Samir Naqqash's Tenants & Cobwebs spins its claustrophobic, multivocal narrative around the lives of Jewish and Muslim characters who live cheek-to-jowl in mid-20th century Baghdad.
The novel’s action unfolds in the shadow of the June 1941 “Farhud,” a pogrom carried out against Baghdad’s Jewish citizenry. Throughout the 1940s, the book’s many Jews are squeezed tighter and tighter until they press up against the choice, in 1950, of whether to stay in an increasingly intolerant Baghdad or tear apart families and communities as they give up their citizenship and move to Israel.
This novel – Naqqash’s first – was published in Arabic in 1986, and draws on the author’s own life experiences. His family fled Iraq in 1951 when he was just 13. Unlike most other writers who left Baghdad’s once-thriving Jewish community for Israel, Naqqash continued to write in Arabic until his death in 2004.
The book’s titular “tenants” live in a handful of buildings in the working-class district of Bani S’id. Its “cobwebs” might be the sticky traps that bind them ever-tighter in the years following the Farhud. Or they might be the cobwebs left behind in 1951, when the buildings are emptied of their long-time Jewish residents.
The book’s translator, Sadok Masliyah, has a “Short History of Iraqi Jewry” at the end of the book, which emphasises the deep roots of the country’s Jews.
Ya’qub, a character who begins the novel as a respectable shoemaker and loses everything to gambling, reflects on this history while losing at Dominoes. “This land is made of us … We lived in it before you were born. When you were sperm, we had already completed compiling our Talmud, before you. Before the beginning of history, my first patriarch was born here, the second married a native, and the third lived in it.”
The novel portrays a diverse, struggling Baghdad besieged by the imperialism and Nazism of the 1940s.
“Incitement was as sharp as the teeth of a saw, and the minds of Baghdad’s residents were tender. Baghdad had an army of starving mobs. Starve your dogs and they will follow you. The British starved the Iraqis, so did the allies of the Nazis who shouted, ‘Attack the Jews!’”
Naqqash’s experimental narrative slips from one character to another, moving between thought and speech, reality and nightmare. The effect is overcrowded and overheated, much like the densely packed buildings where the characters reside.
The largest single attack on Baghdad’s Jews was the June 1941 Farhud, when an estimated 179 people were murdered, with hundreds more robbed or injured.
There was no second mass attack. Yet the characters in Tenants & Cobwebs are in constant fear of one, asking themselves and each other, what will we do if Farhud happens again?
When the book opens, many of the characters are already stuck. Aziz Ghawi is in his 20s and still a senior in high school. Sabriyah, the building’s beauty, is married to a train conductor who visits home once a week. Others are stuck inside their nightmare-memories of the Farhud.
Naturally, some Baghdadi Muslims protected their neighbours during the attack. Masliyah writes in his afterword, “Many Jews were saved by Muslim neighbours who risked their own lives to protect them, some of whom were also killed.”
In Tenants & Cobwebs, a character named Selman remembers his rescue by an acquaintance who says, "don't be afraid! I'll escort you step-by-step and not leave you until I bring you home, even if it costs me my head."
Yet while Selman makes it home, he never discovers how his parents died during the days of looting and killing.
Selman (a reluctant Zionist) shares a room with Jamil (a sceptical Jewish Communist). At the start Selman is fixated on his unrequited love for the building’s lonely beauty, Sabriyah. Bit by bit, Selman is drawn into the Zionist resistance. Yet his resistance is hapless: the first time he fires a gun, he accidentally hits a child and is smuggled out of the country, away from his love.
_____________________
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_____________________
As the book progresses, love crumbles everywhere: romantic, familial, and neighbourly. Romantic love is exchanged for prostitution; families break apart; and love of one’s neighbour is replaced by suspicion.
When Ya’qub reflects on the religious commandment to love one’s neighbour, he wonders: “Has man really declared the bankruptcy of a love so deeply rooted?”
One of the most heartbreaking scenes comes in 1950, when tenants Farhah and Abdallah Ghawi decide to flee the country with their children. One daughter, Sai’dah, has married a Muslim. When Farhah comes to beg Sai’dah to travel with them, the young woman is pregnant, a “baby sleeping inside her tingling belly.”
When Farhah says, “If you truly loved us, you would give him his son and leave with us,” her daughter declines, tearfully, in the Baghdadi Muslim dialect.
It is difficult to sense, in the English, the traces of Baghdadi Muslim and Jewish dialects. The novel would have needed a virtuoso translator to find a way to echo the shifting registers compellingly in English.
Yet while this aspect is flattened, other choices unnecessarily complicate the text, as when a Bar Mitzvah is written as Bar Miswah.
In her foreword, Nancy Berg writes that Tenants & Cobwebs "is not an easy read" and, indeed, the translation can sometimes be a slog. But Berg is also right that Naqqash's singular novel rewards attention.
Know your cyber adversaries
Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
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UAE v Gibraltar
What: International friendly
When: 7pm kick off
Where: Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
Admission: Free
Online: The match will be broadcast live on Dubai Exiles’ Facebook page
UAE squad: Lucas Waddington (Dubai Exiles), Gio Fourie (Exiles), Craig Nutt (Abu Dhabi Harlequins), Phil Brady (Harlequins), Daniel Perry (Dubai Hurricanes), Esekaia Dranibota (Harlequins), Matt Mills (Exiles), Jaen Botes (Exiles), Kristian Stinson (Exiles), Murray Reason (Abu Dhabi Saracens), Dave Knight (Hurricanes), Ross Samson (Jebel Ali Dragons), DuRandt Gerber (Exiles), Saki Naisau (Dragons), Andrew Powell (Hurricanes), Emosi Vacanau (Harlequins), Niko Volavola (Dragons), Matt Richards (Dragons), Luke Stevenson (Harlequins), Josh Ives (Dubai Sports City Eagles), Sean Stevens (Saracens), Thinus Steyn (Exiles)
If you go
Where to stay: Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Centre has unparalleled views of the Indian River. Alligators can be spotted from hotel room balconies, as can several rocket launch sites. The hotel also boasts cool space-themed decor.
When to go: Florida is best experienced during the winter months, from November to May, before the humidity kicks in.
How to get there: Emirates currently flies from Dubai to Orlando five times a week.
COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
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COMPANY PROFILE
● Company: Bidzi
● Started: 2024
● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid
● Based: Dubai, UAE
● Industry: M&A
● Funding size: Bootstrapped
● No of employees: Nine
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Disclaimer
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Stars: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Lesley Manville
Rating: 4/5
Singham Again
Director: Rohit Shetty
Stars: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone
Rating: 3/5
The specs
Engine: Long-range single or dual motor with 200kW or 400kW battery
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Max touring range: 620km / 590km
Price: From Dh250,000 (estimated)
SPECS
Engine: Two-litre four-cylinder turbo
Power: 235hp
Torque: 350Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Price: From Dh167,500 ($45,000)
On sale: Now
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
Cricket World Cup League 2
UAE squad
Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind
Fixtures
Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
Sunday, November 3 – UAE v Netherlands
Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
Saturday, November 9 – Netherlands v UAE
From Zero
Artist: Linkin Park
Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
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Tips for taking the metro
- set out well ahead of time
- make sure you have at least Dh15 on you Nol card, as there could be big queues for top-up machines
- enter the right cabin. The train may be too busy to move between carriages once you're on
- don't carry too much luggage and tuck it under a seat to make room for fellow passengers
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Company%20Profile
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Our legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
MATCH INFO
Manchester United 1 (Fernandes pen 2') Tottenham Hotspur 6 (Ndombele 4', Son 7' & 37' Kane (30' & pen 79, Aurier 51')
Man of the match Son Heung-min (Tottenham)
Citadel: Honey Bunny first episode
Directors: Raj & DK
Stars: Varun Dhawan, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Kashvi Majmundar, Kay Kay Menon
Rating: 4/5
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 154bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option
Price: From Dh79,600
On sale: Now
FORSPOKEN
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Star%20Wars%20Jedi%3A%20Survivor
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Diablo%20IV
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Starfield
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The specs
Engine: 3-litre twin-turbo V6
Power: 400hp
Torque: 475Nm
Transmission: 9-speed automatic
Price: From Dh215,900
On sale: Now
Electoral College Victory
Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate.
Popular Vote Tally
The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
The Cairo Statement
1: Commit to countering all types of terrorism and extremism in all their manifestations
2: Denounce violence and the rhetoric of hatred
3: Adhere to the full compliance with the Riyadh accord of 2014 and the subsequent meeting and executive procedures approved in 2014 by the GCC
4: Comply with all recommendations of the Summit between the US and Muslim countries held in May 2017 in Saudi Arabia.
5: Refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of countries and of supporting rogue entities.
6: Carry out the responsibility of all the countries with the international community to counter all manifestations of extremism and terrorism that threaten international peace and security
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
Company profile
Name: Tratok Portal
Founded: 2017
Based: UAE
Sector: Travel & tourism
Size: 36 employees
Funding: Privately funded
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EA Sports FC 25
Developer: EA Vancouver, EA Romania
Publisher: EA Sports
Consoles: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4&5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S
Rating: 3.5/5
