in 1973 and 1974, respectively. The sto-

ries in these collections reflect the social, political and cultural reality in Iraq, espe-

cially in the ten years prior to Bar Moshe’s immigration to Israel. As mentioned, this

period (the Second World War and the years during and immediately after Israel’sestablishment) was marked by persecution of Iraq’s Jewish minority, especially the

community in Baghdad. Bar Moshe’s world, as reflected in his stories, is split into

The Short Stories of Isaac Bar Moshe 429

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two: outward realism and inward fantasy. According to Moreh, this represents a

schism between the surrounding reality and the narrators’ dream worlds in their sto-

ries, which sometimes leads to a kind of schizophrenia, an intense internal conflict or

an attack of paranoia. Most of Bar Moshe’s narrators live on the border between

sanity and madness, reality and fantasy, and waking and dream or nightmare.24 Anin-depth examination of Bar-Moshe’s works reveals that the narrator is in fact a

reflection of the author, and that their world around is one of dreams and

hallucinations.25

In ‘The Dead House’, a story in Behind the Wall,26 two nine-year-old boys – the

narrator and his best friend, Salım – visit an abandoned house in the yard of their

school, which they are forbidden to enter, and encounter there a group of fairies

(jinniyyat).

The story begins on a mysterious and ominous note, 30 years after the incident.One day, at nine in the morning, the phone rings, and when the narrator answers, he

hears an ‘indistinct mumble’ . The use of the word ‘indistinct’ and

other words like ‘fractured’ and ‘clarity’ suggest an ambivalent real-

ity that can be perceived as both clear and comprehensible or vague and obscure.

The caller turns out to be Salım, wishing to remind his friend of their childhood

together, and of the incident of the fairies, which the narrator has since forgotten.

The verb ‘remember’ recurs again and again in the conversation: Salım says to

the narrator ‘you must remember me’ and asks if he rememberswhat he (Salım) looks like.27

When Salım asks the narrator if he remembers the ‘abandoned building’

, the latter freezes, feeling as though ‘a match has been struck amid the

darkness of his life, illuminating a great mansion of memories’

. Memory is

perceived in the story as a deposit which, over the years, becomes buried in an ever-

thickening layer of dust. The mention of the abandoned house shakes this layer off,

moving the narrator to ask, ‘What are 30 years in the life of the memory?’.

Once reminded, the narrator cannot understand how he ever forgot Salım and

their adventure together. He recalls how, one evening, he and his friend realized

that the abandoned house could be reached through the cellar of the school, and

decided to go there, despite the prohibitions of the school principal and staff. The

description of their descent into the cellar is detailed and suspenseful – all the more

so because it is preceded by a long conversation with the friend, which is suspenseful

in itself – and full of terms of concealment and exposure, light and darkness. In thecellar there is ‘no light and no lamp’.28 As they venture in, the narrator thinks, ‘This

cellar must be the only entrance into that abandoned house or dead wing of the sc-

hool’

.29

Inside, they suddenly realize they are being followed by an unknown presence,

which turns out to be a mysterious, invisible sentry who tries to prevent them from

reaching the abandoned house. When the boys beg him to let them through, he

explains that they are unbidden guests and that the inhabitants of the house will nottolerate them. He refers to the abandoned building as al-dar al-ukhra ,

which literally means ‘the other house’, but also hints at the afterlife.30

430 G. Elimelekh

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The story alternates smoothly between the description of the boys’ adventure, told

from their perspective, and the description of the phone conversation 30 years later.

Apparently, the author’s message is that life as we experience it is a single unit min-

gling past and present. Though life takes place in time, our thoughts and conscious-

ness transcend the limitations of time and place, just like the fairy world that theboys discover.

Reaching the abandoned house despite the sentry’s attempts to stop them, the

boys feel as though they have fallen into a dark well. From the outside, the building

seemed ordinary, but once inside they find themselves in what appears to be ‘a block

of blue glass with no sky above it and no ground below’

.31 When the narrator

looks back, he finds that the door has disappeared, and that he is suspended in a lim-

itless blue space. His friend Salım is gone, but he is not surprised by his absence;everything that happens seems completely natural to him. Suddenly, he sees in front

of him a tiny fairy (jinniyyah) with large eyes. She speaks to him tenderly and lov-

ingly, but then disappears. Later, his friend tells him that he saw and experienced the

same thing. Exiting the building, the boys see two other children quarrelling in the

school yard. They recall that the fight started as they descended into the cellar, mean-

ing that the entire episode lasted no more than a few minutes, though it seemed to

take much longer. In other words, their adventure took place in a spiritual-mystical

realm where the dimension of time does not exist.Throughout the story, the narrator is preoccupied with questions of reality. He asks

himself time and again if what he and his friend saw in the cellar was real, or just the

product of their imagination and self-delusion. He points out that many scientists and phi-

losophers study supernatural phenomena and try to analyse them, but have failed to reach

clear conclusions. Despite his doubts, he ultimately feels sure that ‘what he saw, sensed,

knew and experienced in those moments [in the abandoned house] was completely re-

al’

.At the end of the story, the narrator looks at the clock and discovers that it is

still nine o’clock – no time has passed since the phone rang. Overwhelmed, he feels

that he is losing his sanity. He states that the phone call has destroyed the mental

world he constructed over 30 years, leaving him stranded in a fantastical realm

peopled by spirits and demons. This spiritual world is not a bad place. On the con-

trary, it is bright and magical, full of beauty, purity, love, warmth, silence and

innocence. It is the complete opposite of the cruel and grey world we live in, and

provides hope and comfort to one who is exhausted from the hardships of every-day life. However, a man who wanders into this realm immediately finds himself

at a disadvantage, for he is burdened with carnal and material attributes accumu-

lated over years of struggling to survive. He is trapped in an absurd situation to

which he is unaccustomed, torn between two worlds, the spiritual and the material.

The abandoned house, described as ‘the dead wing of the school’, symbolizes

man’s reality, which consists of a realistic-material sphere, accessible to our five

senses, and a spiritual sphere that cannot be experienced through the senses, and is

therefore a kind of ‘dead wing’. The cellar through which the boys pass is a corridorbetween the two worlds, or perhaps even between the world of the living and the

world of the dead,32 and the sentry may be a kind of mediator between the two

The Short Stories of Isaac Bar Moshe 431

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realms. The story reflects Bar Moshe’s dual perspective on existence in general and

on man in particular.

The fairy motif recurs in ‘The Cellar’ , another story in Behind the Wall.

The story opens with a question and answer: ‘What are miracles?

They are all those things that transcend the experience of our everyday lives. Every-thing we can see and understand we call ordinary. Anything out of the ordinary we

regard as a wonder.’33

The narrator, a young law student, lives in his childhood home, which has a large,

dark cellar used for storing coal and firewood. The family members usually avoid

entering it, and even the servants keep their visits short and often come out looking

frightened. As a boy, the narrator was curious and wanted to explore the cellar, but

when he walked in, he felt something touching his arm and ran out in terror. When

his mother noticed his fear and asked him what was the matter, he asked, ‘Is there afairy in the cellar?’ She replied, ‘I don’t know, your grandmother says there is. All

these old houses have fairies in the cellar. Don’t be alarmed, they harm nobody. All

those who have seen them describe them as quiet and peaceful creatures. I myself

have never seen this spirit, or any other.’34

One day, many years later, when the narrator is alone at home, he notices the cellar

door standing half open. With a smile he recalls the story of the fairy, and decides to

go down and investigate. Feeling a touch of fear, he scolds himself, ‘We are grown

up now. We no longer believe in superstitions and old wives’ tales’.35

He goes in, and when his eyes adjust to the darkness, he sees the fairy sitting on a

pile of firewood.

Her body, though wrapped in darkness, was clearly discernible. Shocked, he

stood rooted to the spot, his eyes nearly popping out. His body froze and he

stared, unblinking. Then he felt a wonderful silence coming over him, cleansing

his mind, purifying his blood, and turning the darkness around him into flutter-ing light. This, then, is the light of the darkness.

His gaze is captured by the silver glimmer of her mysterious eyes, by whose light he

can see the full length of her body. Was it the body of a child or a woman? Its perfect

harmony transcends any form of beauty he knew. Her eyes rest on him with a deep,

luminous, quiet gaze. They give off a silver shine. He thinks she moves one of her

arms. Suddenly, she vanishes, just as she had appeared, and the cellar is plunged

once again into total darkness.36

Snir notes that ‘the description of the fairy is replete with synesthetic and contra-

dictory phrases, typical of descriptions of mystical experiences. . . . The story, rich in

allusions to Arab mysticism and to modern works that incorporate elements of this

heritage, ends with the narrator deciding to revisit the cellar the following day’.37

‘The Cellar’ clearly has an autobiographical dimension – for example, Bar Moshe

was ‘a young law student’. But, more broadly speaking, in Bar Moshe’s autobio-

graphical novels A House in Baghdad and Iraqi Days , the theme that the

Jews believed cellars to be haunted by spirits and demons is a constant leitmotif. Thefairies in these stories have yet another function: they symbolize Bar Moshe’s yearn-

ing to go back to the Jewish community life in Iraq, and to return to the peace and

security of his childhood home.

432 G. Elimelekh

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‘The Third Hill’ , also in Behind the Wall, incorporates elements from

the author’s history as described in his later autobiographical works.38 In the story,

the narrator is travelling through a ‘dead land’ , a dark, silent and lonely

landscape. He passes over two hills and, unable to find a place to rest, continues to a

third. On reaching the top of the third hill, he suddenly realizes that the journey hastaken very little time. He also notices that there is a circle of seats carved into the

side of the hill, and his ability to see it in total darkness convinces him that it repre-

sents an unnatural phenomenon. Trying to find another human soul in this wilder-

ness, he whistles, and the sound summons a mysterious presence that approaches

with a threatening rustle.

Suddenly he hears laughter, and is seized by an invisible being. A voice informs

him he has entered a forbidden realm, and pronounces him a prisoner:

Strong hands gripped his wrists in the darkness, but he could not see anyone. A

loud voice spoke in his ear. ‘From this moment you are our prisoner.’‘Who are you?’

‘We will not answer your questions. You will be safe with us, but you will be a

prisoner.’

‘I have committed no crime.’

‘That does not matter. Not every prisoner is guilty.’39

The narrator protests at being imprisoned without warning or reason.40 His mysteri-

ous captor tells him he is imprisoned forever and must obey without question. He leadshim to a spot behind one of the seats, where an opening in the ground reveals stairs

leading downwards. As the narrator descends, he is asked to give personal details. Sud-

denly the stairs disappear and he finds himself in a wide, empty space open to the sky.

He can do nothing but think, so he spends his time contemplating the strange events

that have befallen him. He does not know how much time has passed, whether it has

been days or seconds. His surroundings have not changed; it is still dark and he is still

in the grip of invisible arms that now hold him by the ankles. However, he is allowed

to question his captors. He asks them what they expect of him, to which they reply,‘complete obedience’. This leads to a discussion of freedom. The narrator asks, ‘Can I

equally object to the false liberty that is allowed me?’ And they answer, ‘Nameless

man, false liberty is the liberty you thought you had before you came here. If you wish

to see the stars, you must forget your previous freedom. It was the freedom of one who

did not know the meaning of the word.’41 To clarify, they add,

One man is bound by obstacles, fetters, rules and laws, yet considers himself

free. Another knows that freedom vanishes and is lost with the appearance of

the very first limitation. Which of the two is free? . . . From the minute you enterthis place, your freedom must be real. Otherwise, painful feelings of loss will fol-

low you until your dying day. Do you wish to be a torn man, who feels his con-

duct to be incorrect and unnatural?42

They try to make him see that in his previous life he was enslaved, whereas now he

has found true freedom.43 They say to him, ‘You have been searching for this hill all

your life. You must know that. You do know it, but you disregard it.’44

The Short Stories of Isaac Bar Moshe 433

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Contemplating his past, present and future, the narrator gradually realizes that he

has always been a prisoner and that his entire life has been a uniform mass of ‘dead

soil’ and ‘barren hills’ . When he asks

his captors to release him, they consent, explaining that he is a prisoner who is free

to go wherever he pleases and even to return if he wishes. He takes his leave of themand ascends the third hill. Looking back to the place where he was, he sees nothing,

yet he returns to his home a changed man. He realizes that, apart from himself, there

are others who are bound by invisible shackles, and this gives him such peace that he

forgets his own.45

Mudhi argues that each hill in the story represents a period in the life of the writer,

and that the dark atmosphere symbolizes his loneliness.46 Moreh states that the story

encapsulates Bar Moshe’s philosophy and reflects the author’s own life, specifically a

spiritual crisis that befell him at the age of 30. Like Mudhi, Moreh says that the threehills symbolize the three decades of his life until then. Only upon reaching the summit

of the third hill (namely, age 30) did he realize that man is not free, but is always

bound by invisible rules and obligations.

The story ‘The Return of Mahbub’ in Behind the Wall tells of a

seven-year-old boy who falls down the stairs and is fatally injured. When he dies, his

spirit is released from his body.

At that moment [of his death], Mahbub rose to the ceiling of his room and perched

on the windowsill, where he could gaze out of the window over his small world. He

no longer felt any pain in his body, his head or his arms. He continued to live as

before, free in his home and his room. Sitting on the windowsill, he gazed down at

his body lying on the bed and at his mother crying and screaming.47

The mother’s screams quickly summon the neighbours. They feel the boy’s arms

and legs and look out of the window ‘at the God that can be neither seen nor heard’.When Mahbub’s father comes home, the boy jumps off the windowsill and perches

on his arm, but the father is unaware of his presence. Witnessing the sorrow of his

family and neighbours, Mahbub wonders whether it is reasonable to grieve so much

over the dead, considering that death released him from intense pain. But nobody

sees or hears him. They all look at the body and weep. Trailing after his funeral pro-

cession in bewilderment, Mahbub tries to make his parents see that only his body is

dead, whereas his spirit is present and alive, but he is unsuccessful in communicating

his presence. Despite this, he decides to stay with them if he can.The years pass. Mahbub spends his days on the windowsill or gliding around the

house, and discovers that distance and time are meaningless for him. The mother

gives birth to a new son and names him Mahbub. The ghost boy realizes that his

parents regard him as dead and gone. After Mahbub’s three brothers marry, the

parents decide to sell their house, which greatly saddens the child. Gliding through

the rooms that have been emptied of furniture, he suddenly hears a voice calling to

him from heaven. ‘He raises his arms towards an invisible hand that is stretched out

towards him, and leaves the house, ascending to another place, far, far away, fromwhich there is no return.’48

This story – which, like other stories by Bar Moshe, recalls the testimonies of peo-

ple who had a near-death experience – addresses the question of whether an afterlife

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exists. Bar Moshe evidently believes that it does, even if our earthly senses cannot dis-

cern it. In fact, Bar Moshe believes that the spirit world controls the behaviour of

people on earth and has foreknowledge of their future. According to Mudhi, this

story reveals that Bar Moshe believes in God and in the existence of a spirit world

where justice and honesty prevail. For him, death is not the end of life; on the con-trary, it liberates man from the pain and anguish of this earthly existence, and there-

fore mourning and grief are unnecessary.49

In the story ‘Saʿıd’s House’, Saʿıd, a friend of the narrator, is a writer whose wife

has left him because he immersed himself in his literary work and ignored her. The

narrator decides to visit his friend, but when he tries to find the house, he discovers

that it has vanished. Wandering around, he starts to panic, but then forces himself

to relax and say a prayer. ‘I closed my eyes for a moment and said a prayer to the

Supreme Creator who governs the world and its inhabitants. I thought I saw amysterious light shining in front of me. I passed through a doorway, tripping over

stones and rocks and trying to avoid prickly thorns.’50 The narrator finds himself

inside Saʿıd’s house, but it seems strangely transformed. He gropes his way for-

ward, trying to locate Saʿıd’s desk, but finds his way blocked by a large boulder.

After crawling and passing beneath it, he is surprised to find Saʿıd himself, sitting

at his desk and writing. The narrator cries out, ‘What are you doing here?’ To

which Saʿıd replies, ‘As you can see, I am busy writing my book. Why are you

late?’51

Saʿıd explains that, when he is writing, the real world does not exist for him. Some-

times he disconnects from reality so completely that he forgets where he is. Describ-

ing how he came to be where he is, he tells his friend that he got up from his desk for

a moment, but before he could reach the door, he suddenly ran into a boulder and

fell onto some grass, whereupon he found himself in a strange place far from home.

He asks,

Why is it that when I am immersed in my work, everything around me sinks

away and disappears? Sometimes I feel I have been transported back to the early

centuries, to observe the youths of that time and study their relationships, and

then something strange happens: I discover that my desk is standing in the

woods, among weeds and rocks . . . that my thoughts are purer, and that the air

in my lungs is fresh, fragrant and pleasant.52

Immersed in spiritual work, Saʿıd disconnects from the material world. When thenarrator tries to reach his home by following a physical road, he is unable to do so.

Only when he says a prayer does he see the mysterious glimmer and discover the van-

ished house. The glimmer symbolizes God, who lights the way for the believers. The

author’s message is that life without faith is meaningless.53

The last story in the book, the title story ‘Behind the Wall’, is narrated by a pebble

lying in a road. An early-rising passer-by on the way to work kicks it into a yard sur-

rounded by a wall, and the pebble then observes what goes on in the yard. The story

apparently conveys the idea that, beyond our ordinary, visible world, in which thereis a distinction between the animate and the inanimate, there is another hidden world

in which everything, even an inanimate and inconsequential object like a pebble, is

part of the divine spirit that permeates all of creation.54

The Short Stories of Isaac Bar Moshe 435

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In this article, I have so far enumerated some of the elements in Bar Moshe’s life that

he drew upon in writing his stories and autobiographies: the Middle Eastern tradi-

tion of fairies and genies, memories of Baghdad’s ghostly streets at night, haunted

cellars, his lost childhood, nostalgia for the womb of the Iraqi Jewish community,

the rhythms of Arabic, and the wrench of immigrating to the Jewish homeland. Butwithout the catalyst of his imagination, he could not have been able to turn his expe-

riences, hopes, desires and memories into stories of fantasy. None of the foregoing,

however, illuminates Bar Moshe’s motivations for choosing to pour out his deep-

seated dissatisfaction and frustrations and to assuage his most heartfelt hopes and

dreams through the fantasy genre.

No less than the great master of the art of fantasy J.R.R. Tolkien has left us with a

theoretical analysis that reflects on the stories of Bar Moshe from a different perspec-

tive that is both illuminating and satisfying. I have found no indication that BarMoshe read Tolkien, nor do I suggest that he had. However, drawing parallels

between Tolkien’s work and that of Bar Moshe is useful in better understanding how

Bar Moshe’s personal experience may have led him to encounter the three functions

of fantasy described by Tolkien in his brief book Tree and Leaf. Tolkien notes that

fantasy possesses an ‘arresting strangeness’, and associates it with the notions of

‘imagination’, ‘unreality’ and ‘unlikeness to the Primary World’.55 In speaking of

‘unlikeness to the Primary World’, he means divergence from what is generally per-

ceived as reality, or what he calls ‘the domination of observed fact’, referring to theidea that people often feel uncomfortable with anything that transcends the bound-

aries of the mundane, visible world.56

Tolkien maintains in Tree and Leaf that fantasy serves three functions, namely

‘recovery’, ‘escape’ and ‘consolation’. By no means does he suggest that these ingre-

dients are a recipe for fantasy writing. ‘The analytic study of fairy-stories is a bad

preparation for the enjoying or writing of them as would be the historical study of

drama . . . for the enjoyment or writing of stage-plays.’57 Rather, Tolkien’s three

functions are like a ‘general theory’ that should fit all fantasy, including Bar Moshe’s.By ‘recovery’, Tolkien means that fantasy serves as a means of healing one’s soul.

As we grow older, he explains, day-to-day life dulls our senses so that we lose contact

(sight of and touch with) all that is magical and mysterious in the world. We there-

fore need to ‘clean our window’. The world of fantasy is a tool of mental healing and

a ‘prophylactic against loss’58 that allows us to recover our fresh view of reality, free-

ing us from the greyness that surrounds us. It helps us to rediscover the mundane

and see it in bright, sparkling colour, as we are meant to see it, or as we saw it for the

very first time.By ‘escape’, he means that fantasy allows us to step out of reality. This sort of

‘escapism’ is often regarded as negative, but Tolkien does not view it that way. He

argues that escape from reality – both in the grander sense of a respite from the hor-

ror of death (‘the Great Escape: the Escape from Death’59), and in the minor sense of

a momentary respite from the worries of existence and the ugliness of the modern

world – allows us to rediscover the deeper realm of spiritual freedom and universal

truth. He said, ‘It is the essential malady of such days is [that is, the modern, industri-

alized age] – producing the desire to escape, not, indeed, from life, but from the pres-ent time and self-made misery – that we are actually conscious both of the ugliness of

our works and of their evil.’60

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By ‘consolation’, Tolkien means that fantasy satisfies the human desire for a

‘happy ending’ and for ‘miraculous grace’. ‘The possibility of these’, he wrote, ‘is nec-

essary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will)

universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy

beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.’61

Now I shall apply Tolkien’s theory of fantasy to a few of Bar Moshe’s stories

reviewed above. ‘The Dead House’ and ‘The Cellar’ exemplify the first function of

fantasy as described by Tolkien, namely recovery. The fairies symbolize complete-

ness and harmony that cannot be attained in this world but only in the spiritual

realm. The narrators in both stories experience the magic and mystery of the fairy

world and the warmth and love that can be found there; the fairies deliver them from

the dreariness of their everyday existence and arouse in them a newfound delight in

the beauty of creation. These stories also fulfil Tolkien’s third function of fantasy,namely consolation: the fairies’ appearance is a miracle and a glimpse into another

world, which gives us hope that, beyond this world, there is another realm full of

grace and joy.

‘The Third Hill’ embodies Tolkien’s second function of fantasy – that is, escape.

The narrator attempts to escape from society and thus avoid dealing with the exhaust-

ing troubles of everyday life and the flaws of society. Wandering alone through the

hills, he stumbles into a spiritual realm whose rules are very different from the concrete

reality he knows. He discovers that the world from which he comes is paradoxical anddeceptive, whereas the spiritual world embodies all that is true and just.62

‘The Return of Mahbub’ fulfils Tolkien’s third function of fantasy – the emotional

consolation ‘of the Happy Ending’.63 In fact, with the young boy’s impish presence

finally going to Heaven after his parents have abandoned him, having left him in the

family home, this story’s ending conforms to Tolkien’s pronouncement that ‘there is

no true end to any fairy-tale’.64 Not only is death presented in this Bar Moshe story

as something not to be feared, but, on the contrary, it is portrayed as a release that

frees one from pain and the constraints of time and place. The story of the everlastingsoul of a dead child emphasizes that the spiritual world is infinitely superior to the

physical world. The tragedy is that an impenetrable barrier separates the two, as is

evident from Mahbub’s unsuccessful attempts to make others aware of his presence.

In the light of Tolkien’s essay on the therapeutic nature of fantasy writing in Tree

and Leaf, one may ask if the functions of fantasy as formulated fit Bar Moshe, the

man and the writer. Was he seeking ‘recovery’, ‘escape’ and ‘consolation’ through his

writing? Or did he believe his stories might relieve his readers, particularly his country-

men and women, of their hardships and loss? I think Tolkien answers these questions:

I do not think that the reader or the maker of fairy-stories need even be ashamed

of the ‘escape’ . . . For it is after all possible for a rational man, after reflection

(quite unconnected with fairy-story or romance), to arrive at the condemnation,

implicit at least in the mere silence of ‘escapist’ literature, of progressive things

like factories, or the machine-guns and bombs that appear to be their most natu-

ral and inevitable, dare we say ‘inexorable’, products.65

The world of fantasy in Bar Moshe’s stories serves to heal the diseased and

unhappy souls of his narrators, clearly representing the author and identified with by

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the reader, by liberating them from their dreary routine and allowing them to see the

world anew, in bright and glowing colours. It also serves the goal of escape, by offer-

ing a release from the corruption, injustice and evil of the world, the worries of exis-

tence, and the horror of death, and providing a window into a spiritual realm of

magic, beauty and harmony. It is striking that the title of Bar Moshe’s first book ofstories, Behind the Wall, evokes Tolkien’s statement that fantasy consoles us by pro-

viding ‘a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world’ – that is, a pros-

pect of an otherworldly joy that is true and everlasting.

Finally, Shmuel Moreh argues that Bar Moshe’s stories work on two planes: the

external-material plane and the spiritual-metaphysical plane. On the material plane,

the author exposes human society in all its ugliness and describes grim psychological

states like schizophrenia, excessive sensitivity, paranoia, suffering, loneliness, alien-

ation and the obsessive pursuit of justice. On the spiritual-metaphysical plane, theauthor describes eternal and mysterious forces that direct people’s actions and shape

their future and their relationships, and addresses existential questions through the

prism of mysticism and fantasy. He deals intensively with supernatural phenomena,

beings that transcend our ordinary experience and life after death. Many of his sto-

ries are spiritual journeys into the conscious or sub-conscious mind, in which the

action takes place within the character’s soul or imagination. So perhaps we may

conclude by saying that Isaac Bar Moshe, always the author and often the narrator,

acted in his stories; indeed, lived his stories and his life forever helplessly suspendedbetween the real and the fantastic.

Notes

1. R. Snir, Arabness, Jewishness, Zionism: A Struggle of Identities in the Literature of Iraqi Jews (in

Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2008), pp.23–4. See also Y.R.A. Ghanimah, A Nostalgic Trip into

the History of the Jews of Iraq [Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi Tarıkh Yahud al-’Iraq] (London: Dar al Warraq,

1997; first publ. 1924), p.214.

2. S. Moreh (ed.), Short Stories by Jewish Writers from Iraq, 1924–1978 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press,

1981), p.16.

3. N. Qazzaz, The Jews in Iraq in the 20th Century (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1991), p.294.

4. Snir, Arabness, Jewishness, Zionism, pp.252–4, 309.

5. M.H. Mudhi, ‘The Origin and Development of the Iraqi-Jewish Short Story from 1922 to 1972’ (PhD

thesis, University of Exeter, 1988), pp.313–64.

6. Snir, Arabness, Jewishness, Zionism, p.188.

7. Sh. Moreh, The Tree and the Branch (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), p.238.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., pp.239–40.

10. Snir, Arabness, Jewishness, Zionism, p.201.

11. I. Bar Moshe, A House in Baghdad (in Arabic) (Jerusalem: The Association of Jewish Academics

from Iraq, 1983).

12. M. Giora-Elimelech, ‘Three Generations in a Single Mosaic’ (Hebrew), Bama’aracha, Vol.22, No.264

(1982), p.13.

13. In his book Reality, Paul Weiss writes, ‘The world we take for granted in a theory of knowledge is . . .

an extended field, peopled with particular, qualitative and changing objects, in movement and at rest

. . . some important, others trivial; some strange, others familiar; some concrete and others insub-

stantial.’ He asks, however, whether what we ‘know’ about objects we observe is not illusory,

‘grounded on the evidence of an untrustworthy memory and misleading attitudes and expectations’.

When we observe an object, he asks, can we really be sure that what we observe is more than a shape?

Can we possibly observe more than what we sense – colours, shapes, sounds, shapes, etc.?

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Weiss notes that most of the answers to this question fall on one side or the other of a divide

between two schools of philosophy. The phenomenalists, of whom the positivists form a subdivision,

contend that only what is observable by means of the senses is real, and ‘wish to rid mankind of those

notions that which no experience can ever test’. The na€ıve and rational realists, on the other hand,

argue that perceived reality cannot be confined to what we experience with our five senses. Weiss

emphasizes that it is difficult to know when one is being misled by one’s senses and to distinguish

reality from dream, even if one has a solid definition of wakefulness, dream and the nature of the

senses. In order to judge whether one’s senses are reliable, one must trust one’s memory (Paul Weiss,

Reality (New York: Peter Smith, 1949), pp.17–23).

Descartes points out that ‘there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish

wakefulness from sleep’ because our senses often deceive us. (The Philosophical Works of Descartes,

trans. E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p.146).

14. The Koran and the Talmud indeed associate demons and witchcraft with ancient Babylon. See S.

Moreh, ‘The Rise and Fall of Tantal: The Demon in the Folk Literature of Iraqi Jewry’, in Moreh,

The Tree and the Branch, p.283.

15. H.W.F. Saggs, The Greatness that Was Babylon (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1988), p.144.

16. Moreh, The Tree and the Branch, p.292.

17. The aforementioned Jewish-Iraqi writer of Bar Moshe’s generation, Samır Naqqash, portrays in his

story ‘Tantal’ the world as dominated by demonic forces. Tantal, a traditional Iraqi folklore figure, is

a mischievous nocturnal demon who can appear in different guises and likes to play tricks on people.

In Naqqash’s story, he immigrates with the Iraqi Jews to Israel, where he changes from a harmless

sprite into the embodiment of evil and uncertainty. He represents man’s existential anxiety, his fear

of invisible and mysterious natural forces, his sense of doubt and detachment, his insecurity and his

fear of the future – in short, the alienation experienced by men everywhere, but especially by the Iraqi

Jewish immigrants after their immigration to Israel. S. Naqqash, An�a wa-h�a’ul�a’i wal-fi�o�am [I, They

and Ambivalence] (Jerusalem: Al-Sharq, 1978), pp.68–91).

18. Y. Meir, The Socio-Cultural Development of the Iraqi Jews from 1830 until Today (in Hebrew) (Tel

Aviv: Naharayim, 1989), p.343.

19. M. Keren, Reality and Fiction at the Turn of the Millennium (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ministry of

Defence, 2007), p.9.

20. In evidence, I briefly cite two examples of novels with fantastical elements written in the late twentieth

century. The first is South African writer Andr�e Brink’s The Rights of Desire. Brink grew up in a pious

Dutch Boer family holding rigid conservative values, and in his youth was exposed to Bible stories,

mythology, African folklore and especially to ghost stories. The novel’s narrator Ruben Olivier loses

his job to a black man and wants to escape from reality. The ghost of a seventeenth-century slave girl,

who holds lengthy conversations with the elderly coloured housekeeper, Magrieta, haunts the family

home. The ghost is a link between the present and the past. The housekeeper says, ‘Perhaps we need

our ghosts as much as they need us.’ A. Brink, The Rights of Desire (New York: Harcourt, 2000), p.250.

The second work is Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, in which 15-year-old Kafka Tamura

accompanies an old man named Nakata on his travels. The latter, who is the embodiment of Kafka’s

spirit, murders Kafka’s father. (In Japanese culture, a man and his spirit exist side by side, but the

spirit can leave the body and return to it. See Keren, Reality and Fiction, p.33.) The mixture of real-

ism and fantasy leaves the reader to wonder whether Kafka’s murder of his own father actually hap-

pened or was only a dream. H. Murakami, Kafka on the Shore, trans. P. Gabriel (New York: Vintage

Books, 2005).

21. The question arises of what is ‘real’ in a work of fiction. French structuralist literary critic Roland

Barthes (1915–80) wrote of the ‘reality effect’ (effet de r�eel), a textual devise aimed at giving the reader

the (subjective) impression that the text he is reading describes a concrete reality, regardless of

whether this text is a realistic description of the familiar world. (In the theatre, the purpose of the

reality effect is to give the audience a sense that what they are seeing on the stage is ‘real’). The artistic

value of a work of fiction has nothing to do with the historical, documentary or ‘realistic’ character of

the story, but it does often depend on the effective use of reality-creating devices, which allow the

readers to believe in the story. R. Barthes, The Rustle of Language, trans. R. Howard (New York:

Hill and Wang, 1986), pp.141–8.

22. Mudhi, ‘The Origin and Development’, p.366. A fundamental assumption in Kafka’s works is that,

at some point in the past, a more blissful reality existed, which was somehow transformed into the

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present reality and into a new existential state. Kafka’s Metamorphosis, for example, describes a situ-

ation in which a previous reality disappears and is replaced by a nightmarish one. ‘“What a quiet life

our family has been leading,” said Gregor to himself, and as he sat there motionless staring into the

darkness he felt great pride in the fact that he had been able to provide such a life for his parents and

sister in such a fine flat. “But what if all the quiet, the comfort, the contentment were now to end in

horror?”‘ F. Kafka, Selected Short Stories, trans. W. Muir and E. Muir (New York: Modern Library,

1952), pp.42–3.

23. Mudhi, ‘The Origin and Development’, pp.366, 392, 455.

24. Moreh, The Tree and the Branch, pp.240–41.

25. In her book L’ �Ere du Soupcon (The Age of Suspicion), first published in 1956, Nathalie Sarraute

(1900–99) wrote, ‘Today, a constantly rising tide has been flooding us with literary works that still

claim to be novels and in which a being devoid of outline, indefinable, intangible and invisible, an

anonymous “I”, who is at once all and nothing, and who as often as not is but the reflection of the

author himself, has usurped the role of the hero, occupying the place of honour. The other characters,

being deprived of their own existence, are reduced to the status of visions, dreams, nightmares, illu-

sions, reflections, quiddities or dependants of this all-powerful “I”.’ N. Sarraute, The Age of Suspi-

cion, trans. Maria Jolas (New York: George Braziller, 1963), pp.55–6.

26. I. Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall (in Arabic) (Jerusalem: Al-Sharq, 1972), pp.153–5.

27. Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall, pp.153–5.

28. Ibid., pp.155–6.

29. Ibid., p.157.

30. In Arabic, this (our) world is called al-dunya , meaning ‘the world’, and the next world is

referred to as al-ukhra , ‘the other’, hence a semantic association is suggested by the ‘the

other house’.

31. Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall, p.163.

32. Perhaps it is meant to evoke the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, which, according to Jewish tradition,

is a portal between this world and the next. The Zohar states that the cave was dug by the first man as a

tomb for himself and his wife. It asks, ‘How did Adam know where to dig the cave? He saw a small

glimmer of light there, emanating from Paradise, and craved that place as his tomb. It is the spot closest

to the gate of Paradise.’ (Zohar, Bereshit 57b (Brooklyn, NY: Ohel Torah, 1999), pp.231–2).

33. Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall, p.169.

34. Ibid., p.174.

35. Ibid., p.175.

36. Ibid., p.177.

37. Snir, Arabness, Jewishness, Zionism, pp.190–91.

38. Ibid., p.189.

39. Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall, pp.62–3.

40. Moreh argues that this scene is described in a Kafkaesque manner. The Tree and the Branch, p.243.

41. Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall, p.68. Another of Bar Moshe’s stories, ‘The Village of the Free’

in The Polar Bear, reflects his belief that our world is a world of enslavement to the

desires of the flesh, and that only death brings true liberation by freeing the soul from the physical

body and allowing it to find spiritual joy. The ‘village of the free’ is in fact a graveyard, whose inhabi-

tants enjoy freedom and peace. The more their bodies decompose, the freer they become.

42. Ibid., pp.68–9.

43. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that not only is man free, he is the embodiment

of freedom. Man cannot escape freedom, for it is part of him wherever he goes; it is the very essence

of his being. He wrote, ‘There is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom.’ Therefore, man

remains free even if he decides to give up his liberty or when others take it away from him. J.-P.

Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, trans. and intro. P. Mairet (London: Methuen & Co., 1965),

p.34.

Albert Camus seconds Sartre, saying that authentic freedom is a means of coping with the anxi-

eties of modern man: loneliness, alienation, moral deterioration and the fear of death. A. Camus,

Resistance, Rebellion and Death, trans. J. O’Brien (New York: Knopf, 1960), pp.93–9.

44. Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall, p.70.

45. Another story in Behind the Wall, ‘Prisoner and Guard’, is narrated by a prisoner who has lost his

memory and thus has no idea he is in jail. His conflict is not only with society but also with himself.

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Paradoxically, in prison he feels relatively free because he does not need to take care of himself, and

because he is protected from the suffering and pain that exist in the outside world. Many of Bar

Moshe’s characters escape their surroundings by sheltering in a dream world, but the prisoner is

unable to do so. In his case, the prison walls shield him from reality.

46. Mudhi, ‘The Origin and Development’, p.373.

47. Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall, p.118.

48. Ibid., p.132.

49. Mudhi, ‘The Origin and Development’, p.388. Similar themes appear in the story ‘The Guard’

, also in Behind the Wall. In this story, the narrator has a friend who is kind and honest, but

precisely for this reason his boss regards him as a threat. The narrator has a feeling that his friend

might be in danger, and his forebodings come true. Indeed, the friend dies and the boss, in his hypoc-

risy, says a eulogy over the grave. After the ceremony, the narrator remains by the graveside. Sud-

denly the dead man appears, and the two have a conversation. To the narrator’s surprise, the dead

man defends his boss. He explains that the boss’s behaviour is dictated from above by a supernatural

force, so there is no point in feeling anger towards him. The boss too will eventually die, and that

same supernatural force will determine the hour of his death. The dead man says to his friend, ‘You

ascribe too much importance to death and to life in this world. Life and death have no real impor-

tance in a man’s world. The important [stage] begins here, in the grave. Now I am free and [truly]

alive . . . The people you see around you, whom you think are alive, are mostly walking corpses . . .

Had the world been peopled by those who are truly alive, there would have been no need for laws.’

Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall, p.97.

50. Bar Moshe, Behind the Wall, p.28.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., p.69.

53. Mudhi, ‘The Origin and Development’, p.70.

54. Snir, Arabness, Jewishness, Zionism, p.192.

55. J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973), p.44.

56. In the ancient world, people perceived myths as descriptions of a concrete reality, and used them to

make sense of their past, their circumstances and their fate. Contemporary fantasy, on the other

hand, is perceived as purely fictional, and is not bound by considerations of fidelity to the primary

world or to historical fact. However, like other types of fiction, contemporary fantasy does address

existential questions such as man’s place in the world, and especially his ability to control space and

time, manipulate the laws of nature, determine his own fate, aspire to achievements, pursue his

dreams and fulfil hidden yearnings. See D. Gurevitch, ‘What Is Fantasy?’, in H. Yanai (ed.), With

Both Feet on the Clouds: Fantasy in Hebrew Literature (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Graff, 2009), p.13.

57. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, pp.50–51.

58. Ibid., p.52.

59. Ibid., p.59.

60. Ibid., p.57.

61. Ibid., p.60.

62. The Talmud Bava Batra 10b tells the story of Rav Yosef, the son of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, who fell

ill and was at the brink of death when his father’s prayers brought him back to life. When he came

to, his father asked him, ‘My son, what did you see in Heaven?’ Rav Yosef replied, ‘I saw an upside-

down world. Those who are on top [here] are on the bottom [there].’ His father said, ‘My son, you

saw a well regulated world.’

63. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, p.60.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid., p.56.

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