Between Two Homelands

Opening Scene — The Shimmering Stars

The film opens on a warm summer night in Baghdad. Families sleep on the rooftops to escape the heat. A young Sasson lies awake on his mattress, gazing at the stars while listening to the soundtrack of films playing in a nearby open-air cinema. He already knows many of the films by heart, yet continues to imagine the stories unfolding beyond the walls. The stars above and the stars of the silver screen become the audience's first glimpse into the world that shaped his imagination.

Chapter 1 — Family, Home, and The Lettuce Quarter

Sasson introduces his family, their home, and the neighborhood where he grew up — Hayy al-Khass ("The Lettuce Quarter"), named after the exceptional lettuce once cultivated there. Through stories of family life, the house, the streets, and the close-knit Jewish community, this chapter recreates Baghdad during its final decades as one of the oldest and most vibrant Jewish communities in the Middle East.

Chapter 2 — A Baghdad Childhood

Through a collection of childhood memories, Sasson paints a vivid portrait of everyday life in Baghdad: swimming in the Tigris River, wandering through bustling markets, family meals, neighborhood traditions, school life, and the rhythms of a multicultural city. These stories recreate a world that no longer exists but remains deeply alive in his memory.

Chapter 3 — Discovering Literature

As a teenager, Sasson frequently skipped school to spend hours in Baghdad's cafés, quietly listening to conversations among poets, writers, and intellectuals. Long before imagining an academic career, he became captivated by Arabic literature and the people who created it. These encounters shaped the intellectual path that would define his life.

Chapter 4 — Jewish Life in Baghdad

The Jewish community of Baghdad was remarkably cosmopolitan. Although Arabic was the language of the surrounding society, many Jewish families were educated in Alliance schools, where French and English were central languages of instruction. Following the British administration of Iraq, English became especially influential. Sasson's own parents primarily read and spoke English, illustrating the multilingual and culturally diverse environment in which he grew up.

Chapter 5 — Watching History Unfold

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Sasson did not become actively involved in either the Zionist or Communist movements during his youth. His interests remained focused on language, literature, and culture. While political ideologies increasingly influenced those around him, he experienced these historic changes largely as an observer.

Chapter 6 — The End of an Era

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 fundamentally changed the position of Iraq's Jewish community. As Iraqi society increasingly identified with the Palestinian cause, attitudes toward its Jewish citizens shifted dramatically. Families who had considered themselves fully Iraqi suddenly found their place in society becoming uncertain, marking the beginning of the community's final chapter.

Chapter 7 — Leaving Iraq

Between 1950 and 1951, Iraqi Jews were permitted to emigrate on the condition that they renounce their Iraqi citizenship. Hoping circumstances might improve, Sasson's family delayed their departure until the final phase of the exodus. By then, government restrictions prevented emigrants from taking with them the money they had saved or the proceeds from selling their homes and belongings. They arrived in Israel carrying little more than their personal possessions and memories.

Chapter 8 — Beginning Again

Immigration to Israel marked the end of one world and the beginning of another. Iraqi Jews entered a society largely shaped by European Jews, many of whom were themselves Holocaust survivors. Differences in language, culture, food, education, and social expectations created a profound cultural transition. Families who had once enjoyed professional status and financial stability suddenly found themselves rebuilding every aspect of their lives in an unfamiliar country.

Chapter 9 — A Shared Future

Because Arabic was his native language, Sasson naturally formed relationships with Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. Through conversations and personal encounters, he became interested in understanding their experiences following 1948 and increasingly sought a framework in which Jews and Arabs could engage as equals. This search eventually led him toward the Israeli Communist Party — not primarily out of ideological commitment, but because it offered one of the few spaces where meaningful Jewish-Arab partnership could exist. The idea of a shared future would remain a defining thread throughout his life.

Chapter 10 — The Loss of His Father

Immigration came at a particularly heavy personal cost for Sasson's father. After serving for decades in a respected banking position in Baghdad, he lost not only his career but also the social standing and sense of purpose that had defined his life. Although he eventually found work in banking in Israel, the language barrier and his limited Hebrew made communication with customers extremely difficult. The emotional burden of displacement remained with him until his untimely death.

Chapter 11 — Terry and Building a New Family

Alongside the challenges of establishing an academic career, Sasson met Terry, whose partnership became central to his personal life. Together they built a family and raised three children while creating a new home in Israel.

Chapter 12 — Mastering a New Language

Only a few years after arriving in Israel as a seventeen-year-old immigrant from Baghdad, Sasson had mastered Hebrew to an extraordinary degree. As one of the first students at the newly established Tel Aviv University, he studied Hebrew language and linguistics, demonstrating an exceptional ability to move between Arabic and Hebrew with equal depth.

Chapter 13 — The Academy of the Hebrew Language

In 1963, Sasson was appointed Secretary of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. Working alongside some of Israel’s greatest literary figures — including S. Y. Agnon, Avraham Shlonsky, and many others — he participated in shaping modern Hebrew during one of its most formative periods. For someone who had arrived in Israel only a decade earlier with almost no Hebrew, the appointment represented a remarkable personal and intellectual achievement.

Chapter 14 — Oxford and the Discovery of Naguib Mahfouz

At the request of Tel Aviv University, Sasson pursued doctoral studies at Oxford University with the goal of returning to establish a program in Arabic language and literature.

Under the supervision of the distinguished Egyptian scholar Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi of Alexandria, he chose to dedicate his dissertation to the novels of Naguib Mahfouz.

During the very years he was conducting his doctoral research, the Six-Day War broke out. Despite the conflict between Israel and Egypt, Professor Badawi continued to support Sasson's work without interruption. Their academic collaboration endured throughout the war, standing as a remarkable example of scholarship transcending political conflict.

Oxford also brought together students from across the Middle East. During this period, Sasson developed a friendship with Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, the brother of King Hussein and one of the Arab world's leading intellectual voices. Their relationship, which began in Oxford, would continue for many years and reflected Sasson's lifelong ability to build meaningful personal connections across political and national boundaries.

The dissertation introduced Mahfouz's work to Western academia and marked the beginning of a friendship that would last more than twenty-five years.

Chapter 15 — An International Scholar

Over the following decades, Sasson divided his academic life between Israel and leading universities around the world. He returned regularly to Oxford, held visiting appointments at Princeton and other institutions, and became one of the foremost international scholars of modern Arabic literature. These years expanded both his academic influence and his network of friendships across Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

Chapter 16 — Princeton and the Cairo Geniza

During his years at Princeton University, Sasson became involved in scholarly work surrounding the Cairo Geniza, contributing to the preservation, translation, and interpretation of one of the world's most important collections documenting nearly a thousand years of Jewish life throughout the Middle East. The Geniza became another bridge connecting the Jewish and Arab worlds that fascinated him throughout his career.

Chapter 17 — Cairo: Walking Through the Pages of Literature

Following the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, Egypt opened its doors to Israeli visitors. In January 1980, Sasson became one of the first Israeli tourists to visit the country.

For decades he had imagined Cairo through its novels, cafés, and streets. Now, carrying a map, he wandered through neighborhoods he had known only from literature, searching for the cafés, alleyways, and landmarks that had filled his imagination since childhood.

During his visit, Sasson also met many of Egypt's leading writers, poets, critics, and intellectuals. Despite decades without official relations between the two countries, he was welcomed with remarkable warmth and generosity. These encounters reinforced his belief that literature and culture could build relationships where politics often could not.

Chapter 18 — The Israeli Academic Center in Cairo

Between 1995 and 1998, Sasson served as Director of the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo, an institution established after the peace agreement to encourage academic and cultural exchange between Egypt and Israel.

When he first arrived, the center was a vibrant meeting place for Egyptian students, Israeli scholars, and intellectual dialogue. During his tenure, however, the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin marked a turning point. Hearing the news while in Cairo together with the Israeli writer Sami Michael, Sasson witnessed how the optimism surrounding the peace process gradually gave way to uncertainty and increasingly strained relations between the two countries.

Chapter 19 — Naguib Mahfouz: Twenty-Five Years of Friendship

Over the course of twenty-five years, Sasson developed a close friendship with Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's greatest modern novelist.

Long before Mahfouz became internationally celebrated, Sasson's doctoral dissertation introduced his work to Western academia. When Mahfouz received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, international media turned to Sasson — then at Princeton University — to explain the significance of an author who was still largely unknown outside the Arab world.

Mahfouz himself paid a personal price for his commitment to dialogue and his support for peace between Egypt and Israel. His positions alienated many former supporters, and in 1994 he survived an assassination attempt by an Islamist extremist that permanently injured his writing hand.

Their friendship became a powerful example of how literature, mutual respect, and intellectual curiosity could transcend political divisions.